Unreal Tournament - odd network gameplay issue - FIXED!

merlocka

Platinum Member
Nov 24, 1999
2,832
0
0
I just installed UT on my new laptop for some ultra-portable lan party action. The setup details are below.

Dell C400 laptop, P3m 1.2GHz
512MB SDRAM
Win2K SP3
DirectX 8.1
Intel "Extreme" (ya right) i830 graphics v6.13.01.3413
Unreal Tournament retail patched to 4.36

I noticed an odd issue after I installed the game and tried playing a few CFT matches with bots. The game seemed at "turbo" speeds, although it was set to 100%. I found that I had to reduce the speed to ~75% to seem "normal".

So, it seemed weird, but the game runs fine otherwise.

The real trouble occurs when I try to connect to my LAN server. I know the server is OK, as I can connect to it with other machines and they play fine.

When I try to play on the LAN server with the C400, the effect is that for about 6 seconds I seem faster than I should be, then for 3 seconds I just sit there and studder. This pattern repeats itself over and over.

It almost seems as if the C400 is running the game too fast again, and the server is "correcting" it every 6 seconds. If I watch the C400's player walk by, it looks like it's skipping along, then it pauses for 3 seconds (while it "catches up").

I've tried deleting the unrealtournament.ini file, but I recall it behaved like this the very first time I installed it so there is something else weird going on.

Any thoughts?


 

merlocka

Platinum Member
Nov 24, 1999
2,832
0
0
Wo0T! I figured it out. It's funny how after I organize my thoughts in a "need help" post, the answer seems to pop out :)

This is kinda funny actually, and perhaps a bug that someone at Dell / Intel might want to know about.

The C400 uses Intel "SpeedStep". I'm not sure exactly what that does (other than the obvious CPU throttling).

In the control panel, SpeedStep is set to "Automatic". If I change it to "Max Performance", the problem goes away. I've repeated this 3 times, with a reboot thrown in just to make sure.

Seems like "SpeedStep" is doing something weird when on "Automatic"