Should Quake 4 "lurch" on this system?

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
OK, I'm very satisfied with the performance of this newly built system but something about the way Quake 4 performs is nagging me...

During the real-time intro sequence it is very obvious that the game is not playing smoothly. I don't mean "not smoothly" as in "low FPS" but I mean that when a ship floats by on the screen it seems to go slowly like it should but lurch forwards several times before it passes. It's as if it were moving too slowly and had to catch up at certain intervals a couple times a second. It's very distracting though I haven't played enough to know if it's a problem in game [It's not].

Anyway, if it is just me and this isn't just the way Quake 4 is made, what could cause this? I doubt the SLI setup is a bottleneck in any way. It's a fresh install of XP 64-bit edition with the Quake 4 dual-core/hyperthreading point release and the latest official drivers for everything.

I passed on nVidia's IDE SW driver because I was told that there is a reason why it is optional and a reason that the installation asks you a second time before installing (Too buggy with too many problems I hear). I will try installing it anyway unless you guys can save me the time. :) [Tried it, no difference]
 

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
33,986
3,320
126
need more info on your sytem what you have given is not enough to help you.
Need total system specs....plz
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
I know what you mean with the "lurch" thing, its not lag it just... dosent float along smoothly. It dosent happen with me on a 3200+ and 9800 PRO, but i am probably using lower settings than you.

I would guess its an issue with xp-64 or its a setting that is playing up, you might wanna play around with them, or perhaps a driver issue.
 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
need more info on your sytem what you have given is not enough to help you.
Need total system specs....plz

1GB Corsair value ram in dual-channel w/ SPD timings, two XFX 7800GT cards in SLI (And SLI turned on) at stock clocks, retail AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at stock speed and voltage, Abit AN8-SLI, 400GB Hitachi 7k400 PATA hard disk drive and some Benq-based Plextor DVD burner (May be on same channel but it is not in use so it's not a factor [They're on separate channels]) all in an Antec P180 w/ PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 Deluxe.

Quake 4 settings are high (Not Ultra High). I tried using 4xAA @ 1024x768 resolution [and under]... It doesn't support native widescreen resolutions or 16x10 aspect at all [actually, I discovered r_aspectratio 2] and it forces me to use image scaling [still the case though]so I won't attempt to do my Dell 2005FPW's native resolution.

Originally posted by: Soviet
I know what you mean with the "lurch" thing, its not lag it just... dosent float along smoothly. It dosent happen with me on a 3200+ and 9800 PRO, but i am probably using lower settings than you.

I would guess its an issue with xp-64 or its a setting that is playing up, you might wanna play around with them, or perhaps a driver issue.

Yeah, it really noticable during that scene with lots of debris / bodies floating past a static background. I tried disabling SMP and using the nVidia IDE SW driver but it didn't change a thing. I'm willing to deal with it but it'd be nice to know that nothing is wrong and it's not just me. :)
 

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
33,986
3,320
126
Go to advanced settings and turn off anti aliasing....
also make sure your vertical sync is off and i also have everything under advanced setting iether listed as OFF or NO!!

Also lower your game setting to medium or even low setting......

I know you have an awesome video card but it will run better if you lower your game settings!!
 
Mar 19, 2003
18,289
2
71
I noticed the exact same thing. Haven't gotten around to reinstalling Q4 since I just reformatted last week, but I assume I'd still get the same issue. I have no idea what causes it.
 

cpacini

Senior member
Oct 22, 2005
712
0
76
I noticed the same thing in the intro sequence, but the game plays fine. dont worry about it
 

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
81
More RAM would also help.

1 GB is low for newer games...
 

Megatomic

Lifer
Nov 9, 2000
20,127
6
81
I play this game on my computer (see sig) at 1280x1024 and some decent IQ settings. I don't have this lurching problem and my specs are considerably lower than yours are. :confused:
 

imported_michaelpatrick33

Platinum Member
Jun 19, 2004
2,364
0
0
Try also setting the affinity for one core to see if you are having a scheduler issue (infamous scheduler issue). Make sure you have the AMD dualcore driver as well; that jerking may be a result from that as well. (Too lazy to check to see if OP stated he has the patch)
 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Go to advanced settings and turn off anti aliasing....
also make sure your vertical sync is off and i also have everything under advanced setting iether listed as OFF or NO!!

