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Doom 3 and Micro-Lags


STiFU

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When playing TDM, even at constant 60 fps, the game always somehow didn't run smoothly for me. There were small Micro-Lags, that made it all look more like 20 fps instead of 60. Today I incidentally stumbled over a solution to the problem, that worked out so great, that I thought I'd share it with you taffers. So here's the secret:

 

Enable triple buffering and vertical synchronization in your driver settings!

 

And that's already it. :) It's really unbelievable how much one can gain in graphical quality by simply changing driver settings.

 

"I wonder how RttC plays with this..." - says he, running off to start TDM

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Enable triple buffering and vertical synchronization in your driver settings!

 

For the tired and/or lazy, how do we find those settings?

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Nvidia: Go to your nvidia control panel and browse to the 3d settings. There you'll directly find the settings.

 

ATI: Start the catalyst controll center, go to 3d and choose to display all settings. Activate tripple buffering at the bottom and the vertical sync.

 

I should add that I only tested this on my nvidia 8800 gts. I can't say anything about the performance on ATI cards, because I only have one of those in my laptop, which is way too slow.

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OK, set triple buffering on Nvidia; I'll check it out tomorrow. Already got vert sync: use application but I normally have off because 99% I am testing in a window and it doesn't work in a window anyway. Tomorrow I'll enable in-game and have a play full screen because I'm due for some big play testing. :)

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Is there any benefit to settin vsync in the driver settings if you have it set in D3?

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Well I don't know. I'm getting fabulous framerates in my own FM now but I don't know if it's because of playing full screen which I've not done for so long. I only normally go full screen to play new FMs and final play testing of my own.

 

I've been somewhat worried about fps in my FM - but no more! It now compares very well with others. I'm seeing 25 to 60fps even in the city and 35 even on the roof of the manor which is a huge view. This is a great relief. I knew I could do a bit more optimising but not much. At the side of the manor where I've been working on the grime I was seeing 12 to 15fps maybe 20 at best; now I see 50 to 60fps.

 

I know that vsync doesn't work in a window but what about triple buffering? I guess I need now to turn off triple buffering and play full screen to see if it is any different.

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Well, without triple buffering I'm still getting good fps so my boost must mostly be to playing full screen. I only expected 10% improvement but it feels like 300%. I'm getting double or triple the fps I've got used to over the last few months as I added more and more complexity.

 

As for micro lags I don't know. It's running smooth now in full screen. I'll leave triple buffering on.

 

Things are looking good. :)

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Glad to hear, you got decent performance on your newest masterpiece. :) I didn't get any bigger fps gain through the triple buffering, the fps actually nearly remained constant, but the difference is now, that everything feels a lot smoother.

 

Is there any benefit to settin vsync in the driver settings if you have it set in D3?

I don't think so. If you set your driver to let the application decide whether or not to use vsync, it should be fine.

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For whatever reason, I feel like my framerates have been better lately as well. I wonder if it has anything to do with the new interaction shader or Grayman's interleaved thinking fixes?

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Maybe the new Boost libraries or the Stim Response memory leak fixes help too?

 

(Edit I love bug tracker :wub: )

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Enable triple buffering and vertical synchronization in your driver settings!

 

For the record, I have to say that this made things worse for me. I didn't have any micro-lag issues before, but when I changed the driver settings it made the AI start stuttering, as if every other frame of the animation was skipped. So it's not a magic bullet for everyone.

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Hmn, alright, good to know. May I ask graphics card and drivers you use? From what I read, triple buffering + vsync is very close to the optimum. The only downsides of it are supposed to be that there is more storage necessary (a 3rd framebuffer) and that there is a maximum 1 frame delay.

 

Maybe the vsync did not work properly. Did you try forcing it in the driver? I know I said earlier that it shouldn't make a difference, but who knows? Maybe there is an issue with the divers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Can you describe that 'Micro-lags' more please? Mission? Mission-spots?

 

Actually I tested my ATI-settings in Biker´s Cathedral of St.Alban in the spot near the tavern, in that little garden with the gate there you can climb up on leaves. There FPS drops either to 30 or between 45-5x depending on my settings, wait, that´s wrong. I put AA, Supersample, AF and Adaptive AA to maximum (but also Vsync with TB), no difference at that spot! Well, not more than 5 FPS. What makes big difference is the resolution of course. I would like to play in 1080p(1920x1080), but on some spots it´s down to 30 FPS, even when I disable all other stuff like AA and even Vsync. Still 30 FPS.

