TweakGuide for games site I found

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johnS

Not sure how informative this site is. Just started reading it but a
central guide is far easier to read then trying to dig through various
sites for bits of info at Anandtech and Tomshardware etc.
Actually this place does have links to articles there.

He also has some download of "essential optimization" free PDF
which I also havent read yet so I dont know how decent it is besides
the obvious. And has a link for 10 bucks to a deluxe version so it
could be basic info + spam. But for people who find it laborious to
dig through tons of links to get info on how games and hardware
interact when they buy older, less capable hardware it may be useful
to some degree.

http://www.tweakguides.com/

He has a link to Anandtechs site on CPU and graphic card impact on
DOOM game play

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149

Some interesting things here

Same card
Athlon 3000 XP Doom 1280x1024 Hi quality 60.9 FPS
Athlon 3000 64 754 76.2

Xbit labs Quality settings for DOOM 3
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/doom-3-tests.html

Old news but for those who are setting up game system now and missed
all this.


Med Quality - 128 meg cards
Lo quality 64 meg cards

They say not a huge difference down to Med qual but you notice
degradation in visuals with LOW quality for 64 meg cards.

Im using a 128 meg 9600 XT which should be OK at med quality according
to tests but I have some wicked freezing. As I mentioned I can run at
1024 x 768 anything above 800x600 greatly reduces the jaggies even
without AA and it generally it runs fine with a 3200 AMD 64 754 .
The problem is when there are mulitple effects ---or even one
elaborate one it freezes up to 5-10 seconds or even longer as its
loading. As soon as you see a lightning flash and a creature attack
and you are in mid shot ---- the whole freezes and loads. Incredibly
annoying.

According to these articles its probably lack of system memory. One
article says 1 gig for DOOM is recommended. I have 512 now on this
system. When I reduce the res doesnt seem to do much --- changing it
to 800x600 with those loading freezes. Lowering the quality setting to
low = 64 meg card seems to improve it 90% so the freeze is enormously
shortened.

My problem probably is I need 1 gig of mem.

Ill try FEAR and FAR cry and Quake 4 on this budget but modern system
with the old 9600XT level card to see if they work. So far Im much
more optimistic, Its probably very acceptable as long as you dont go
over 1024x768 or so and have 1 gig and a 3200 AMD 64 or close to that
level. I just bought some Sempron 2800s and I really want that system
to be able to play games for my nephew.

Hopefully a 9600XT + sempron though slower than the above will be OK
or maybe a slightly faster card since the 6600gts are being clearanced
out may be ideal.
 
On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 12:23:32 GMT, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

Some interesting things here

Same card
Athlon 3000 XP Doom 1280x1024 Hi quality 60.9 FPS
Athlon 3000 64 754 76.2
Click to expand...


It is interesting though I don't know if important in your
context, since 60.9FPS would be enough and that is only with
a 6800 Ultra. Since the same chart showed Athlon 3200XP up
at 67FPS, but no CPU taking a 6800 Ultra higher than 83FPS,
it looks like squeezing the o'c out of skt A is enough for
Doom3, but that the Athlon 64 has the potential to be
bottlenecked by the card and memory speed.

Xbit labs Quality settings for DOOM 3
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/doom-3-tests.html

Old news but for those who are setting up game system now and missed
all this.


Med Quality - 128 meg cards
Lo quality 64 meg cards

They say not a huge difference down to Med qual but you notice
degradation in visuals with LOW quality for 64 meg cards.
Click to expand...

Yes, I find that even if all the other settings are at low,
minimum, etc, it is desirable to at least use medium quality
textures. That can be a good quality framerate compromise,
manually setting only the textures higher than minimum.
Even so, it might push video memory needs past 64MB, I dont'
recall specifics but think it'll be close.


Im using a 128 meg 9600 XT which should be OK at med quality according
to tests but I have some wicked freezing. As I mentioned I can run at
1024 x 768 anything above 800x600 greatly reduces the jaggies even
without AA and it generally it runs fine with a 3200 AMD 64 754 .
The problem is when there are mulitple effects ---or even one
elaborate one it freezes up to 5-10 seconds or even longer as its
loading. As soon as you see a lightning flash and a creature attack
and you are in mid shot ---- the whole freezes and loads. Incredibly
annoying.
Click to expand...

What does that ATI card do when running hot? It may not
apply in this case but I was just curious, as "some" nVidia
cards (FX5xxx series and newer) can cause a (similarly)
multi-second long hesitation when running hot, or a less
often talked about phenomenon when overclocking if the GPU
voltage isn't high enough for the set operating speed. I
suspect a lot of overclockers have been thinking their cards
were getting too hot when they were simply starving for
power but flipping control panel settings is more common
than volt-modding a card so few get the chance to compare
this aspect.