Also lower your game setting to medium or even low setting......

I know you have an awesome video card but it will run better if you lower your game settings!!

Thanks. i tried it but it's not a performance issue. Frames per second is just fine though I can see how VSYNC may be to blame (Like 3:2 pull-down frame-rate conversion causes "judder" in video processing).

Originally posted by: n7
More RAM would also help.

1 GB is low for newer games...

Well, it's alll loaded into memory at that point so it's not that. If it lurched just before each new piece of debris entered the screen then I'd know it was paging from a file but it's not.

Originally posted by: michaelpatrick33
Try also setting the affinity for one core to see if you are having a scheduler issue (infamous scheduler issue). Make sure you have the AMD dualcore driver as well; that jerking may be a result from that as well. (Too lazy to check to see if OP stated he has the patch)

Affinity? It does it both when I enable SMP (r_usesmp 1 and restart) or disable SMP (r_usesmp 0 and restart) in the Quake 4 console so would that suggest otherwise? What patch? The game or something for Windows? [Nevermind, I found all that info.]
 

sodcha0s

Golden Member
Jan 7, 2001
1,116
0
0
Go to advanced settings and turn off anti aliasing....
also make sure your vertical sync is off and i also have everything under advanced setting iether listed as OFF or NO!!

Also lower your game setting to medium or even low setting......

I know you have an awesome video card but it will run better if you lower your game settings!!

Absolutely not.... with your setup you should be able to crank up the effects using 1024x768 res. I don't have any experience with dual core cpu's, but I would make sure you have the correct drivers and such for it. Also from what I understand there is a patch or new driver (not sure which, sorry) that's multithreaded, in other words it takes advantage of dual core. That will definitely boost performance. 1 gig of ram is plenty for Q4, the only advantage 2 gigs would bring is faster load times.

I run the game on an x800xtpe, high settings, 4xaa and it's butter smooth.... the beginning cut-scene is a bit jittery, but the game itself is fine.
 

funkrocker049

Member
Dec 15, 2005
56
0
0
I've got Quake 4 running on max settings @ 1280x1024 w/4x AA and experience no slowdown whatsoever. I haven't tried to figure out the actual FPS, but it's perfectly smooth and perfectly playable. System specs below.

EPoX 9NPA+Ultra
Opteron 144 @ 1.8 (haven't OC'd yet)
2gb OCZ Performance RAM
eVGA GeForce 7800gt
 

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
33,986
3,320
126
Originally posted by: sodcha0s
Go to advanced settings and turn off anti aliasing....
also make sure your vertical sync is off and i also have everything under advanced setting iether listed as OFF or NO!!

Also lower your game setting to medium or even low setting......

I know you have an awesome video card but it will run better if you lower your game settings!!

Absolutely not.... with your setup you should be able to crank up the effects using 1024x768 res. I don't have any experience with dual core cpu's, but I would make sure you have the correct drivers and such for it. Also from what I understand there is a patch or new driver (not sure which, sorry) that's multithreaded, in other words it takes advantage of dual core. That will definitely boost performance. 1 gig of ram is plenty for Q4, the only advantage 2 gigs would bring is faster load times.

I run the game on an x800xtpe, high settings, 4xaa and it's butter smooth.... the beginning cut-scene is a bit jittery, but the game itself is fine.

Absolutely YES!!!!! Even with his system hes having issues that are game related that can most likely be solved by doing all of the above!!

Also just a note---Quake4 has the FPS capped at 60 so nothing you can do about that. there is NO work around!!
 

wlv

Junior Member
Sep 1, 2005
23
0
0
i think ive read that u can remove the fps cap from single player, but not multiplayer.
 

