08-03-2004, 01:28 PM | #1 (permalink) |
A Real American
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Doom 3 Performance boost
I started this topic so it wouldn't get buried in the mess of other D III threads, plus it didnt' exactly fit in the screenshots thread
Mods if you need to merge by all means, but if you could at least wait a day or so? I think this info is helpful and I didn't want anyone to miss it. Little tip I picked up elsewhere for increased performance: In your DOOM 3 directory, find "DoomConfig.cfg" (x:\Program Files\Doom 3\base). Open DoomConfig.cfg in Notepad. Find the line: seta image_cacheMegs "32" I changed 32 to 96. Other in the thread changed it as high as 384 with a noticable difference, but said the jump to 512 didn't yield any major difference. From here: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoo...33&tid=1438663 new tweak found: tried this and Im now runnig at 1280x1024 compared to 800x600 at the same settings. "As all of you who allready have this game recognized the game is very slow even on new Computers. I found out the reason for this and the solution to fix this problem. As you already know after installation the game consits only of the doom3.exe and some .PK4 files. Those PK4 files includes the entire game (sounds, videos, textures etc.) in high compressed form. Normally those files were decompresse during the game. But this exactly is the problem. Even new CPUs are not able to decompress those files while running the game with good peformance and therfore the game runs very **** also on new computers. I don't know if the develpers of ID-Soft was just too stupid to think about this or if they have an agreement with some hardware manufacturing firms. How to get around this problem: It is very simple. Go to your Doom 3 installation directoy and get inside the folder "Base". There are some .PK4 files you have to open each of them with WinRAR 3.3 and extract their entire contents to the Base dir in you Doom 3 installation folder (replace all files if they are any duplicates). Now you have to delete all .PK4 files in the Base folder to prevent the game to use those compressed files agian. Now the game starts and runs mutch faster!!! from here: http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gen...topic=15503352
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I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince Last edited by Holo; 08-04-2004 at 09:42 PM.. |
08-03-2004, 07:52 PM | #2 (permalink) |
Friend
Location: New Mexico
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it did work, i changed it fro "20" which was in my cfg file to 92 and there was a significant boost. I am running a 2.8 p4 with 800 FSB with only 512 megs of pc 4000 ram and a radeon 9800 pro. playing on high settings at 1024x768 and it runs very well with the boost. I am getting another 512 stick this week so it will be great since that is my bottleneck.
when i get the more ram i will up it to probably 256.
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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly "This is my United States of Whateva!" Last edited by YaWhateva; 08-03-2004 at 07:58 PM.. |
08-03-2004, 07:55 PM | #3 (permalink) |
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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Man, that extra RAM is gonna make it play WAY better.
Glad to know the boost works. Thanks for the tip Holo! -Lasereth
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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
08-03-2004, 07:59 PM | #4 (permalink) | |
Friend
Location: New Mexico
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Quote:
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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly "This is my United States of Whateva!" |
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08-03-2004, 08:08 PM | #5 (permalink) |
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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Well, I know for sure that going from 512 MB of RAM to 768 MB of RAM on Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam made a HUGE increase. Going from 512 MB to 1 GB on Doom 3 should be amazing.
-Lasereth
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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
08-03-2004, 10:04 PM | #7 (permalink) |
Crazy
Location: Salt Lake City
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This one sounds shady, but it might help some peeps out. If you have an Nvidia or ATI card that supports multiple monitors, turn off Windows XP's multi-monitor support. Go to [Display Options]->[Settings]->[Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor]
Make sure it's turned off. This will help with other games, as well. Made a HUGE difference for me. (Geforce 4)
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08-03-2004, 11:07 PM | #8 (permalink) | ||
Friend
Location: New Mexico
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Quote:
Quote:
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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly "This is my United States of Whateva!" |
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08-04-2004, 01:22 AM | #9 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Auckland
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ok i dont want to sound like a complete nerd and i know its completely off topic but,
while waiting for D3 to install, i read the licsense in the back of the manual. and in section 3 it lists a bunch of things you arent allowed to do. One of these things is i. Reproduce or copy the software(except permitted by section 4) the thing is, section 4 is about cheating, they meant section 5 which is about copying. obvious mistake, I was hoping for some cool easter egg, but no, only a typo. but its something at least
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I am Hanabal, Phear my elephants |
08-04-2004, 03:01 AM | #11 (permalink) |
Go Ninja, Go Ninja Go!!
Location: IN, USA
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I'm sure I'll say something like "thank you for the tip!!!" after I go out and buy it.. I didn't put a pre-order down and thus I don't have it yet.
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RoboBlaster: Welcome to the club! Not that I'm in the club. And there really isn'a a club in the first place. But if there was a club and if I was in it, I would definitely welcome you to it. |
08-04-2004, 05:18 AM | #14 (permalink) |
Holy Knight of The Alliance
Location: Stormwind, The Eastern Kingdoms, Azeroth
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I tried it. Are you supposed to put a "1" in the line above it instead of the "0" that's there? I haven't noticed a difference, except when I try to use it with a "1" in the line above the line you change from "32" to "whatever" the game crashes to desktop. What's the deal with that? I've got 786MB to work with.
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What do you say to one last showdown? - Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3 The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha. - The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3 |
08-04-2004, 07:00 AM | #15 (permalink) |
Banned from being Banned
Location: Donkey
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I have an Athlon XP 1800, 786 MB RAM (PC2100), 60 gig 7200 RPM drive, and a Radeon 9600 Pro (128).
Using this performance boost (changed 20 to 128), I can now play it in 1024x768, Med Quality without any problems whatsoever where before, it was choppy at times in 800x600 Med Quality. Now that I've been playing in a higher resolution, it really looks no different than 800x600!
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I love lamp. |
08-04-2004, 09:14 AM | #16 (permalink) | |
Friend
Location: New Mexico
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Quote:
__________________
“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly "This is my United States of Whateva!" |
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08-04-2004, 09:54 AM | #17 (permalink) | |
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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Quote:
-Lasereth
__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
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08-04-2004, 11:07 AM | #18 (permalink) |
Death Leprechaun
Location: College Station, TX
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From what I have heard that number is the size of the texture decompression, so the larger the number the more decompressed the textures are on your hard drive. The reason i thinking it runs faster is that it doesnt have to decompress as many textures while running the game. Check and see how large the folder is after doing this. I'm at work and can't check it. Plus I may just be completely wrong about this whole thing.
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08-04-2004, 11:14 AM | #19 (permalink) |
beauty in the breakdown
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
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Am I the only one wanting to know what this does before jumping in? Performance gains dont just come out of nowhere, this has to be doing something pretty beefy--and I would like to know what it is before I jump in.
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"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato |
08-04-2004, 11:25 AM | #20 (permalink) | |
Death Leprechaun
Location: College Station, TX
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Quote:
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08-04-2004, 12:03 PM | #21 (permalink) | |
beauty in the breakdown
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
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Quote:
__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato |
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08-04-2004, 12:12 PM | #22 (permalink) | |
Death Leprechaun
Location: College Station, TX
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Quote:
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoo...33&tid=1440520 |
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08-04-2004, 03:22 PM | #24 (permalink) | |
Blood + Fire
Location: New Zealand
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Quote:
I bumped mine up to 256 and I've got a Gig of Ram, might try 512 later |
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08-04-2004, 05:54 PM | #25 (permalink) |
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
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I tried the performance boost and it helped out a good bit. The game is way less jittery. It's running really good now on my GeForce 4 TI4200 128 MB.
-Lasereth
__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
08-04-2004, 07:11 PM | #26 (permalink) |
Holy Knight of The Alliance
Location: Stormwind, The Eastern Kingdoms, Azeroth
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Word. I corrected that, Mr. D. I also wasn't allowing for enough cache to be free. It's default at 200 (k?), or something like that, so I jacked it up to around 10000 (k?). That fixed it.
__________________
What do you say to one last showdown? - Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3 The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha. - The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3 |
08-04-2004, 09:42 PM | #27 (permalink) |
A Real American
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Thread updated above with new tweak.
Make sure you read a few pages of the thread I linked with the new tweak as it has some cautions.
__________________
I happen to like the words "fuck", "cock", "pussy", "tits", "cunt", "twat", "shit" and even "bitch". As long as I am not using them to describe you, don't go telling me whether or not I can/should use them...that is, if you want me to continue refraining from using them to describe you. ~Prince Last edited by Holo; 08-04-2004 at 09:47 PM.. |
08-05-2004, 05:00 AM | #30 (permalink) |
beauty in the breakdown
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
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Watch out for that new tweak, the decompressing one--I dont believe you will be able to play online like that.
__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." --Plato |
08-05-2004, 05:32 AM | #31 (permalink) |
Tilted
Location: Dublin, Ireland
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Benchmarking
1) Load Doom3 using the shortcut that enables the console 2) Open the console using the ~ key below ESC or press CTRL ALT ~ 3) Enter the command timedemo demo1 4) Wait until demo has finished and note your FPS 5) Adjust your settings/tweaks and repeat steps 2 to 4 until you find the settings with the best average FPS. Repeat steps 2-5 with the other Doom 3 benchmark benchmark To test your FPS while online type "com_showfps 1" at the console Please make sure that you read the Display and Rendering Tweak Notes at the foot of this page. The lowest system specification I have here is a 1.8 GHZ AMD Athlon XP, Geforce4 ti4200/128/8x with 512 megabytes of system ram. Tweaks are based on best compromise / quality in the single player game for that system. Make sure that you do a writeconfig DoomConfig.cfg followed by a vid_restart after setting the cvars. Main Menu Options Ultra Each texture (diffuse, specular, normal) will be at full resolution with no compression. In a typical DOOM 3 level, this can hover around 500 megabyte of texture data. This will run on current hardware but will not fit onto a 256MB card, causing texture thrashing. The amount of texture referenced in a given scene per frame ( 60 times a second ) can easily be 50 megabytes+. This is ideal for 512 megabyte video cards. High quality Uses hardware compression ( DXT1,3,5 ) for specular and diffuse textures and no compression for normal textures. This looks very very close to Ultra quality but the compression does cause some loss in quality. This is ideal for 256 megabyte video cards. Medium quality Uses hardware compression for all textures (specular, diffuse and normal). While this still looks good, compressing the normal maps can produce a few artifacts especially on hard angled or round edges. This is ideal for 128 megabyte cards. Low quality Uses hardware compression for all textures (specular, diffuse and normal) and automatically resizes diffuse and normal textures to no more than 256x256 and specular texture maps to no more than 64x64. This is ideal for 64 megabyte video cards. Best Visual / FPS Compromise Config Create a file called autoexec.cfg in your Doom3 'Base' directory and add the relevant config 64 Megabyte Video Cards seta image_downSizeLimit "256" seta image_ignoreHighQuality "1" seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "256" seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "64" seta image_downSizeBump "1" seta image_downSizeSpecular "1" seta image_downSize "1" seta image_forceDownSize "1" seta image_anisotropy "0" seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST" 128 Megabyte Video Cards seta image_downSizeLimit "512" seta image_ignoreHighQuality "1" seta image_downSizeBumpLimit "512" seta image_downSizeSpecularLimit "64" seta image_downSizeBump "1" seta image_downSizeSpecular "1" seta image_downSize "1" seta image_forceDownSize "1" seta image_anisotropy "0" seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST"
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We All Have Questions What Seperates The Men From The Boys Is The Ability To Use Google To Find Our Answers |
08-05-2004, 01:32 PM | #33 (permalink) | |
Guest
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Quote:
http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Doom3/FPSVisuals.htm i dont know im sure some of those tweaks would work. but im running doom 3 on high settings with 4x AF and no AA with excellent FPS. and that website recommends high seetings only for 256 cards. i havent benchmarked yet but i dont notice any lag so i dont feel that need too. |
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08-06-2004, 08:20 PM | #35 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: TX
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Just a note... unpacking your .pak files does nothing but make the game run slower, and load slower.
iD Software commented about it recently... I will try to find the source again and post it. And I have done a number of benchmarks and the game was on average 5 fps slower when using the unpacked files vs. the .pak files. |
08-06-2004, 10:54 PM | #36 (permalink) | |
Blood + Fire
Location: New Zealand
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I posted this earlier on another forum, some of you might find it useful:
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08-07-2004, 09:56 AM | #37 (permalink) |
Banned from being Banned
Location: Donkey
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ATI has released Catalyst 4.9 (beta) drivers that will help boost Doom 3 performance: http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html
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I love lamp. |
08-08-2004, 05:43 PM | #40 (permalink) | |
Upright
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Hi,
Quote:
Thanks, Manga |
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Tags |
boost, doom, performance |
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