According to these articles its probably lack of system memory. One
article says 1 gig for DOOM is recommended. I have 512 now on this
system. When I reduce the res doesnt seem to do much --- changing it
to 800x600 with those loading freezes. Lowering the quality setting to
low = 64 meg card seems to improve it 90% so the freeze is enormously
shortened.

My problem probably is I need 1 gig of mem.
Click to expand...

Check Task Manager, how much was the peak when the game was
exited? I don't recall on Doom3 but does it load all the
level at the beinning or continually have file access
throughout?j Try those tweaks on the page I linked in one of
my posts, the highest performance settings and see if that
alleviates the problem and if so you can progressively
re-endable some of the settings to see which is the culprit
(if not a combination of them).

Ill try FEAR and FAR cry and Quake 4 on this budget but modern system
with the old 9600XT level card to see if they work. So far Im much
more optimistic, Its probably very acceptable as long as you dont go
over 1024x768 or so and have 1 gig and a 3200 AMD 64 or close to that
level. I just bought some Sempron 2800s and I really want that system
to be able to play games for my nephew.

Hopefully a 9600XT + sempron though slower than the above will be OK
or maybe a slightly faster card since the 6600gts are being clearanced
out may be ideal.
Click to expand...

If he's not very old, the main thing will probably be
setting all the right eyecandy levels before delivering the
system, possibly making a backup copy of the config file
those settings create, then make a link to a batch file to
copy the backup config file to overwrite the current one, to
"reset to best performance" so if he fiddles with it, it can
easily enough be put back to a working config without anyone
else having to know how to do it, rather than just reading
the name of the shortcut and clicking on it.
 
.... stuff followed by many blank lines ...

I don't know if you are aware of the blank lines your system is
generating, but it is rather disconcerting at this end. For one
thing, the 'lines' number in the summary pane is misinformation,
for another it is disconcerting to have a totally blank page appear
after paging down with the spacebar, and expecting the next article
to appear.

--
Some informative links:
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/

http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
 
If he's not very old, the main thing will probably be
setting all the right eyecandy levels before delivering the
system, possibly making a backup copy of the config file
those settings create, then make a link to a batch file to
copy the backup config file to overwrite the current one, to
"reset to best performance" so if he fiddles with it, it can
easily enough be put back to a working config without anyone
else having to know how to do it, rather than just reading
the name of the shortcut and clicking on it.
Click to expand...

Well hes 6 so hes not going to actually be playing FEAR or DOOM but Id
like the system to handle that level of game decently even if at lower
settings.

The thing is I was way too optimistic.

IT REALLY SUCKS ! As I was testing it progressing through the game as
the effects got more elaborate with multiple zombies or monsters , the
pauses become intolerable. Its defintely not a once every 20 min
thing. Its basically almost unplayable.

If one gig of memory does cure the pauses then it may save this card
, but right now even on LOW QUALITY the pauses are horrible.

You can see it going to the hard disk all the time , especially when
theres a heavy action scene and when it does everything is frozen.

Ill test it later with 1 gig.
 
What does that ATI card do when running hot? It may not
apply in this case but I was just curious, as "some" nVidia
cards (FX5xxx series and newer) can cause a (similarly)
multi-second long hesitation when running hot, or a less
often talked about phenomenon when overclocking if the GPU
voltage isn't high enough for the set operating speed.
Click to expand...

Im not sure cause Im not really a temp checker when it comes to cards.
I rarely check that cause I guess I never do really have problems like
more freezes etc when it gets hot except for one obvious time.

Recently I mentioned my ATI 800XL had the problem but I blamed it on
my general system woes --- the RMAd system board Ive been complaining
about. I thought it was that but like I suspected after awhile it was
two problems. Suddenly my system went from flakey to catastrophic in
FAR CRY crashing every 5-10 min , complete crash after playing FAR CRY
for a little while.

I traced it to tons of dust clogging the 800XL heatsink which
obviously probably overheated the card. I had so many crashes I took a
look at the CPU heatsink cause Ive seen dust clogged in there before.
But then I noticed my 800XL had clumps of dust sticking out of the
opening. You know it has one of those shallow wide heatsink trays
covering most of the card , with a metal cover completely over the
fins with a circle cut out for the fan intake. I look and every space
between the fins has dense thick dust clumps. I blew it all out and
took the rest out with tweezers. It worked fine after that.

Ive always seen some slight pauses though with every card. Seems like
you have to tweak the settings etc to get rid of them. I noticed it
with my neighbors 6800GT, my 6800, my 800XL and even my 7800GT.
But thats different from these interminable freezes.
 
... stuff followed by many blank lines ...

I don't know if you are aware of the blank lines your system is
generating, but it is rather disconcerting at this end. For one
thing, the 'lines' number in the summary pane is misinformation,
for another it is disconcerting to have a totally blank page appear
after paging down with the spacebar, and expecting the next article
to appear.
Click to expand...


Yeah sorry about that. I often do that with forum messages too and
have to go back and edit those out.
 
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