BOLt

Diamond Member
Dec 11, 2004
7,380
0
0
I get the same kind of problem in some scenes of GTA:SA, CZroe. I think it's just an issue with the games because my system is pretty good (see the link in my signature). That being said, overclocking my system from 1.8GHz to 2.5GHz and running my memory at 2-3-3-7-1T did lessen the problem. It might be due to your processor. Two cores are nice, but it means very little with regards to single-threaded games (all games up to this point in time). 2.0GHz on the x2 3800+ is a possible culprit of bottleneck, especially at such low resolutions with SLi 7800GTs. Read some Anandtech video card benchmarking articles and you'll find the same thing happening there. Try increasing your resolution and the quality settings to put more strain on your graphics cards. It might be that your FPS are too high for the game engine! This seems very counterintuitive, but try it -- I think it'll work. Also, try enabling/disabling VSync.

Keep us posted

1000th post for me, BTW. :)
 
Feb 19, 2001
20,155
23
81
U cannot play high / ultra high with 1gb only. I've tried. It gobbles up 1.7 gb on high already. That's worse than BF2. Medium runs fine for me. FPS may not be the best at all times but it is 99% smooth on my 7800GT. With an SLI rig, you should run medium FINE.
 

GOREGRINDER

Senior member
Oct 31, 2005
382
0
0
Originally posted by: CZroe
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
need more info on your sytem what you have given is not enough to help you.
Need total system specs....plz

1GB Corsair value ram in dual-channel w/ SPD timings, two XFX 7800GT cards in SLI (And SLI turned on) at stock clocks, retail AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at stock speed and voltage, Abit AN8-SLI, 400GB Hitachi 7k400 PATA hard disk drive and some Benq-based Plextor DVD burner (May be on same channel but it is not in use so it's not a factor) all in an Antec P180 w/ PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 Deluxe.

Quake 4 settings are high (Not Ultra High). I think I'm using 4xAA @ 1024x768 resolution... It doesn't support native widescreen resolutions or 16x10 aspecct at all and it forces me to use image scaling so I won't attempt to do my Dell 2005FPW's native resolution.

. I tried disabling SMP and using the nVidia IDE SW driver but it didn't change a thing. I'm willing to deal with it but it'd be nice to know that nothing is wrong and it's not just me. :)

for the res on the monitor,..just make sure you have the monitor driver installed and then in the vid options you have to tick the widescreen option to "yes" in quake4 before selecting widescreen resolutions

id only suggest using the nvidia IDE drivers for a Raid array,..single drives will prolly not benefit,..and the fact that you HAVE to instal them for Raid,..and you dont need them for a single drive kinda says what the purpose of them is imo

quake4 is mostly perfect on my system,..but that may be the 2gb of ram kickin,...theres only 2 parts in all of single player quake4 that are a little annoying,..but if i run no AA,..the slight "mouse swoosh" goes away (its in 2 very trivial parts that are when your standing in the middle of an open door and you turn back and forth between both large rooms for a second ,.so it really doesnt effect anything and its hardly noticeable,but im severly anal about these things also)
so basically my happy medium is running 1600x1200 no AA high quality 8xAF forced in config(high quality in quake4 is standard @ 4xAF unlike doom3 which is 8x),..and also in the nvidia control panel,...set LOD bias to "clamp",..you will likely notice the difference immediatly in quake4 ;)

 

CZroe

Lifer
Jun 24, 2001
24,195
857
126
Originally posted by: cpacini
I noticed the same thing in the intro sequence, but the game plays fine. dont worry about it

Yeah, I played for quite a bit and it doesn't seem to affect anything but the cinematics. It may just be that it's only noticable when something is supposed to be moving by at a consistent rate.

Originally posted by: Vegito
spent so much on video but only 1 little tiny gigs of memory..

