Wolf ET timedemo & Rad 9800

[druga runda]

OK... just to post here as well, as I already did post the question at TR forums...

So Tech report have made that demo for Wolf ET and they were getting ~ 130 FPS at 1024*768 with no AA and no AF with Rad 9800 pro...

I just tried their demo last night and got confusing results...

Their system was a athlon 2600+ with 333 FSB on NF2... mine is 2400+ with 266 FSB on KT333... so that is some difference but I am not sure that this is all so to start with:

My system: (after sort of sorting out that "heating problem" - now it runs around 63C while gaming )

Epox KT333 chipset
Win 2000
Rad 9800 with Omega Cats 3.6
Creative SB 5.1 Live
network card... and WD 80 GB 8 mb HDD
ok and 2400+ proc... + 256 MB PC2700 ram running async (I know I know... but what the hell no OC for me with such high temps as it seems that they will stay)

nevertheless

the settings were put to performance (should be no AA no AF) in the driver
and in game settings were 800*600 resolution and otherviese they were high... and AF was set to trilinear (but this should be overridden with the driver setting I hope)
so I have run this benchmark with Kazza in the background and got something like
67 fps first time and than ~ 80 fps second time and 84 FPS next... and than it stayed ~ 84, 85 FPS fourth and fifth run.... so it seems that the program was speeding up as i was rerunning the demo???

next I shut down Kazza and than got around 80 fps, 92 fps, 94 fps... in subsequent runs??? so the pattern was there - still 94 FPS to top it off is waay to slow. I have to say I expected more around 130 FPS for this resolution, unless my proc is such a big bottleneck here, still I wouldn't expect to lose 30%+ because of 80 mhz and slower memory...

so any ideas?

I you want you can download the benchmark from here:
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2003q3/xtasy9800pro256mb/index.x?pg=3 and as well get a bit more detailed numbers in that newspost thread...

as for the demo it is like Q3...
just create a Demos folder under the ETMain folder, sasve their demo in there... and run like in Q3 timedemo 1 ; demo xxxxx - where xxxxx is the name of the demo...

any help appreciated... I will do more testing tonight (I hope, even though I might go to the cinema with my wife... so maybe not :) ) But I have to get to the bottom of this :mad:

[Sazar]

I play ET @ max everything (no AA/AF) and 1600x1200 res... everything is completely fluid.. incl airstrikes from field ops right in front of me... game remains completely fluid and playable..

I will try benching it and see if I can get any interesting numbers as well :)

[Sazar]

all right how am I supposed to run it again ?

I have ET installed already... the free download of the MP game.. what else do I have to install if anything... I clicked on the benchmarking tool and installed it to a demo folder I created...

file name is demo0000.dm_82

lemme know what to do and I will give it a run for you :)

[druga runda]

Originally posted by Sazar
all right how am I supposed to run it again ?

I have ET installed already... the free download of the MP game.. what else do I have to install if anything... I clicked on the benchmarking tool and installed it to a demo folder I created...

file name is demo0000.dm_82

lemme know what to do and I will give it a run for you :)

OK... you got the demo... and I you saved it in WolfET/etmain/demos (ok speaking from my head here from work) :) so what you need is start ET, - meaning to the main menu only - press ` (above TAB key); to open the ET command prompt (or whatever is that called, the name escapes my memory at the moment)

type in the command prompt:
"timedemo 1" press enter
"demo demo0000" press enter again

and the demo should start
to check your FPS you should just open the command prompt after the demo has finished again and it will be there in the last line... the demo lasts around 30-60 sec roughly.

If you could just try a few times without closing the game to see if you get the "speed up" effect when you run it a couple of times straight. Just press the up arrow to repeat the last command (saves you typing :) )

[Sazar]

ok.. they are all running round like crazy.. in EVERY run I had.. I dunno if its the demo itself or what...

@ 1600x1200 with all my settings in the control panel maxed (trilinear et al) and no AA/AF... quality driver settings... for 4 runs my fps was

72.6
72.5
72.7
72.6

lemme know if you want me to check anything else...

[druga runda]

TX...

yes the demo runs faster when FPS go faster...

so not bad, and it must be something in my setup that is slowing me down the first few runs, and than additionally I am slow overall I think, but will have to try different resolutions to see what is the case there...

hope that I will do it tonight if not tonight than tomorrow ;)

[Sazar]

Originally posted by druga runda
TX...

yes the demo runs faster when FPS go faster...

so not bad, and it must be something in my setup that is slowing me down the first few runs, and than additionally I am slow overall I think, but will have to try different resolutions to see what is the case there...

hope that I will do it tonight if not tonight than tomorrow ;)

well I have tried it with AA at lower res and w/o AA @ 1600x1200... most jaggies are less evident @ this res... so I just play @ 1600x1200 :)

it looks damn nice for an old game..

I just wish all the classes on the snow levels could earn skates as an upgrade lol... its so hard to revive someone on the ice... takes ages to creep up to them w/o sliding :D

[druga runda]

actually could you just change your resolution on 800*600 with no AA or AF and run the benchmark just to see what numbers you are getting ...

|I didn't have enough time yesterday... but I should have it tonight... so I'll post my numbers...