But in 720p(1280x720) it´s constantly over 50FPS, even with AA and such at maximum!! How do you call that gates before the room-fires Biker used in the houses? They look horrible in 720p, even with my new fov-setting (70) I have to step half to the room until they look right. In 1080p they´re fine, but also it´s slower. It sounds odd (for me), but under 50 FPS it´s too slow to look around smoothly. :huh:

I use ATI 4870 HD btw (Thanks to 7upMan ;)).

 

And I can´t play without Vsync! That tearing tears me apart, I can´t stand it, never could. Ok, I play on TV, that maybe makes that tearing more visible, but in the old monitor-days I never turned it off too.

 

In case you already forgot: more details on that 'Micro-lags' please ;) , I wonder if I encounter them too...

-> Crisis of Capitalism

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(hard stuff), more
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I have vsync usually disabled, because it creates problems in many games. But now that I discovered that it helps so much in TDM, I have made a game specific driver configuration, that activates tripple buffering and vsync.

 

But well, "microlags" is maybe not precisely the correct term to describe this behavior. It's just like specifically Doom 3 always feels low fps, although you're running it at constant 60 fps. Enabling the aforementioned settings makes it all appear a LOT smoother on my side, although the fps remain unchanged.

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It sounds odd (for me), but under 50 FPS it´s too slow to look around smoothly. :huh:

I use ATI 4870 HD btw (Thanks to 7upMan ;)).

 

And I can´t play without Vsync!

 

Have you already tried to overclock the gfx card? I didn't back in the day, my own card would have melted, I guess, but I hear the HD4870 had quite some headroom. Also, how are your idle temps? Were they better than my 70°C?

My Eigenvalue is bigger than your Eigenvalue.

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I thought about this issue the other night when I was noticing similar things and I think I made a bit of sense of it;

 

Doom3 staggers drawing fames in a way which isn't exactly smooth or optimal for viewing consistent linear movements, don't think any subsequent tech4 games were either as ETQW was quite noticeably jerky in scenes where fps was high and the environments let you focus more clearly on a single object. Triple buffering most likely helps to place the updates at a more equidistant interval in comparison. Most likely there's some timing issue that they didn't foresee as the time for a single frame to render decreases; the spaces in-between becomes more noticeable and you'd get in essence places in which your 60Hz monitor might not be displaying an updated frame for >2 cycles (since the vsync cant really do much about this, it's the most accurate frame and it's static for that amount of time), making it quite subjective. I think Vsync cant really come into play very well considering how the draws are not consistent due to the throttling and since its always so close to 60Hz, its most likely only noticeable at lower fps (it seems to be for me, anyway).

 

I also think that its why the render engine tries to stick to specific and seemingly arb fps regions, tho it's a bit hard to say that with certainty... but it makes sense if they were trying to rely on some kind of timing to smooth things out.

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Have you already tried to overclock the gfx card?

 

Oh no, after I tried that with my old GeForce 9800 GT I got OpenGL-errors while working on my Doom3-mod-merge. Meaning I started Doom3 several times for short periods about 2-5 minutes for testing changes and after, say, 5 startups the OpenGL-error came and I couldn´t start any 3D-app anymore and had to reboot OS. Also sometimes I noticed that Doom3 started, but didn´t loaded everything out of my pk4´s. So, I´m really afraid of overclocking. And:

 

I didn't back in the day, my own card would have melted, I guess, but I hear the HD4870 had quite some headroom. Also, how are your idle temps? Were they better than my 70°C?

Oh yeah, much better, about 3 degrees!! After system start its 67° and after a long DarkMod-test-session with max AA-settings and such it was at 68°. The Fan really is dynamic. F.e. in Cathedral of St.Alban I hear the fan kicking in when I look at detailed spots or at the top in the belltower. Really loud, so that strongens my need for FM´s with lot of ambiance... :rolleyes:

 

I´ll send you a PM with more details, sorry, should´ve done that days ago, but this damn Xmas-thing, you know... ;)

-> Crisis of Capitalism

-> 9/11 Truth

->

(hard stuff), more
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