ut2003 runs like an atari game

[roge152]

ill first lay out my system and card

system
-----------
celeron 1ghz
512mb ram
Slackware 8.1
kernel 2.4.18


card
----------
Nvidia Gefore 4
MX 440
64MB 400mhz ddr
Dual 350mhz RAMDAC processors
core clock 270mhz

-------------
ive installed the nvidia drivers and edited my
Xfree86 config file the driver and card works
fine while running x it even plays soilder of fortune decently but like i said ut2003 runs like an atari game

im stumped any idea's would be great

[bwkaz]

Can you post some FPS numbers?

The GF4 MX series cards are not all that fast (seeing as they're NV17 cores), and UT2003 is quite a new game... my Ti 4200 (NV25) only gets ~60fps max, and ~10-15fps min.

I believe you can still do a stat fps in UT2k3's console to get FPS numbers.

[roge152]

i was swaying back and forth between 5-10 mostly low numbers 5 6 7 rarely hit 10

[roge152]

my old ati Rage 128 32mb card played ut like a champ but wouldnt play sof at all now this new gf card plays sof like a champ but wont play ut2003 i cant find ut to try it with this card

[bwkaz]

OK, is AGP enabled? What mode? Check /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status for that.

Anything in the kernel logs?

Is MTRR support enabled?

[LordMorgul]

I've recently been searching for performance in UT2k3 as well, for reference my system:

2.0A P4 512 ECC RDRAM
Creative Audigy Gamer
GeForce 4 Ti4400
Running RedHat 8.0 (2.4.19 cust)
and the infamous x4191 drivers

The short story for those who want better fps:

Disable High quality sound, or all sound, and check your fps. Running low quality sound I average ~45 fps everywhere at 1600x1200 max quality settings. Yes, it still spikes low ~20 in areas, the engine doesn't seem to be perfect in handling the map designs given.

How do you disable high quality sound?
Edit your engine config file at: ~/.ut2003/System/UT2003.ini

under the heading...
[ALAudio.ALAudioSubsystem]
...
LowQualitySound=True

you may also wish to adjust settings here.
[OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice]

I was running extremely low fps ~15 and lower with typically low fps areas running up ~45. I found that this behavior was independent of my graphics settings entirely (640x480 low = same fps as 1600x1200 maxed). That means its not graphics hardware related.

Performance charting cpu / memory / swapping etc shows the system is not under heavy load, ~60% cpu load with 1~2 processes waiting for cpu time (vmstat).

Now sound running low, the system keeps up ~45 fps with intense settings, and UT2k3 looks great

[roge152]

agp is enabled but its set at the speed of 2x
what is mttr ?

and im going to try turning off high quality sound i forget to mention the sound is kinda wierd it sounds like ... well you ever here one of thoose computer voices ? lol

i should have looked into the sound thing before i did here them say on tech TV once that you're sound can slow down a game big time even if you have massive hardware

thx

[roge152]

well it clearly seems like a sound problem although i could still do with better FPS low quality sound didnt do much for me

but when i turned sound off at first i was averaging 15-20 then i was stable at around 17FPS hitting 20 every minute or so