Mutantant

Thought had crossed my mind but the dell xps 630i I got has a mobo that would need to be upgraded as well (due to nerfed pcix slots)- just have not had the money for that right now.

Thanks much for the reply. I have only one issue that really messes everything up, and its the micro-stutter that doom 3 engine games have with some hardware configs. The reason I keep vsync on is because the com_fixedtic command that irons out the stutter, also uncaps the FPS So without vsync the game runs 4x too fast most of the time. But I suppose there is nothing for it, I will remove the stutter fixing commands, and play with that micro-stutter problem for now. I have been following this project for years, and now that its available my computer doesn't like the engine lol Anyway, if anyone has had a similar issue or a fix, prob involving an ATI card (I have had some big problems with ATI and the drivers over the past year, so nVidia may get my business next time) please post

Hello all. I have a crossfire setup with 2 HD 4850 cards. I of course run into the famous Catalyst AI bug, etc, so I need to run the game with AI off (which, for those who may not know, disables crossfire...cant use both cards is AI is off, which is pure crap) I am getting pretty poor performance in general when it comes to lighting. In most areas of the training map, no issues. A solid 60fps, with AA set at 2, and AF at 16. 1600x1200 res, interaction at high. But, when I get to an area lit by quite a few light sources, my frame rate drops in half. An example is in the training mission, right where the swinging rope is 1st introduced and there is a bunch of ledges and water, I end up at almost exactly 30fps. Another example is in the 2nd room of the 'business as usual' level, with the mirror. I face that mirror, and its chop city. When I turn off lighting or lower the distance of the lighting via console commands, back to 60fps, so def a lighting issue rather than a geometry one. This would not bother me too much except for 2 things - one being that at 30fps it feels quite choppy, choppier than it should be since we see things at 25-30 frames a second with our eyes. 30 should be plenty good, but it feels more stuttery, like it was really at 24 or lower. Second is that I have the well known 'micro-stutter' issue that many ATI owners have had, so I have to set com_precicetic to 0 and com_fixedtic to 1, which irons out the micro-stutter like a charm, but when the frames drop things go into slow-mo. Literally, everything is then moving at half speed. Very sucky. So I either play with the 2 console commands at default, and have choppy FPS at these areas, and micro-stutter every 1sec or so, or I play with these console commands set at the values presented above, fixing micro-stutter but putting things in super slo-mo when turning corners into well lit rooms. I have tried everything from modifying the interactions shader file, to trying with all options low, and tampering with may console commands involving lighting, to no avail. Just to fill in all the blanks, my system is a Dell XPS 630i, quad core proc, 2x4850 cards, 8gig ram. I play some of the top-line modern games better than the doom 3 engine from years ago is running for me. If anyone has any ideas, I would be grateful.