Doom 3 major Tweakage

[Cloudw4lker]

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1438663

well it's not major tweakage so much as a it's easier on your system to load new places as no one has found greater fps in the timedemo, btw there are 35 pages I don't recommend reading them all.

[wildwildwest301]

Have you done it, has it worked for you, as soon as mine arrives, Ill be doing this.

[Cloudw4lker]

I don't have doom 3 so I don't know, I just found this and it might be helpful to those who do. Aparently it works better for worse systems (this guy with a 6800GT was trying to do it, I mean why the hell do you need more fps with that?)

[OldsterHolster]

I'm nearing the end of the game, and its played wonderfully on my mid-range system, so far. (2.6gig, 1gig of memory, 5900XT) In fact, after PainKiller and The Suffering, its a breath of fresh air for a game to play flawlessly and look good, too; without any patching, at all. I suppose a little tweaking might be in order if you have problems or are running an older system; but, if it ain't broke, why fix it? From what I've heard so far, the game does pretty damned well on a wide range of equipment; and the system auto-detect does a pretty good job of configuring the game to play well. How about you other folks who are playing it? Have you had any problems or complaints? Personally, I'm impressed; and my hat's off to the folks who released such a trouble-free and polished product. All games should be like this. Edward.

[RangerRick]

Aside from the video card(ti4400), everything is right up there system spec wise(Athlon64 +3400, 1gb mem), and the game has run great. I just finished the game with nary a problem!

[SupaTroopa]

I haven't played in about a week due to time constraints and a sudden AO addiction again, but the only problems I had on Ultra High or High settings were the sputtering during level/room loads...certainly something that could be fixed with more/faster system RAM and ecspecially a 256+MB video card.

I might try the tweaks this weekend as I plan on finishing the game soon if I get time, I hope they help, but I can play on the High settings with no real problems.

The biggest reason I think it performs so well are the small, cramped levels.

[Torsion]

I'm nearing the end of the game, and its played wonderfully on my mid-range system, so far. (2.6gig, 1gig of memory, 5900XT)

I would not consider that midrange. I am running the game on a ti4200 64mb with low settings and 800*600 resolution. I get about 20 fps in battles.

[pigwalk_arg]

I agree with Torsion there. If you consider that a mid range system then i´m running a C64!

Anyways, the seta_ tweaks were definately the most useful of the ones I´ve tried, helped out LOADS to get it smoother.

Actually lately I dropped my Vid cards clock rates to the out of the box settings (425 core/550mem fx5700) and it seems to be running even smoother. Then I upped the quality from mid to high (i have a 128 card) and it just lags on opening doors. Anyone else here run it on high with a 128 card?

-pig

[Fzoulcmbyl]

I am running it on high @ 1280 x 1024, with a 5700 Ultra and 512 of ram, processor is an Athlon XP 2000.....now I would consider my system a Mid-range.

I get a very small stutter upon a door opening into a new room. Otherwise it's very smooth, no lag at all and mouselook is smooth also, game runs great.


:thumbup:



Fzoul

[DanTheManPR]

I've been playing it at a friends house on high settings at 1024x768. He has a P4 3.0 with a Radeon 9800 non-pro. It runs at 60 fps all the time (even during battles). Its wonderful.

After playing Doom 3 and the Counter-Strike source beta, every other FPS I own seems to run sluggishly. These engines look GREAT, and run GREAT.

[pigwalk_arg]

Luckily the CS:Source beta engine didn´t need a whole day of tweaking to run right! Go Valve!

-pig

[OldsterHolster]

Well, by mid-range I just meant it wasn't the latest and greatest gaming computer one could have. I just left the settings on medium, and I'm playing it at 1024X768 resolution; and I don't know how it could look or play much better. I always play my shooters at least twice, so maybe I'll push things up a little the second time around and see what happens.

I still say it's an excellent example of how all games should be put together. I sure hope Half-Life II is a comparable experience. Edward.

[MasterChief]

I'm playing it on a 3000+, radeon 9800 pro and 512 RAM, not too bad but I've had a couple problems. Might update to 4.9 drivers for the graphics card and see if that helps.