I never really bought that. Let's see... Who made the press release as soon as Battlefield 2 benchmarks showed a difference with 2GB of RAM? That's right: A memory manufacturer. We techies and gamers ate that BS up. BF2 was probably inefficient with it's programming or the developers were paid by a memory maker or something! Any way, until F.E.A.R., no game NEEDED 2GB to run smoothly. Even the press release about Battlefield just said that it ran best (ie, "better") but not that it was required. Ever wonder why they never nailed down the actual amount between 1GB and 2GB that was reccomended? Probably because they want you to buy more memory than you need for a minimal improvement. Anyway, F.E.A.R. definitely needs more memory so I swapped in two gigs of OCZ from my Media Center PC. Before commiting to it, I decided to run Quake 4 with the full 3GB of RAM and the problem was definitely still there.

If it's certainly not a RAM llimitation, why the push for more RAM? We ATers seem to be RAM whores now ;) I still laugh when my coworker tells people that Doom3 "needs" a gig (And yes, he is on AT). Just because there is a performance difference between 512MB and 1GB does not mean it "needs" it. On a fresh install with nothing hogging memory there probably isn't a difference[when it comes to Doom 3].

Originally posted by: sodcha0s
Go to advanced settings and turn off anti aliasing....

Absolutely not.... with your setup you should be able to crank up the effects using 1024x768 res. I don't have any experience with dual core cpu's, but I would make sure you have the correct drivers and such for it. Also from what I understand there is a patch or new driver (not sure which, sorry) that's multithreaded, in other words it takes advantage of dual core. That will definitely boost performance. 1 gig of ram is plenty for Q4, the only advantage 2 gigs would bring is faster load times.

I run the game on an x800xtpe, high settings, 4xaa and it's butter smooth.... the beginning cut-scene is a bit jittery, but the game itself is fine.

I'm using the Quake4 SMP patch. I get this both with and without SMP enabled [though it is also "just at the beginning" and nowhere else]. BTW, only a faster HDD improves loads times as long as 1GB is enough to store the loaded data without caching to the disk. 2GB shouldn't do squat there. ;)

Originally posted by: funkrocker049
I've got Quake 4 running on max settings @ 1280x1024 w/4x AA and experience no slowdown whatsoever. I haven't tried to figure out the actual FPS, but it's perfectly smooth and perfectly playable. System specs below.

EPoX 9NPA+Ultra
Opteron 144 @ 1.8 (haven't OC'd yet)
2gb OCZ Performance RAM
eVGA GeForce 7800gt

Well, it's not "slow down" or an FPS issue at all. [It's a cadence issue.] It's actually more like "speed up" (It lurches ahead) so I know it's not that my settings are too high or my specs are too low. It may be that something is wrong (Software, driver, something) but I suspect that it's just something the game does during the intro sequence and nowhere else for mostly anyone.

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Originally posted by: sodcha0s
Go to advanced settings and turn off anti aliasing....

Absolutely not....

Absolutely YES!!!!! Even with his system hes having issues that are game related that can most likely be solved by doing all of the above!!

Also just a note---Quake4 has the FPS capped at 60 so nothing you can do about that. there is NO work around!!

Well, I cranked up the setting to the highest resolution my monitor could display and turned it up to 16xAA and it still lurches (In addition to a low FPS) then I turned it all the way down to 640x480 with everything low or off and it still lurches. I guess it's not the FPS cap :(

Originally posted by: BOLt
I get the same kind of problem in some scenes of GTA:SA, CZroe. I think it's just an issue with the games because my system is pretty good (see the link in my signature). That being said, overclocking my system from 1.8GHz to 2.5GHz and running my memory at 2-3-3-7-1T did lessen the problem. It might be due to your processor. Two cores are nice, but it means very little with regards to single-threaded games (all games up to this point in time). 2.0GHz on the x2 3800+ is a possible culprit of bottleneck, especially at such low resolutions with SLi 7800GTs. Read some Anandtech video card benchmarking articles and you'll find the same thing happening there. Try increasing your resolution and the quality settings to put more strain on your graphics cards. It might be that your FPS are too high for the game engine! This seems very counterintuitive, but try it -- I think it'll work. Also, try enabling/disabling VSync.

Keep us posted

1000th post for me, BTW. :)

I doubt it's that a single core is too slow... Quake 4 is not a single-threaded game [so it's not like running a single-core 2GHz CPU]. With the latest patch it supports SMP (Dual core, dual CPU, Hyperthreading, etc) and I tried it both with and without SMP enabled [r_usesmp 1]. I tried lowering and raising everything but it still lurches. VSYNC was not the culprit. I'm starting to think that it's just bad keyframe animation considering that I've only noticed it in cinematics.

Originally posted by: DLeRium
U cannot play high / ultra high with 1gb only. I've tried. It gobbles up 1.7 gb on high already. That's worse than BF2. Medium runs fine for me. FPS may not be the best at all times but it is 99% smooth on my 7800GT. With an SLI rig, you should run medium FINE.

Well, like your it does run fine for me. Like I said, it's just some strange effect that I only see during cinematics... Not a performance issue at all.

Originally posted by: GOREGRINDER
Originally posted by: CZroe
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
need more info on your sytem what you have given is not enough to help you.
Need total system specs....plz

1GB Corsair value ram in dual-channel w/ SPD timings, two XFX 7800GT cards in SLI (And SLI turned on) at stock clocks, retail AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at stock speed...

for the res on the monitor,..just make sure you have the monitor driver installed and then in the vid options you have to tick the widescreen option to "yes" in quake4 before selecting widescreen resolutions

id only suggest using the nvidia IDE drivers for a Raid array,..single drives will prolly not benefit,..and the fact that you HAVE to instal them for Raid,..and you dont need them for a single drive kinda says what the purpose of them is imo

quake4 is mostly perfect on my system,..but that may be the 2gb of ram kickin,...theres only 2 parts in all of single player quake4 that are a little annoying,..but if i run no AA,..the slight "mouse swoosh" goes away (its in 2 very trivial parts that are when your standing in the middle of an open door and you turn back and forth between both large rooms for a second ,.so it really doesnt effect anything and its hardly noticeable,but im severly anal about these things also)
so basically my happy medium is running 1600x1200 no AA high quality 8xAF forced in config(high quality in quake4 is standard @ 4xAF unlike doom3 which is 8x),..and also in the nvidia control panel,...set LOD bias to "clamp",..you will likely notice the difference immediatly in quake4 ;)

I'm running XP-64 and there are no monitor drivers available (The 2005FPW INF's on Dell site will not work. [X64 issue?]). It works fine in Half-Life 2 where it not only has 16:9 resolutions but also 16:10 and native resolutions. Basically, it's a plug & play widescreen monitor and games should be able to see that from the specs/settings.

When I check 16:9, the resolution is still 1024x768 (4:3) with other 4:3 resolutions available (No 16:9 resolutions and certainly not my monitor's 16:10 native resoltuion). The 16:9 image however is rendered at 1024x768 and the monitor must be set to (over)compensate... It needs to be set to "Fill" (Stretch) instead of "1:1" or "Aspect". So I'm forced to enable crappy scaling. [I discovered r_aspectratio 2 for 16:10 but it still forces me to stretch.]
 

sodcha0s

Golden Member
Jan 7, 2001
1,116
0
0
You are complaining about the "real-time intro sequence" as you call it. How does the game itself play? If THE GAME ITSELF is choppy, then you have something else borked with your rig.... your hardware is more than adaquete to run that game at 1024x768 on high settings. NOT ULTRA HIGH..... As far as the intro scene goes, others with an x2 reported the same thing as you in this thread so perhaps it's just a bug.
 

Pens1566

Lifer
Oct 11, 2005
13,115
10,465
136
Nice to see that when OP gets the help he asked for he treats the posters that responded like ****. BTW, 2Gb of ram will make a difference. In load times and gameplay. Why the hell would you spend $600 on video, and $70 on ram???