Maybe an Improvement for Performance for Win 32bit systems

[LEGION]

I use the following for successfully improving performance for a racing game (GTR2) and tried it for TDM/Doom3 but can´t see any improvement. But in average I have 60 FPS and I think I read somewhere that I can´t have more than 60 FPS on a 32bit-system.

Anyway, maybe this methods will increase performance on older/weaker systems many of you seem to use. As for GTR2 people talked about increasing performance in double. That much I didn´t get out of it.

 

Here is what might help:

 

the 3GB-switch for Windows XP 32-bit-systems to let older games use more than 2 GB RAM. (if you have more available, that is) I don´t know what the case is on Doom3, though.

 

Than you have to patch the executable of the software you want to use more RAM with. (doom3.exe) It can be done with a file called 'imagecfg' reputed to be on some Windows-CD. Anyway, I used this tool. It automatically generates a backup of the executable. This could be helpful for 64bit-systems, too.

 

The second thing that maybe could help improve performance is to set the affinity on Multicore-systems. This is not really Mulitcore-support though. But it can help.

Again, 'imagecfg' is reputed to help here but again, I use a tool. In this case Prifinitty2.

 

 

So I hope it helps someone to get more out of TDM. I can´t make promises because I´m no expert at this. I just learned about it and want it to share with you.

[stumpy]

or you could just turn off vertical sync as it clamps the game to 60fps.

[Komag]

I think vsync would only clamp to 60 if the monitor refresh rate was 60. But Doom 3 has it's own 60 clamp

[Tels]

I think vsync would only clamp to 60 if the monitor refresh rate was 60. But Doom 3 has it's own 60 clamp

 

That's true, you get 60 FPS only, anway. Also, the "2 Gb => 3 Gb" fix is only going to help if D3 uses more than 2Gb memory, which would be suprising. The latest numbers I had for a large mission were around 700 Mbyte memory under Linux. I would be surprised if it uses more than 1Gbyte or even 1.5Gbyte.

[AluminumHaste]

The 60 FPS clamp was necessary for the physics system, if you change the max FPS limit the physics will somehow get out of sync with the scene or something along those lines.

[nbohr1more]

http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Com_fixedTic_%28cvar%29

 

Com_fixedTic

 

This controls whether Doom 3 adheres to 60fps physics tick rate, I believe a "-1" will set the engine free of this restriction at the expense of accurate physics...

[LEGION]

What about the Affinity-setting? This is the one people talked about FPS-boost in half! When I look at the Taskmanager after exiting the game I can see that TDM has used all four cores...

[aidakeeley]

Legion, as I understand it... you want the 4 cores to be used. As opposed to limiting the game to using 1, 2, or 3 cores. You would only use an affinity-setting (restricting the game/program to use less than the full set of your processor cores) on an older program that for some reason bugs-out under a multi-core setup.

 

IOW, it's not something you'd choose to do; rather it's something you might have to do because of old-tech. Affinity-setting is NOT a boost but the opposite in effect.

 

I think I'm correct about this -- but I'm only hoping that I said all of that clearly enough to make it through the language barrier

Edited July 17, 2010 by aidakeeley

[LEGION]

No, no, I meant Doom3 uses only one by default (or am I wrong here? At least my other game used only one so I assigned all four). I know this 'imagecfg' originally was made for disabling other cores. But with 'Prifinnity' I was easily able to assign all four cores.

[stumpy]

another boost is turning off sli on nvidia if you have two or more graphics cards, seems to fix some shadow errors as well.

[AluminumHaste]

another boost is turning off sli on nvidia if you have two or more graphics cards, seems to fix some shadow errors as well.

 

lol wut? If I turn off SLi on my laptop my FPS goes from constant 60 FPS to around 20 FPS.

 

EDIT: You do know what SLi is right?