UT2004 problem

G

GVX

Gawd
Joined
Aug 19, 2004
Messages
610
Hi, this is a serious problem and I have tried everything that I know to fix it. I would greatly appreciate your help.

Here's my problem in UT2004
graemeav-Unreal1.jpg

If you take a look at the FRAPS counter at the top left-hand corner of the image you'll see that my framerate falls to unusually low levels intermittently throughout the game. It usually happens without warning can remain this way for 4-5 seconds. It's almost like my HDD is being paged, but the HDD light isn't active at all during gameplay (due to the gig of ram that I'm using).

I ran Prime95 for 6 hours w/o any errors or warnings, so I don't think that it's a memory problem.

The strange thing is that my video card runs other games such as Halo without any hitches and it scores 3600 3Dmarks in 3DMark03. I really don't know why these problems are happening in Unreal Tournament.

This is really bugging, and I just want some clarification about whether or not it's the vid card (since I'm upgrading that soon anyways) or if it is some other problem.

thanks.
 
From my experience with FRAPS (which is limited), running FRAPS while playing will almost always give you low FPS. Have you ran UT2004 without FRAPS running?

Also, you might want to post your machine specs 3600 in 03 seems kind of low. At least post your video card and processor.
 
Yes, the low FPS occurs even without FRAPS. I was just using it to help illustrate my problem.

My machine specs are in my sig, but I'll post them for those who have sigs off

Athlon "Barton" XP 3000+ (at stock)
2x512MB (Kingston+Samsung) PC2700
9600XT w/ Overdrive
ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
Zalman CNPS7000 Al-Cu heatsink (load temps=40C)
Samsung 997DF 19 inch CRT
Samsung 160GB, 7200RPM ATA133 HDD
Tt Tsunami Dream case w/ windowed sidepanel (2x120mm fans +1x90mm)
Antec TruePower 430W PSU
XP Home w/ SP2
 
KevinO said:
From my experience with FRAPS (which is limited), running FRAPS while playing will almost always give you low FPS....
Click to expand...

That sounds like poo to me. aka, not true at all.
 
UltimateMan said:
That sounds like poo to me. aka, not true at all.
Click to expand...

Thanks for helping the OP. Appreciate your input. I guess anything for postcount++. I specified my using FRAPS was very limited and when I have used it my FPS in my games have dropped.

I still think 3600 is low on 3DMark03 for your system. I really don't think it is your video card, but maybe misconfiguration or driver problems. Have you tried uninstalling the drivers, running driver cleaner, and reinstalling them? Other than that, I don't have a clue as to why 2K4 would be the only thing giving your problems. I haven't played HALO, so I don't know the stresses it puts on the system.

With a GIG of memory, your system shouldn't be paging hardly at all while playing. Do you have alot of background services running?
 
Also I have noticed on some machines, you should not have anything running in the background...Spyware programs, antivirus programs, mbm, anything...after you turn those off, see if it runs smoothly...
 
Have you tried running ATI tool? That will let you know if its an OCing problem, and will also determine if the problem is genuinely specific to UT2K4 or your video card.
 
Looks more like a driver problem. Your 3d mark score is off. Try a reinstall of your cats (you never mentioned what ver you are running....)
 
A couple of things that I have run into with this game, which I play each and every night. First, I had horrible graphics artifacts, way worse than yours, when I overclocked my system. Even thought memtest said my ram would operate at 230fsb without errors, the oc actually hurt my frames. I went back to stock settings and got rid of the corruption and gained a few fps. Check that first. Second, make sure that vsync is off. This would be a driver setting. My vsync capped me at 60fps all the time but from what I understand, and I may be wrong, the vsync works on ratios. If it can't keep 60, it drops to 30. I have since disabled vsync and although the game shows some tearing I usually get 85fps on most maps. There are those few maps that bring my machine to lower fps levels. VCTF-Viperlake is one. I get 30-40 frames there, I suppose it's all the water. Third, My friend and I have a small site dedicated to ut2k4. There is a section that deals with key binding. It will guide you through setting up the "stat fps" that is built into the game, no need to run fraps. Check it out here:
http://www.ctclan.us/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15
Also, come on by and play on our servers, give BR and VCTF a shot! Hope this helped!
<{CTC}>SalChicha is what I go by and my friend goes by <{CTC}>JimRimya. We always have our mics on so communication is easy. Have fun!
 
