HL2 and Doom3 weeks away - new graphics card discussion

[WPKenny]

The GT is fantastic. I've just had Doom3 running, wonderfully playable at 1600x1200 on ultra quality. The FPS never dropped below 45ish while running about and never below 25-30fps even in the fircest of fire fights. That to me is perfectly playable.

AA was off as I don't really see the need at 1600 res and antisotropic filtering was set to 8x as far as I can tell from the d3 config file.

If you're wondering how on earth I did it since I don't have a graphics card with 512 megs of ram then I shall tell you. I simply changed a setting in the DoomComfig.cfg file in the \base directory:

By default it is: seta image_cacheMegs "20"

but I changed the value to 600 since I have 1gig of ram. There's VERY slight pauses when I open the door to new rooms but apart from that it sings along. Very happy with my new purchase!

 

[SawTooTH]

Well Im off on holiday. I'll be getting Doom3 and my new grafx card when I get back so my hols going to end on a high.
Ive been testing out my new Athlon 64 3400 with Farcry and it brought a tear to my eye when the autodetect put everything to very high.

Come on Doom, lets see what ya made of!

 

[Jonty]

Hi guys

Just to say, for Ultra quality settings, having an Athlon 64 system will help with Doom more than a Pentium 4 system. If you are in the latter category, having a Prescott-based CPU will gave an advantage over the older Northbridge design.

Furthermore, many more people find their systems can handle ultra quality settings in multiplayer mode due to the smaller map sizes, so their system doesn't get as bogged down as with the large, single player maps.

Finally, tryout WPKenny's tip. It's been well documentated to give very impressive performance boosts (don't go daft with the new value, though, as there's a limit to the possible performance gains).

Kind Regards

 

[old.user4556]

It's one hell of a pant-browning game. For some reason, I thought "how can a game be scary", but it really does make you "WOAH", "AIEEE", "SHIIIIT" at many parts.

I switched on dolby encoding last night on the nforce2, and that brought a whole new level of enjoyment to the game with 5.1 through my home cinema speakers.

G

 

[inactionman]

The GT is fantastic. I've just had Doom3 running, wonderfully playable at 1600x1200 on ultra quality. The FPS never dropped below 45ish while running about and never below 25-30fps even in the fircest of fire fights. That to me is perfectly playable.

Have you overclocked it yet? Still *ahem* getting hold of my copy of D3, will buy it on first day of release tho!

 

[WPKenny]

Have you overclocked it yet? Still *ahem* getting hold of my copy of D3, will buy it on first day of release tho!

I did the coolbits hack and just ticked the box "Autodetect". Where it supposedly dynamically adjusts the levl of overclocking. No idea what speeds it's obtaining though. When I tried to set it manually to 400/1100 it refused saying it didn't think the settigns were safe. I might try and use the bundled software today/tomorrow and see if that'll let me.

 

[Jonty]

I did the coolbits hack and just ticked the box "Autodetect". Where it supposedly dynamically adjusts the levl of overclocking. No idea what speeds it's obtaining though. When I tried to set it manually to 400/1100 it refused saying it didn't think the settigns were safe. I might try and use the bundled software today/tomorrow and see if that'll let me.

Hi WPKenny

I can't speak for Leadtek, but I know MSI's own-brand drivers feature their own specialist overclocking utilities. Their dynamic overclocking tool was able to provide an almost 10% boost in performance whilst staying within relatively safe clock ranges. The only downside is such branded drivers tend to be slightly older than nVidia's newest reference drivers (MSI's card shipped with 61.11 drivers, for instance). Good luck

Kind Regards

 

[Tom]

I downloaded the new nvidia drivers from their site, ran the coolbits fix, and overclocked to 420/1100 on 2D and 3D modes, with absolutely no problems whatsoever on my Aopen GT.

 

[Bodhi]

D3 runs absolutely fine at 1024x768 on my 9800 Pro. It's being prodded along by a P4 2.8 with 512meg of RAM, and ever since I installed the latest Catalysts (4.9's, the unsupported ones) it has really flown. Slows down a bit when the harddisk gets involved in the action, which is clearly ATi's fault. Im just not sure why.....

 

[Ono]

The GT is fantastic. I've just had Doom3 running, wonderfully playable at 1600x1200 on ultra quality.

How the hell are you playing this on Ultra? I though id said that you needed a 512 meg graphics card to do that.

My new PC gets delivered next week Athlon 64 3400+, 1 gig Ram and a GF 6800 Ultra.

If it doesn't fly on that ..........

 

[WPKenny]

How the hell are you playing this on Ultra? I though id said that you needed a 512 meg graphics card to do that.

My new PC gets delivered next week Athlon 64 3400+, 1 gig Ram and a GF 6800 Ultra.

If it doesn't fly on that ..........

The answers there in the rest of my post you quoted.

As far as I understand the cfg change basically loads textures and whatever else into the pc's memory instead of accessing the info from the HDD so while you may get the odd stutter as you go into a room it's barely noticable if you've got fast memory.

 

[Requ!em]

How the hell are you playing this on Ultra? I though id said that you needed a 512 meg graphics card to do that.

My new PC gets delivered next week Athlon 64 3400+, 1 gig Ram and a GF 6800 Ultra.

If it doesn't fly on that ..........

Doom3 runs quite nicely even on some low end systems, very tweakable so you can get a good compromise between frame rate and visual quality. Theres a breakdown of the different quality settings and some additional tweaks that might help in the UpsetChaps Doom3 Guide (Be warned, full of spoilers)

Direct link to Doom3 'FPS and Visual Tweaks' (inc sample config) - http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Doom3/FPSVisuals.htm

 

[Ono]

The answers there in the rest of my post you quoted.

Hehe, sorry. I've got got this blinkered reading habit where I read a bit and then jump to conclusions

 

[SawTooTH]

Ive had nothing but trouble waiting for my Ultra card from OcUk so Ive bought it from pcwcomponent center instead. Should arrive on Saturday.

A bit off topic but does anyone else think companies that deal by email exclusively are , well , pants?

 

[Ch3tan]

If you have access to CS: Source, it comes with a video stress test tool. Basically a benchmark. On my 9800pro I get 58.9 fps @ 1280*1024. CS itself runs at about 60fps average, on high settings with no AA.

 

[Ch3tan]

Right with 2xAA everything looks noticbly nicer, but my average fps is 27, although the benchmark ran smoothly. CS with 2xAA still reaches 60 fps, dropping to about 40 in firefights.

 

[SawTooTH]

wow is all i can say. In the end i got the BFG 6800 Ultra OC from pcwcomponent center. I was surprised to find its one of the few makes that give a lifetime warrenty.

Anyway, O/C UK just kept giving me the large quantities of cards arriving next week line so I cancelled that order.

Well Ive played doom at high quality settings and all is fine with the world. I also managed to find a site with the Far Cry 1.2 patch and enabled sm3 shading. If this is the way gamings going Im going to be playing games for a few more years.

Is there a good site with all the doom 3 console commands listed. I want to see frame rate etc.

 

[Ono]

My new PC has been delayed because MESH can't source any 6800 Ultras apparently.

This is despite me ordering and paying for it 3 weeks ago. Bit of a joke for such a big company.

 

[SawTooTH]

I know exactly how you feel.

 

[smurkin]

Many thanks to Jonty for the savacentre MSI 6800 card pointer. I just built my new doom 3 system so I thought I'd share my benckmarks (although I havent had chance to benchie with d3 yet). So all I got for ya is 3dmark 2003 (groan). I bought the best I could afford (wanted a nforce2 shuttle originally, but dropped it to reduce cost & get a better mobo).

After o/c ing the cpu a tad and the 6800 (374/933)

3dmark 9828 with 831 cpumarks

http://service.futuremark.com/servl...ojectdetails&projectType=10&projectId=2983578

Rig:

Gigabyte GA-K8NSPro (Gb Lan, surround, firewire, USB2, SATA or PATA RAID, 1600 FSB which I think is a misprint,DDR400 etc) £64.50 ex VAT

Athlon 64 3200 skt 754 (512 cache) - stock fan running at around 40 deg C - about 135 quid inc VAT

MSI6800 TD128 £192.64 + a little P&P inc VAT

2x512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz (Geil iirc, not my first choice but what was in stock) - about 50 quid inc VAT

36 GB Western Digital Raptor 10Krpm 8Mb Cache Serial ATA HDD £70 quid inc VAT

Chieftec Dragon Silver DX-01SLD-U Midi Case - about 40 quid inc VAT- this is a really nice budget alu case - it has a lockable flap for the drives which is great to keep my lil daughter from playng with the pretty lights. It just needs a 10 cm blue cold cathode behind the front grills to make it look sweet.

Cheap 500w psu.

The system plays d3 really nicely on high detail without aa & no d3 tweaks - but the above overclock giives visual artefacts - so I use the DOT commander setting which gives slightly lower 3dmarks (9272), but no artefacts.

I'm not an o/c guru, but the dynamic overclock (DOT) is a great feature of the MSI GPU for the amateur. The mobo comes with a o/c util which checks all permutations, fsb, cpu etc and sets a recommended o/c - again great for amateurs.

One thing that really surprised me about d3. I started an mp server, just to try the maps & guns...and all of a sudden I'm beating off clients connecting to play - I guess having a 4 player limit means that big organisations tend not to run servers. Had some ggs - last night 2 players with ping 66 & one at 150 - I've only got 512K DSL....d3....great game.

Anyone else got any d3 rig 3dmarks ?

 

[Jonty]

You're welcome smurkin At the usual £240+ selling price, the MSI card is a tad steep, but at the SavaStore price it makes far more sense.

I'm glad your system is running so well, those 3DMark scores are very nice. As you say, MSI's dynamic overclocking technology (DOT) is rather nice, just a shame they're slighty slow catching up with nVidia's newer driver releases. Just out of interest, are you running the card's fan on the higher or lower speed?

