smoke bombs in CS... 16 mb Voodoo3 2000 pci vs 64mb radeon vivo agp... the winner is....

[spanky]

hi peeps,

here is the situation. i've been running CS on two pc's. the first is my primary rig, and here are the specs:

duron 750mhz
epox 8k7a (w/4-in-1's)
256mb pc2100 crucial
64mb radeon vivo agp

the second rig has the following specs:

celeron 300a
gigabyte 6bxe
128 pc100 (generic)
16mb voodoo3 2000 pci

99% of the time, my first rig maintains higher fps and better image quality. only when i get nailed with a smoke grenade does the second rig totally embarassed the first rig. in my radeon pc, my fps is usually 50+...then when a smoke comes...i'm way down to like 10-20 fps. on the voodoo3 system, smoke does not even make my fps twitch. is there a reason for that? i am really impressed with the performance of my voodoo3...i am tempted to buy a voodoo5 to replace the radeon. does anyone know how the voodoo5 handles in CS? are there any tweaks (besides the sprites thing) to prevent my fps for dying on my radeon system?


-spanky

P.S. - btw, i am running windows98 se

 

[BFG10K]

Good lord, haven't ATi fixed that problem yet? :Q

I think the solution was to force the smoke particles to be sprites instead of rendered fog. I forget what the command to do this was though.

are there any tweaks (besides the sprites thing) to prevent my fps for dying on my radeon system?

Oh, so that didn't work for you? Try running the game in 16 bit colour and reduce the detail levels.

 

[spanky]

BFG10K: nah...its not that it did not work for me...but i just wanted to keep most the quality settings maxed out btw...i thought the fps killing smoke nades were a problem with nvidia cards too? so it is a driver issue?


-spanky

 

[damocles]

<< BFG10K: nah...its not that it did not work for me...but i just wanted to keep most the quality settings maxed out btw...i thought the fps killing smoke nades were a problem with nvidia cards too? so it is a driver issue?


-spanky >>



It definitely occured with nVidia cards, although it only ever affected me in D3D and not OGL

 

[anime]

voodoo5 is the best playing CS. at least IMHO.

 

[Alex]

on my tbird 1.4 with radeon i get 99fps constantly and drops to 60ish with smoke... still totally playable

 

[spanky]

<< on my tbird 1.4 with radeon i get 99fps constantly and drops to 60ish with smoke... still totally playable >>



thats nice. are ur quality settings maxed out? do u think my slower cpu is holding my fps down?

 

[The_Lurker]

There was a problem w/ The Radeon's FOg table emulation or something like that. So the FPS went to hell when there was a smoke grenade. The Radeon 8500 does fix this problem, but it's hardware problem, and drivers update can't seem to fix it. You can turn the Smoke detail down and your framerate will not drop as far.

 

[BFG10K]

It definitely occured with nVidia cards, although it only ever affected me in D3D and not OGL

Well any card will slow down with smoke but the Radeon seemed to take the biggest hit of them all. IIRC there was a petition some months ago that was sent to ATi in an attempt to address the issue.

 

[Killrose]

Even with my old 32mb Radeon DDR at 183/183MHz, win98, and my old T-bird 750@900MHz running the 7075 drivers, I never experienced this stuutering slowdown everyone whines about.

I play CS constantly, and I allways buy a smoke grenade.I've got plenty of experience with running thru the smoke as well. Never had this problem. But I've alway's wondered if maybe it was because I run at high system bus speeds. My old T-bird I ran at 6x150MHz. Now I run my new 1.4 T-bird at 10x145MHz.

OpenGL, 1024x768 32bit, everything maxed (but the smoke complxety of course), set that at 0.0000

 

[duragezic]

It's the damn problem the Radeon has with drawing some types of fog I guess. It happens in other games too, but it is pretty major in CS. Mine never dropped that low but I do have a faster comp but it still did drop A LOT. I signed that petition... not that it'd help.

I don't know if there ever was confirmation whether it was a hardware problem or just yet another ATI driver problem. Even if it is a driver problem, I don't expect it to be fixed. The driver updates have some compatibility fixes but pretty much no performance increase since day 1 (98 drivers, 2k drivers are up to par in most things a while ago but haven't improved any since then).

edit: I thought I remember people saying the 7075's were better at fog actually (and have been the only drivers that were). I don't recall completely though, and I switched to win2k around that time anyway.

 

[spanky]

pay $220 to get better fps when getting smoked out at max quality? god dang....i think i will replace my radeon with my voodoo3 pci when running CS... just kidding. thanx for the feedback guys. at least i have a clearer picture of what solutions i am looking at.

 

[The_Lurker]

Still a great card though. A lotta cards have this problem, so dont fret. As for setting smoke complexity to 0, how do u do that exactly?!

 

[spanky]

<< Still a great card though. A lotta cards have this problem, so dont fret. As for setting smoke complexity to 0, how do u do that exactly?! >>




type in console (or edit in ur config.cfg file) "fastsprites 0". i think by default it is set to 0. setting it higher (up to 2?) will make the smoke look crappier...but fps won't die as bad. i might have this all backwards tho, so can someone confirm?

 

[DeadmanInc]

oh, how do i love these threads,

if you are willing to switch from ati to a voodoo 5, i would, because on a 900cele@1200, i hit 120-140fps, in most games, hehe and the quality is outstanding, i have had a v5 from day one, and it kicks arse, the ATI Radeon 8500, looks to be great card, but with ati's driver probs and lack of updates, i would be inclined to grab a v5 $50-100 in US$$$ AU$150, here in aussie land, and you wont have any troubles, with any game, driver support is there for the v5 just goto www.voodoofiles.com,,

and thats my 2cents worth

 

[kylebisme]

v5 is great in cs, gefoce3 is a bit beter looking with x4 fsaa and 64-tab anisotropy though and beter for most other things too, ofcourse you pay considerably more too.