[Sazar]

ok.. I'll post results in a coupla mins...

hmm... odd... seems to be highly cpu dependent... getting average of just over 87 fps...

compare that to my 1600x1200 scores... I reckon with a better cpu I would be getting much higher fps...

odd...I woulda thought I would get a higher fps...

[The Baron]

Maybe you've pulled a me and left vsync enabled accidentally.

Helpful Hint--do a sanity check after the first set of benchmarks to see if it's hitting the refresh rate.

[Sazar]

Originally posted by The Baron
Maybe you've pulled a me and left vsync enabled accidentally.

Helpful Hint--do a sanity check after the first set of benchmarks to see if it's hitting the refresh rate.

afaik i turned it off..

i'll check when i get back home...

[The Baron]

I THOUGHT I did, then I realized I forgot to set ini=...\Benchmark\Stuff\MaxDetail.ini userini=...\Benchmark\Stuff\MaxDetailUser.ini. Yes, Shirley, I'm an idiot.

Then again, if you REALLY CAN set the level of anisotropy in the UT2003 ini file (have to play with it and all that), I will create a Batch File of EVIL that runs 50 individual benchmarks. :D (640x480, 800, 1024, 1280, 1600, with 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x AF, on Asbestos and Antalus--it'd be sweet.)

[Sazar]

considering my max refresh == 75 @1600x1200 and 100+ @ 800x600... I am assuming I turned it off... I will check it again when I get back home though :)

[druga runda]

Just quick a part of my last night findings for my setup...


1600*1200 - 68.9-77.7-78.1-78.2-77.8
1280*1024 - 73.8-86.0-87.5-87.5
1024*768 - 77.1-92.6-95.6-96.1
800*600 - 78.1-93.0-96.6-96.4
640*480 -73.9-93.1-94.7

that was with no AA and with no AF and with high details

1280*1024 with low settings did pretty much as 800*600 with high + the first run was fast straight away even though I changes some settings, I guess that slow first run is somehow connected to change in resolution or color depth???

the last few runs one were 1280*1024with 4xAA & 8xAF

the first run was 47.9 FPS and the second was 51.7 FPS...

so you can judge.. it seems that the proc/system is the bottleneck @ 90+FPS
which is OK... however I am still curious about the first run and what was the command to show FPS...

showFPS 1 or something else? - I guess that I will need to look it up on the web... ah and when I OC the proc to 350 clock + 325 RAM... with 4xAA and 8xAF @1280*1024 I did 54.4 and 55.7 FPS... so around 10% increase... btw what is the stock for PRO... forgetfull me.. 340*325? as I think that this board of mine could run that easily... (samsung memory ;) )

[druga runda]

I spent whole of last night benching and recording various demos... there was only one that was a bit harder on he hardware out of 7 that I recorded... and the results are :(

in my case

1. the first run is slow
2. harder tha demo is the delta between the first run and the subsequent runs is larger
:mad:

- in this more tasking demo 1600*1200 first run was 35.4 FPS and the second run was 51.5 FPS - while 51 FPS for a section with quite a lot of action/blasts is acceptable and the frame rate doesn't really dip below 30 FPS... 35 FPS - at one moment the counter was in single digits

3. the resolution doesn't really matter - 800*600 is ~5 FPS faster than 1600*1200 which should mean this is some kind of chipset problem + radeon as it was OK with GF4??? I don't know what's going on... apart arghhhhh...

maybe it's motherboard monitor... will have to uninstall it as this is one of the changes...

moving from cats 3.5 to cats 3.6 made no difference...

and the sky in Wolf ET is not clear either... as if I can see those mip-map levels in the sky that is sort of how it looks like... weird... ahhh will have to test some more... I did put a new installation of win 2000 on the same HDD without making a new partition, and no help... wolf ET even crashes after about 5 mins but I think this was MBM related, as it didn't crash before i installed it there as well... ah well doh... too much rubbish on that HDD, 5 GB free out of 80 ... but can't be bothered to record everything and clean it all up - yet....

maybe I will clean it out a little make a new partition and start from scratch... but somehow I fell like buying a 160 gb hdd :D

[druga runda]

OK...

very simple indeed, and noone came here or at TR to forward me in that direction :(

but nothing else than radeon's problem with 32 bit color in OGL :mad:


Well yesterday first of all I installed latest via 4 in 1 than cats 3.7

than cleaned the registry ...

and run the demo and still the same problem :banghead:

however reading the Cats 3.7 thread someone mentioned 32 bit color problem has not been sorted, and than I just put the color setting @ default (as I was maxing everything out before including this setting and put it @32 bit... )... and now the first run is just a little bit slower - meaning 49.5 FPS with the second run being still ~52 - 54 FPS but this is now negligible as in the demo the biggest dip I see is the counter in 30's on few ocassions and that's it... I guess it's how it should be... OK so this is one problem sorted :alc:

I just wish that I could figure out this overheating problem that I have as the chip looks to be rather good... OC' in for 150 mhz puts the temp up for 1-2 C only... however the overal temp being as high as it is there is no point in really running the system any faster :(...

ah well.... at least it works... :balloon: