How can I best improve my fps?

[volumen1]

Hello all. I apologize if I'm going to ask some foolish questions. It's been literally years since I've used Windows (I'm a linux person). But I recently installed it on my desktop machine for the express purpose of playing games.

Here is my hardware:
2X Operton 246 processors (2GHz)
2X 1024 Corsair RAM (2G total)
Nvidia GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (running Beta drivers 67.02)
3Ware 9000 SATA RAID controller (with 400G worth of RAID10 storage, on Barracuda drives)
2 Dell 19" LCD monitors
SoundBlaster PCI 64/128
Umm... I'm not sure what else is important, but I'll post more info, if needed.

Anyway, I feel like my system is pretty decent. But Half-Life 2 seemed a little sluggish for me. So, I ran the Counter-Strike: Source video stress tests. I was hoping someone could tell me whether or not my results jive with my hardware or not.

* Are the suggested defaults

Test 1)
800x600
Model Detail: Medium
Antialiasing: None*
Texture Detail: Medium
Filtering: Bilinear
Water: Simple reflection
Shader: High*
Shadow: High*
Wait for Vertial Sync: Disable*
fps: 21.95

Test 2)
1280x1024 LCD
Model Detail: High*
Antialiasing: None*
Texture Detail: High
Filtering: Trilinear
Water: Simple reflection
Shader: High*
Shadow: High*
Wait for Vertial Sync: Disable*
fps: 20.84

Test 3)
1280x1024 LCD
Model Detail: High*
Antialiasing: 6X
Texture Detail: High
Filtering: Anisotropic 16X
Water: Reflect All
Shader: High*
Shadow: High*
Wait for Vertial Sync: Enabled
fps: 18.41

I was surprised by these results. Test 1, I felt, was like a Medium setting. Test 2 was pretty much using what was recommended (although I think the game defaulted to 1024x768. Test 3 was pretty much picking the highest settings.

I would have expected to see a much greater fps difference. But, again, I really don't know what I'm talking about.

So, if anyone can let me know if these settings seem right and/or if they don't, perhaps someone could suggest a good starting point for me to resolve the problems? I greatly appreciate any help you might be able to offer!

 

[volumen1]

Hmm... I know it's probably bad form to reply to your own message before you've even got a response. But, after all my dinking around with the video stress tests, I just started Half-Life 2 again and it seems pretty peppy. I'm using the settings from Test 2 above.

I'm not sure what made the difference, I believe I wasn't running Beta NVIDIA drivers earlier today. Also, I'm starting the game with the "+snd_async_prefetch_priority 1" launch options.

Anyway, I'd still like to hear any feedback that anyone wants to offer on my fps and whether my results are typical or not.

Thanks!

 

[volumen1]

Just to reply to myself replying to myself. I'm still seeing the sluggishness. It was just the particular point in the game wasn't very graphic intensive. Rats.

 

[DytHlt]

maybe try turning shadow off if you wont miss it, and shader to low, model detail to medium, texture detail to medium. and water to simple reflection and 800 X 600 res.

 

[volumen1]

I'll try that. So, does my fps seem correct to you? I am just surprised because I felt like my machine was fairly decent, yet it couldn't even achieve 30fps at the "reccomended" levels. Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[lister]

correct me if im wrong but that sound card u have, is it old one cos i aint heard of it?, Also your GFX card could be the 1 slowing u down aswell as the sound, try turning your sound quality to medium-low, see if that helps.

Also make sure you dont have any extra programs running in the background.

 

[volumen1]

Yeah, that sound card is pretty old. My machine also has an onboard AC'97 chipset soundcard, but it was goofing me up in linux, so I disabled it in the BIOS. I'll try turning the sound quality down and see what that does. I'll also try yanking the PCI soundcard and using the onboard one.

So, if I was going to replace my video card, what would you suggest I get?

 

[A-Bomber]

are you running both monitors from the one graphic card? if so that is ur problem, switch it to single display and it should work fine, i forgot to switch off my dual-screen when i installed far cry and doom 3 a while back and i couldn't play anything very well heh, really sucks up ur video cards power when u're trying to play the new games with great graphics and another monitor on

 

[volumen1]

Ahh.... I am doing that. That makes perfect sense! I'll reboot into Windows in a few moments and try this first. If it doesn't work, I'll try turning down audio/video detail. I'll report back with results. Thanks for all the help!!

 

[StainlessJ-FPGA]

Also make sure you are running in DX8 mode, not DX9 mode. The FX cards get like 50% loss in performance in DX9 mode, and you certainly shouldn't be getting 20fps with that system. My 9700 pro is getting around 70 fps in stress test in dx9 mode, but the radeons can handle dx9 while the FX's can't. You should get similar if not better FPS in dx8 mode. All you really lose is realistic water, you won't miss it too much.

The other option is to get an ATI card, which do perform better in HL2 than nvidia cards. Or simply get a geforce6 instead of the geforce5. Geforce5's aren't that great.

 

[volumen1]

Hmm... that's good to know. It didn't seem like disabling my second monitor did me much good. I did the following 2 video stress tests with the second monitor disabled. I did them both in 1280x1024 because when I change resolutions, the fps doesn't seem to be affected very much (if at all)

Test 1)
1280x1024
Model Detail: Low
Antialiasing: None*
Texture Detail: Low
Filtering: Bilinear
Water: Simple reflection
Shader: Low
Shadow: Low
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Disable*
Audio Detail: Low
fps: 22.14

Test 2)
1280x1024
Model Detail: High
Antialiasing: None*
Texture Detail: High
Filtering: Trilinear
Water: Simple reflection
Shader: High
Shadow: High
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Disable*
Audio Detail: High
fps: 18.70

My card shows hardware DirectX at 8, but software at 9. I'll change that and see what happens. I picked Nvidia over ATI because Nvidia has open-source driver support. I believe ATI just supplies binaries?

If I narrow it down to my gfx card, I'll loook around for a new one. I really need one that has support for dual DVI, though. I can't live without dual DVI for my work stuff.

Thanks for all the help!

 

[volumen1]

Blast! This is killing me!!

I bought a new Nvidia 6800 card (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-196&depa=0)

This card supports DirectX 9 and, I have to admit that everything looks good, but my fps still sucks. Here is what I've seen.

At first, when I ran the Video Stress Test after installing the new card, all of the rotating texture maps showed up as a big red rotating ERROR. Then, just out of chance, I found a piece of paper that came with the card that explained that both power plugs on the card need to be directly connected to the powersupply with nothing else sharing the cable.

That was a tall order for me, but I did it. That fixed the large red rotating ERRORs.

I don't think my fps is sucking because of my graphics card, though, but I don't understand what else it could be. Please see my machine's specs at the top of this thread.

The reason why I suspect something else is because of these results (note: in both of these tests, my native resolution was 1280x1024):

Test1)
Resolution: 640x480
Audio Detail: Low
Model Detail: Low
Antialiasing: None
Texture Detail: Low
Filtering: Bilinear
Water: Simple reflection
Shader: Low
Shadow: Low
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Disable*
fps: 22

Test 2)
Resolution: 1280x1024
Audio Detail: High
Model Detail: High
Antialiasing: 6X
Texture Detail: High
Filtering: 16X
Water: All
Shader: High
Shadow: High
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Enabled
fps: 22

NO DIFFERENCE?!?!

Then I started to think that it was my RAID10 SATA setup that was the choking point. So, I did each test again and I moved 5G files from my SATA drives to an external USB drive. My results only differed by +-1fps.