Thanks for the help guys, but I'm starting to think that this problem is unfixable. Here's a list of what I've done:

Upgraded drivers (vid card, chipset)
Downgraded back to older drivers
moved memory out of dual channel
downclocked FSB to 133mhz
defragmented (many times)
tweaked UT2004.ini to gain performance
uninstalled and re-installed UT2004 (twice)
Used driver cleaner to completely remove old nForce and Catalyst drivers before installing new ones


I have basically done everything short of flashing my mobo BIOS with an update. I am currently using a BIOS revision from August 04. If you guys think that updating the BIOS might fix whatever is wrong, then I guess I can install my FDD and do a flash, but somehow I feel that the answer just isn't so simple.

NOTE: The strangest thing about this problem is that it doesn't only occur at high resolutions. Hell, I even noted it at 640x480 (that's why I thought that it was the RAM). Equally vexing is the fact that it only shows up in UT2k4.

At this point I think that the problem may have no fixable solution so I would just like to narrow down the problem spot (are you guys sure that it's the video card?). I'm thinking about busting out my old Geforce2MX and seeing if the same hitching occurs with that card installed.
 
GVX said:
Thanks for the help guys, but I'm starting to think that this problem is unfixable. Here's a list of what I've done:

Upgraded drivers (vid card, chipset)
Downgraded back to older drivers
moved memory out of dual channel
downclocked FSB to 133mhz
defragmented (many times)
tweaked UT2004.ini to gain performance
uninstalled and re-installed UT2004 (twice)
Used driver cleaner to completely remove old nForce and Catalyst drivers before installing new ones


I have basically done everything short of flashing my mobo BIOS with an update. I am currently using a BIOS revision from August 04. If you guys think that updating the BIOS might fix whatever is wrong, then I guess I can install my FDD and do a flash, but somehow I feel that the answer just isn't so simple.

NOTE: The strangest thing about this problem is that it doesn't only occur at high resolutions. Hell, I even noted it at 640x480 (that's why I thought that it was the RAM). Equally vexing is the fact that it only shows up in UT2k4.

At this point I think that the problem may have no fixable solution so I would just like to narrow down the problem spot (are you guys sure that it's the video card?). I'm thinking about busting out my old Geforce2MX and seeing if the same hitching occurs with that card installed.
Click to expand...


Try the Ge-force 2 then:

Change The ut .ini file so it uses openGL, not Direct3D. I think you just remove the ";" infront of the OPENGL.render.device, or somethink, then delete the DirectX line.
 
The 9600XT isn't a stellar card these days, even so I had one and I got better frame rates than that with it. Something has to be wrong somewhere. On a 3.0C even at stock speeds I got much better frame rates than that with the same video card.

Try the BIOS update or another video card if you've got one. That just doesn't seem right. Are you overclocking your video card at all? If so go back to stock.
 
I guess that I finally solved the problem, although it wasn't as clean cut a solution as I was hoping for.

I guess the problem must have been related to my video card texture swapping because when I turn the "Character detail" down from "Very High" to "Medium" the problem basically vanishes. I never thought to do this before, because I assumed that turning the res down to 480x640 would cover all my bases (I never thought to lower individual settings).

I'm not exactly happy about reducing my IQ in order to get playable performance because this problem never showed up at all when I had my 9600XT in my old Compaq; regardless of what the "Character detail" settings were set at.

I'm just curious, does anybody else w/ 128MB video cards get this problem when the "Character Detail" setting is maxed out?
 
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