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. Doom 3 really doesn't tolerate hard OC'ed systems as well as other games, hence the artefacts. As for Source (HL2, CS:Source etc.) performance, hopefully nVidia's 65.xx drivers should help nVidia users gain around 10%, although they'll likely still be behind ATI in high-end tests.

 

[inactionman]

Looks a nice system! That memory's a bit cheap, I paid £100 for a pair of that!

Any name on that PSU, as I'd avoid cheap PSU's like the plague, as when they go (and it will) they tend to take most of the rest of the components with it. It's a bit of a chance when a good PSU can be had for about £50, and a lot of people's problems with their computers can be traced to crap/underpowered PSU's!

 

[RandomBastard]

Have either jonty or smirkin tried steam based games on your cards? Have you expereinced lockups on them at all? See my other thread for details but im having trouble (still) with mine :/

 

[Jonty]

Hi RandomBastard

I'm afraid I haven't tried Steam-based games on the 6800, be they the 'original' games or the new Source based offerings. All I can suggest is the usual: check your drivers (try MSI's own and nVidia's laest reference drivers), try checking driver settings (antistrophic filtering, antialiasing etc.) and check your Steam settings too. Not very helpful at all, I'm afraid. I'd doubt it's a hardware issue, if other games and Windows are fine. Same goes for card power/temperature, as nVidia cards have built-in monitoring whereby the drivers will alert you to any problems. Good luck.

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. Try disabling any overclocking, just in case.

 

[RandomBastard]

The issue was originally present in both windows and other games, it just seem to be reduced after reseating the gfx card (might try to reseat it again in fact) just out of curiousity what is the idle temperature of your card? I'm currently using the nvidia reference drivers and about to try the msi ones. It seems from a post on the msi forums that a lot of 6800s have issues, relating to temperature, or power.

 

[smurkin]

Just out of interest, are you running the card's fan on the higher or lower speed?

For 374/993 I used a fast fan, but iirc, I did get a 3dmark in early 9000s with slow fan using stock cpu speed and 370/926. Beyond 374/993 I found 3dmark froze on the early tests with the fast fan - so I think I've tested the card to its limits. I was considering testing the 16 pipelines, but tbh, I dont need the extra juice & I dont want to risk breaking the card just yet. (note to self, must look for new drivers).

I havent tried any steam based stuff yet - I dropped cs ages ago - tbh, I'm more into level editing (www.lrctf.com) and I really wanted to get into d3 for that purpose. Still, looking forward to half life 2 - be interesting to test out the neuroses about nv cards. Is there a sensor for the gpu temperature I should know about ?

Yup, your correct inactionman , my booboo - the memory was £50 per stick. The psu is a winpower...not a well known name - but at least it has a name

 

[RandomBastard]

Changed to MSI's drivers, problem solved for now, ta jonty, oh and no i didnt overclock it, I'm generally not interested in overclocking things, I feel it shortens the lifespan.

 

[Ch3tan]

Smurkin, if you've bought the Geil value stuff (and I assume you mean £50 a stick, or you have a bargain) manually set it to 6, 3, 3 in your bios. It auto detects at 8, 4, 4. I have the value stuff and it works fine for me, got the tip from the geil forums.

 

[Jonty]

Hi guys

Glad everything is sorted, RandomBastard. Hopefully MSI will continue to update their drivers as soon as they can (someone has just leaked nVidia's 66.00 drivers ...), or perhaps nVidia's next reference drivers will fix any problems. As for problems with MSI cards, it wouldn't surprise me, sadly, as I know many Gainward cards were shipped with corrupt BIOS which caused no end of trouble for some people.

Thanks for the info, smurkin Those overclocks are impressive. Apparently with regards HL2 and co., nVidia's latest (unreleased) drivers help gain around 10% on ATI's offerings. That said the benchmarks in question were 1600x1200 with 16xAA and 8xAF, which it's unlikely 6800 non-Ultra owners would be running. Guess we'll just have to wait and see

Finally, try out Ch3tan's tip. I have some Kingston HyperX RAM whose timings were auto-detected incorrectly, and setting them up properly provided a 10% boost in performance, which isn't to be sniffed at (be careful, though, tweaking the BIOS settings too agressively can hinder performance).

Kind Regards

Jonty

P.S. If you don't care for MSI's LiveUpdate utility, the latest drivers can be found on MSI's website (although BIOS updates are seemingly only available via LiveUpdate.

 

[SawTooTH]

Anyone benchmarked with the D3 demo1?
I gave it a go, With resolution 1280 X 1024, 2XAA (not sure what the anisotopic filtering is but whatever Doom3s default value is) and at High quality.

I got 79 FPS

Thats with a AMD64 3400+, 1Gb Geil PC3200 with fsb at 205 so a slight overclock. Also just set up my first RAID Raid0 on 2CX Seagate Barracuda 120GB drives -seems to work but waiting for a big crash.
Vid card is the BFG 6800 Ultra and I think that is slightly O/ced compared to the reference Ultra 425 rather than 400 (whether I could tell is a different matter)

This seems about right