I'm losing my mind. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[the_lone_wolf]

it's bizzare that you'r getting the same FPS despite the settings, do you have your monitor refresh rate set ridiculously low? like 40Hz?

i have a TFT monitor too and since my system can't always boost out 60fps it regularly drops to 30 (half my refresh rate) even though without V-Sync on it'll do 40-50 but the tearing drives me nuts

try disabling v-suync, firing up half life 2 and type "cl_showfps" into the command console, and your smoothed fps will come up at the top right of your screen

edit: just seen you did the fiirst test without vync on, disregard my post :upstare:

 

[Ranga]

wow... 22fps with a geforce 6800.... i have a geforce 4ti and i get like 50! i don't think it's ur graphics card. (a little bit out of my depth here), u say u have 2 processors. i thought that most programs didn't support dual-processors. could that be it? (i'm probably wrong)

 

[TEDR]

Blast! This is killing me!!

I bought a new Nvidia 6800 card (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-196&depa=0)

This card supports DirectX 9 and, I have to admit that everything looks good, but my fps still sucks. Here is what I've seen.

At first, when I ran the Video Stress Test after installing the new card, all of the rotating texture maps showed up as a big red rotating ERROR. Then, just out of chance, I found a piece of paper that came with the card that explained that both power plugs on the card need to be directly connected to the powersupply with nothing else sharing the cable.

That was a tall order for me, but I did it. That fixed the large red rotating ERRORs.

I don't think my fps is sucking because of my graphics card, though, but I don't understand what else it could be. Please see my machine's specs at the top of this thread.

The reason why I suspect something else is because of these results (note: in both of these tests, my native resolution was 1280x1024):

Test1)
Resolution: 640x480
Audio Detail: Low
Model Detail: Low
Antialiasing: None
Texture Detail: Low
Filtering: Bilinear
Water: Simple reflection
Shader: Low
Shadow: Low
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Disable*
fps: 22

Test 2)
Resolution: 1280x1024
Audio Detail: High
Model Detail: High
Antialiasing: 6X
Texture Detail: High
Filtering: 16X
Water: All
Shader: High
Shadow: High
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Enabled
fps: 22

NO DIFFERENCE?!?!

Then I started to think that it was my RAID10 SATA setup that was the choking point. So, I did each test again and I moved 5G files from my SATA drives to an external USB drive. My results only differed by +-1fps.

I'm losing my mind. Does anyone have any ideas?

did u have any other cards before this ?

u may have driver fragments. Unistall drivers and
try
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3214.html

run in safe mode. follow instructions on the readme file.
then reboot and install drivers

 

[volumen1]

I finally got it

I just about lost my mind on this one, so I went out and bought a new 160G, 8MB cache, 7200rpm IDE drive and did a brand new windows install (using all my other original hardware).

With Half Life2/Counter Strike installed on the IDE drive, I get 52 fps with these options:

Resolution: 1280x1024
Audio Detail: High
Model Detail: High
Antialiasing: 4X (I think, not in windows now)
Texture Detail: High
Filtering:6X (I think, not in windows now)
Water: Reflect World
Shader: High
Shadow: High
Wait for Vertlcal Sync: Disabled

So, it was my disks that was the problem. To refresh, I had a 3Ware-9000 SATA controller and I had 4 200G SATA drives running in RAID10.

What's crazy is if I run the stress test now and select all the lowest settings, I still get 52 fps. So, I think that the only limiting factor in my setup is drive cache/speed. If I had known that, I would have spent more bread and gotten more RPM/Cache because I think that really helped.

Thanks for all the ideas! Playing Half Life 2 now is a whole nother experience! It's like I've lived all my life on a planet who's atmosphere is vaseline and I'm now visiting Earth for the first time.

 

[jou_yun]

I have similar problem

Oddly enough I have a similar problem with the demo (I am awaiting delivery of the full version and I am worried that the full version will have the same issue). I have a 2.4C P4 on an Intel D865PERL with 2X 512MB, MSI 6600GT AGP. If I set up for 1152x864 DX9.0 4xAA 4XAF I get a very bleah 30-40fps in any open area. But if I turn things down to even 1024x768, DX8.1, No AA, Trilinear, lowest quality for all options I get EXACTLY the same thing. Anything inbetween is likewise the same 30-40 fps. I am going to try a 10000RPM SATA HD with a fresh XP install when I can but I don't have a lot of faith that it will work.