[Bruenor]

You should be fine on high with your system Edward. I have virtually the same system (Athlon XP 2800+, 1 Gig of Ram, GeForceFX 5900XT) and I ran it both on 1280x1024 and 1024x768 on high settings with no noticeable slowdown.

Heh, it's funny, I definitely consider my system midrange too...

[Cronus]

Just uncompress the main files using WinZip or WinRar. Will double your fps... Then use the other tweaks.

[Tom Servo]

The game doesn't run too well on my 2500+ with a Radeon 9000 SE. 20 fps, drops to 10 fps often at 800x600 medium detail :(

[pigwalk_arg]

Uncompressing the PAK files has been pretty hotly debated on the Doomplanet forums. None of these tweaks really affect your frame rate per se, but they do help with load times, stuttering and xfers of data between disk, cache and RAM. Seems to me like the .PAK uncompressed files won´t really help at all, considering that all the textures and whatnot is just uncompressed during load times and dumped into RAM. Might make load times a bit faster, but is it really worth using 5-6 gigs to shave 5-7 seconds off your load time?

-pig

[Cloudw4lker]

hey Tom, that's no se card you got, it's just from sapphire.

[Torsion]

The game doesn't run too well on my 2500+ with a Radeon 9000 SE. 20 fps, drops to 10 fps often at 800x600 medium detail :(


drop the quality to low and 640x860. The game will still look great.

[Tom Servo]

Bah, even then it runs at 25ish and drops to 15 a lot

[Cronus]

The Radeon 9000 is a nasty card... I used to have one.

[Rockn-Roll]

I'm playing Doom3 on High Resolution, but at 640x480 resolution. I did several screen shots and determined that the difference in the quality between Medium and High really made a huge difference in the game. I could barely read some of the computer terminals, and simply could not read any of the magazine covers, scribbles on whiteboards, and other stuff. By using the

SETA COM_SHOWFPS 1

console command I see around 30 to 35 FPS, it dips a little when action starts, but the drop in FPS really isn't all that visible, and it picks right back up to 30-35 after that initial dip. If I just select High Quality then the resolution gets set to 800x600, but at that resolution I only get like 20-25 FPS, and the dips get soo low that it's really noticeable, and hence mostly a poor experience, so I just click on the resolution to cycle it up and around to 640x480.

I also added the following console command:

SETA COM_VIDEORAM 128

which allows Doom3 to use the entine 128MB of my graphics card. The default is 64MB. My system is what I would consider a low end system with a P4 1.4Ghz with 384MB RAM with 4X AGP slot for a 128MB BFG FX 5200 graphics card.

I have not seen any visible increase in any of the other tweaks. Selecting High Quality improves the gaming experience even at 640x480 over Medium quality at 1024x768...a higher resolution just magnifies the distorted textures. Setting the videoram variable allows all of the entities to fit into my graphics card at the beginning of each level, so I never get any performance hit just by walking into a new area...only when more enemy appear, and only then for a moment...probably due to the teleport script taking up my slow CPU time.

Another console command that may be helpfull is:

VID_RESTART

This command will re-initialize the game using the current video settings, so you don't have to exit the game and start it up again just so you can see how different settings look/feel.

[Arrow32]

Hi guys, i need help here....

I'm having a low end system, using P4 1.8, AGP4X, 512MB DDR333 RAM, 128MB FX5200 graphic card... I know Doom3 is a high requirement game, but im having less than 5FPS when playing that game, even when i face the wall, i'm having less than 20 or even less than 15 FPS, and i'm using low details at 640x480 only.... I think that is way too low, its there any way i can get a more decent game?

[Jagndeke]

Whelp, your system is a little light to squeeze a whole bunch of eye candy out of D3. However, here's one tweak that should get you a few extra frames or so.

In your DOOM 3 directory, find "DoomConfig.cfg" (x:\Program Files\Doom 3\base). Open DoomConfig.cfg in Notepad.

Find the line:

seta image_cacheMegs "32"

Change the 32 to something higher such as 64, 96, or 128. I suggst starting with 64 and then trying the game and then bumping it up gradually and see what happens.

Remember, backup your DoomConfig.cfg file first! :wink:

Another suggestion, try one of Omega's drivers. (http://www.omegadrivers.net/) His drivers are typically tweaked for quality and that may help as well.