What makes my FPS low?

[PsYthe]

Low FPS... here are the specs:

Under dxdiag's "System" tab:

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600)
• System Manufacturer: Compaq
• System Model: Evo D500
• BIOS: 686Y2 v2.06
• Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.70GHz
• Memory: 768MB RAM
• DirectX version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Under dxdiag's "Display" tab:

• Name: ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series
• Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
• Chip Type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x94CC)
• DAC Type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
• Approx. Total Memory: 256.0MB
• Current Display Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)

and

• Main Driver: ati2dvag.dll
• Version: 6.14.0010.6891
• Date: 12/1/2008
• DDI Version: 9 (or higher)

Also on dxdiag:

• DirectDraw Acceleration:  Enabled
• Direct3D Acceleration:  Enabled
• AGP Texture Acceleration:  Enabled

All tests were successful.


In the graphics card's control center, in the information tab it lists:

• Direct3D Version: 6.14.10.0630
• OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.8304

3D settings are:

• SMOOTHVISION HD:Anti-Aliasing:  (Use application settings: off) (Temporal anti-aliasing: off) (Level: 4X) (Filter: Box)
• SMOOTHVISION HD:Anisotropic Filtering:  (Use application settings: off) (Per-pixel samples: 16X)
• Catalyst A.I.:  (Disable Catalyst A.I.: off) (Advanced)
• Mipmap Detail Level: (2 / 4: Performance)
• Wait for vertical refresh:  (0 / 4: Always Off)
• Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: (Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: on) (2 / 2: Quality)
• OpenGL Settings: (Triple buffering: off)

OpenArena's settings: (Setup -> System)

Graphics:

• GL Driver: Default
• GL Extensions: On
• Video Mode: 640x480
• Color Depth: Default
• Fullscreen: On
• Lighting: Lightmap
• Flares: Off
• Bloom: Off
• Geometric Detail: High
• Texture Detail: (r_picmip 1)
• Texture Quality: 32 bit
• Texture Filter: Bilinear
• Anisotropy: Off (This is handled by the gfx card though)

Display:

• Brightness: (r_gamma is 1.25)
• Screen size: max

In Setup -> Game Options:

• Simple items: off
• Marks on walls: on
• High Quality Sky: on
• Sync every frame: off

In most maps, I never get more than 100 fps unless I am looking at the ground or zooming in pretty far. oasago2 gets on average 30 fps, where ps37ctf gets on average 55. What should be upgraded? What should be changed? Hopefully all of this information can get some answers.

[fufinha]

Well your set up is definately better than my last pc, I could get 125 fps (but would drop to 80 occasionally).

I also had a Radeon graphics card but was only 128mb.

Everything you posted looks fine. Simple items maybe better on though. All these things probably only make a little difference.

One thing I did find is I have some frequency setting in BIOS which i set higher. I'm not sure what it was but when it's lower I get my fps problems again so put it back up. I'll check this out again tomorrow, I don't want to end up cooking my motherboard :S

[sago007]

Are you forcing AA and Ansi on globally? They say it shouldn't cost a lot of performance on a Radeon card but generally they can be performance killers.

[damocles]

• SMOOTHVISION HD:Anti-Aliasing:  (Use application settings: off) (Temporal anti-aliasing: off) (Level: 4X) (Filter: Box)
• SMOOTHVISION HD:Anisotropic Filtering:  (Use application settings: off) (Per-pixel samples: 16X)
• Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: (Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: on) (2 / 2: Quality)

I would suggest starting with no AA and no anisotropic filtering, and then raise them as needed ("performance," 2X, bilinear, trilinear).

I think your processor is a little too slow for what the Radeon HDs were intended for (especially something like 16X anisotropic filtering at only the default 640x480).

How to optimize your PC frame rates - Features at Gamespot -- read this for more information.

[PsYthe]

Yeah, I was doing anisotropy and anti-aliasing globally, is there a way to tell OA to have anti-aliasing? It doesn't look good in low resolutions without it.


I told anisotropy to be 4x in-game (disabled global anisotropy) and have second to lowest anti-aliasing. Mipmaps are performance set now and I get at lowest 22 fps in the middle of oasago2.

[PsYthe]

Aight, should I just buy a new graphics card? Does anyone know of a good one for decent price?

[Snickersnack]

It couldn't hurt. Unfortunately, noone makes a good AGP graphics card for a decent price.

[fromhell]

Turn off the adaptive anti-aliasing. OA looks fantastic with it on, though the HD2400 is a little "weak".
16x anisotropic is ironically the fastest of the anisotropic settings and looks best too.

Picmip 0 is nice btw.

[a7fuc]

what the sense of playing @ 640x480?

