FPS Tips

[Quaker Oats]

Client = ProQuake DX8 4.51 Beta

If anyone knows anything about these questions, I'd appreciate the advice/answers !

1.) Is there a downside to having a max fps much larger than average fps? (to allow room for my fps to rise). When my fps DOES spike, my ping gets lower, and that wouldn't happen without a really high max fps.

2.) My fps drops when I'm shooting rockets or shafting. Any config options I could adjust that might help this, or is this completely normal? Ex. fps sits at solid 400, and after a few rocket shots, it drops to 350 and then back to 400.

3.) My comp isn't amazing, and I don't have a video 'card'. Monitor is a shitty CRT one too. Is there a downside to using the highest refresh rate possible? Does it affect anything negatively? My resolution is currently 800x600 because it allows me to choose a refresh rate of 100 hz.


Thanks for reading!

[R00k]

imho PING is the rate from your computer to the server and back BASED on the server's ticrate. Overloading the fps in Quake only falsifies the ping response. I can maxfps 999 and get a 0 ping, busted.

CRT is th best way to go for Gaming, even though its not eco-friendly. :*(
They give the better results at the moment...(>120hz) if u can still find one that works.
CRTs are like a lightbulb, "they gonna bust"; lcd_s should last at least 15 years .(EDIT: if you dont over-refresh them!)


EDIT : Try DirectQ, just do it, now, dont wait, wait here >>> http://directq.codeplex.com << DOWNLOAD

[Quaker Oats]

imho PING is the rate from your computer to the server and back BASED on the server's ticrate. Overloading the fps in Quake only falsifies the ping response. I can maxfps 999 and get a 0 ping, busted.

Damnit... I knew something was fishy. I could lower my ping by as much as 20 on dm.quaketx.com if I lowered my resolution for higher fps.

How are we supposed to know if our ping is being falsified though?

CRT is th best way to go for Gaming, even though its not eco-friendly. :*(
They give the better results at the moment...(>120hz) if u can still find one that works.
CRTs are like a lightbulb, "they gonna bust"; lcd_s should last at least 15 years .(EDIT: if you dont over-refresh them!)

Good info, cuz I'm going to be in the market for a new monitor very soon.

EDIT : Try DirectQ, just do it, now, dont wait, wait here >>> DirectQ << DOWNLOAD

I've tried DirectQ quite a few times, and even after spending a lot of time config'ing, my fps and ping are both worse when compared to running DX8.

[R00k]

Honestly 400 to 350 isnt that big of a deal. I'd suggest just running your game around 300 and keep it stable.

Things get a bit confusing with Quake by how the user's input and video refresh and server messages all tie into one function, and are timed dependently on that function, all based on the cl_maxfps cvar. If your monitor can do 100hz, and your mouse does 300hz, and the server is sending at 20fps, only interpolation make all this feel smooth. In the past I've always tried to set my mouse polling and refreshrate the same. Back when I played exclusively on my crt, I was using proquake with pq_maxfps 100 with a 100hz refresh and it was smooth as glass.

[MH]

Getting your FPS above some multiple of your mouse polling rate seems to be key to smoother performance and an overall better experience. So long as the engine can respond to input messages as soon as they arrive you'll be doing fine.

One potential downside to running at too high an FPS is that you'll be sending net traffic to the server at a huge rate - your own net connections may be able to handle it, but take that rate, multiply it by the number of players, and see if the server's connection can handle it. On the other hand client-to-serve communication is not very data intensive so it's something you need to be aware of rather than something you need to take immediate action on.

The slowdowns with rockets and the shaft are probably from dynamic lights. Try running with -nomtex (or gl_texsort 1) and things should improve a good deal. If it doesn't then r_dynamic 0 or gl_flashblend 1 should help a little more. You'll obviously lose some visual quality with the latter two.

I'll admit that the DX8 wrapper I wrote was focussed more around broad compatibility with a wide range of differently structured code bases than out-and-out absolute performance. Restructuring the engine code to properly take advantage of the way D3D works would see it easily beating any other engine (except DirectQ - but see below) for speed on any hardware you care to mention. There's also some useful work that could be done on the wrapper code, but that was an old project I've long since moved on from.

If DirectQ runs slow for you it's likely the case that your 3D card is one of the earlier D3D9 cards (like the GeForce FX family or similar) which had poor Shader Model 2 performance. Provided you can get reasonable enough shader performance DirectQ should wallop everything else for overall speed. In other words it may be the fastest but you need the right graphics hardware to get there. In this day and age even the lowest end Intel integrated in a business PC or el-cheapo laptop is more than good enough to handle it (and has been for the past long time - getting on 6 years now - honourable exception: the Intel 965 is a piece of junk, but I doubt you have one of those as you'd only be getting maybe 70/80 FPS if so), a GeForce 6600 GT can be got on eBay for a fiver, so I feel justified in making this demand, even though there will always be some people who - for one reason or another - will still not be able to meet the requirement. That's OK, if you've already found something that's good enough it's cool. Having a good game of Quake is more important than the engine you're using after all.

[Quaker Oats]

Well r00k, my fps would drop a little bit from just ME shooting an RL or two, but during a big fight, it would just be erratic.

But "r_dynamic 0" fixed this completely! Now my fps remains stable during fights!

Oh, and gl_flashblend 1? Did you mean 0? Because 1 adds that glow to everything, which rapes my fps basically.

Well I got all the info I need! My fps is normal and I now know the connection between ping and fps, thank you guys a bunch.

[javimars]

ok lets put a nail on this ping shit.. PING is how long it takes from the host to the server and back(from your pc to the server). PING is determine by your latency and your routing to the server and what not. now the whole FPS and ping thing..your max fps will be determined by your overall pc and if you have enough bandwidth specially upload bandwidth(at least for multilayer games). if you have high enough fps and upload your ping will feel more like quake 3 ping(almost no lag feel due to the new net engine). this is due to the host (you) being able to send a lot more packets to the server with new information (a high fps count).
the whole monitor hz talk.. im tired of people saying shit that has to do with your monitor refresh rate.
yes its true human eyes can only see up to 79 fps but that doesnt mean your max fps has to be 79fps. if you have a decent monitor with response time of 3ms or less you should be able to throw as much fps as you possibly can. people complain about tearing and such but tearing only occurs when there is a sudden fps jump(going from 40 fps to 100fps). a 120hz LCD monitor will display the graphics more smoothly but at the moment they aren't worth it. you can easily buy a 24"-27" 60hz LCD monitor for less than $300.

this goes to any game that the developers don't lock the FPS.
sorry im a bit drunk

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I get Microstutter.Enough to make Porky Pig jealous, too...

Refresh rate of the monitor DOES matter.


60Mhz @ 300fps

vs

100mhz @ 300fps

even a novice fps gamer can tell if you compared the two, you'd swear by high refresh rates.

[javimars]

its just hertz not mega hertz otherwise 60mghz would be 600hz and microstutter is a whole terrible thing. for what its worth a new monitor with 120hz just might be a bit too costly for some.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

its just hertz not mega hertz otherwise 60mghz would be 600hz and microstutter is a whole terrible thing. for what its worth a new monitor with 120hz just might be a bit too costly for some.

I already got a CRT that does 120hz

I just dont like the real estate it takes up on the desk.