[jessicaRA]

sometimes i get 30 fps with this beast of a pc:

amd phenom 4x (black edition) 2.6ghz
nvidia geforce 9600gt
2gb ddr2 800mhz memory

when i was on a slightly older nvidia 8600 4x anti-aliasing was actually faster than having it disabled somehow so could be the same with 16x on the hd2400 like fromhell says.

when i was on a radeon i had to tweak the temporal anti-aliasing to stop it being so jittery by changing the way it alternates.  it won't effect performance i bet but will look even nicer.

sometimes i think there must be some config options which are the culprit in oa or some downloaded pk3's changing stuff.  after deleting pk3's sometimes its back up to 125 fps other times its the config maybe somehow collecting something unknown which causes it?

a .cmd or .bat similar to what i use may help like like:
start /HIGH openarena-legacy.exe +cvar_restart +exec psythe.cfg

i can see high priority helping a bit on a pentium 4 which my old pc uses.  my old pc was at 3ghz too and needed it to get a little more stable fps so it may help your 1.70ghz more.  the cvar restart hopefully stopping collected stuff being persistent.  setting it up the way you like it from scratch again and /writeconfig psythe would put the config in place to +exec

another thing to remember is you don't need 125 fps to make many jumps.  if you can lock it at stable 75 fps with vsync its only 1 jump height unit lower than 125 fps jump heights.

[RAZ3R]

The reason open arena requires a much higher spec pc than quake3 to get good, stable fps is because of poor mapping and modeling by people on the oa project, and it's really down to them to fix this in future versions.

[jessicaRA]

The reason open arena requires a much higher spec pc than quake3 to get good, stable fps is because of poor mapping and modeling by people on the oa project, and it's really down to them to fix this in future versions.

i certainly would expect 60fps on my set up..  can get 500 on q3 and about 200 on painkiller with full detail.

[fromhell]

You could also try r_primitives 2

[RudyRailer]

You could also try r_primitives 2

It would be nice that you would tell the mappers moddelers etc to make the game better in performance instead of telling players to  try settings all the time.
As i try these settings u suggest i find them not very helpfull.
thanks 

[Snickersnack]

The reason open arena requires a much higher spec pc than quake3 to get good, stable fps is because of poor mapping and modeling by people on the oa project, and it's really down to them to fix this in future versions.

You could also try r_primitives 2

It would be nice that you would tell the mappers moddelers etc to make the game better in performance instead of telling players to  try settings all the time.
As i try these settings u suggest i find them not very helpfull.
thanks 

Many hands make light work.

[fromhell]

As i try these settings u suggest i find them not very helpfull.
thanks 

come back when your computer comes from the year 2002.

Many hands make light work.

Exactly, and I don't really owe anyone here anything. This is all spare time stuff, and there's hardly any active artists onboard.

[kit89]

*On a side note*

If I can remember correctly. OpenArena's textures are stored in .tga, which aren't the most memory efficient.
Also that many of the OpenArena models exceed the usually Quake 3 character polygon limit. Though it gives some excellent details.

I recommend that those having performance issues, check out ways to improve OpenArenas performance. A few recommendations are:

Convert all the OpenArena textures to a better compressed bitmap format, probably .jpg or .png.
Go through all the model reducing polygon count or creating LoD models.
Convert all large .wav files to .ogg.
Optimize a variety of the Maps. A variety of the maps have details rarely noticeable or ever seen.
Optimize shader effects. You'll find a lot of sky & liquid textures consume lots of vertices. Reducing this will improve performance.

This would be greatly appreciative. It would also be interesting to see if it makes any great difference.
My money is on Models, maps & shader optimisation.

[Neon_Knight]

I should learn on how to hint. -.-
That's the only thing preventing me to finish my maps, and all the tutos I've already read aren't so clear, or maybe I didn't understand these well. -.-

[RAZ3R]

if there are rooms in your map where no part of the room will be visible some of the time cover every entrance (including windows etc.) with hint brushes making sure no gaps are present between inside the room and outside the room not covered by wall or hint brush. Then when someone's not looking inside the room (or outside) the rest of the world won't be drawn, saving lots of fps. Also caulk every non-visible surface in your map - it's good practice to set the cliper tool in gtk to caulk always, as there are a lot of surfaces never visible because they're completley concaled by another brush. Infact best way to texture is to completley caulk the map at the end, then go round texturing all visible surfaces.

[fufinha]

*On a side note*

If I can remember correctly. OpenArena's textures are stored in .tga, which aren't the most memory efficient.
Also that many of the OpenArena models exceed the usually Quake 3 character polygon limit. Though it gives some excellent details.

I also had this thought. I even went as far as reducing the textures by 50%. I didnt notice much difference. The model tga's are definately excessive. I dont know if having models over 10mb + make a difference with performance but they are definately not as detailed (with regards to body movement) as q3 models. Watch them in slow time scale to see this.

I should still have all the files I created so will post them at some point and maybe someone else can try them. Maybe I just took it for granted it would make a huge difference so didn't test it much.

[fromhell]

OpenArena's textures are stored in .tga, which aren't the most memory efficient.

It can't get any more memory efficient than .tga, unless you're willing to free that horrid, patented, lossy, evil DirectX DTX/DDS texture format which supplies its own compression in the video memory.
No, JPEGs will not save more memory than TGA once loaded. PNGs won't either.
Immediate file size does not translate directly into the size used in memory.
There is a texture compression cvar that aids fitting within the congestion of small video memory. You'll find it if you tab "r_ext". It calls on the S3 Texture Compression on the driver to get to work. It'll look blockier and worse of course.

Convert all large .wav files to .ogg.

Also, not a memory saver. It just increases loading times for something sounding with a bit more loss.

[PsYthe]

Hmm. I want this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227122

Good? Bad? Could be better?

[fromhell]

That'll work great (it's really more than enough)

[HITMAN]

That'll work great (it's really more than enough)

Agreed. That is a steal for that price. I'd invest and then pwn