Come on NVIDIA why is it so hard for you to............

[magtab]

Come on NVIDIA why is it so hard for you to make games based on the Unreal engine run well. I mean I own a GeForce 2GTS card 32meg ddr the card cost me £200 pound and it runs the following games like crap.

Unreal (Choppy game play)

Unreal Tournament (Runs ok until you change to 32 bit color then it all becomes choppy unacceptable in my opinion for a £200 card)


Deus EX (Choppy aint the word,if you enable 32 bit colour it becomes unplayable)

I have Installed the latest drivers but to no avail.

All other games work ok like Quake3 but I prefer Unreal tournament.

Let's hope NVIDIA will release some decent drivers soon rather than optimizing them for games like 3dmark 2000.

 

[Jumpem]

It's not Nvidia's problem, it was 3DFX's problem. All of those games were founded on Glide. Despite being ported to D3D, they will not run as fast as they would in Glide mode. Poor performance should be blamed on the game developers for supporting a proprietary engine/API.

 

[LiekOMG]

If you like Unreal engine games (like I do), they purchasing a Voodoo5 5500 would have been a better decision. But still, we should work in the present, not the past.
About a month ago an OpenGL patch was released for Unreal Tournament that does 2 things
1.) Allows you to take advantage of the high-resolution textures on the second UT CDROM
2.) Increases your framerate by a great degree and gets rid of the choppyness.

I saw this OpenGL driver in use on my friends computer, and it blew me away. The game ran excellently, and looked awesome. CTF Face... OMG <drools>, it looked soooo good.

Unfortunatly, since i'm not a Nvidia user, i can't use that file, so i wouldn't know where to DL it. I'm sure someone else here can help you with that.

Unfortunatly, that OpenGL file only works with Unreal Tournament (and possible Unreal) - but not Wheel of Time or Deus Ex.

 

[xtreme2k]

i am running a GTS also
when playing UT 1024/32bit everything highest quality
i found no slowdown issues

have you used the most recent Detonator drivers?

 

[randomlinh]

yeah, they were designed specifically for GLIDE, so it's like running a PSX emulator.. sorta...

 

[xtreme2k]

by the way

please give your system specs

 

[LiekOMG]

Jumpem, you can't really blame 3dfx or Epic for the performance. Unreal was a 4 year long project, and began back in 1994 and continued until 1998 when it was released. Back then, there WAS no 3d accelerators to speak of. Unreal was designed to be run in software mode. But in 1996-1997 3dfx blew everyone away with their voodoo1, and so Epic gave Unreal glide support. It was the ONLY real API available back then. You can't blame 3dfx for bringing the first and best 3d accelerator to the market, nor Epic for supporting the only available API (there was no Direct 3d back then).

 

[magtab]

My system spec is as follows

AMD Athlon 600
256 Meg PC133

Latest Detonator drivers fitted.

 

[xtreme2k]

what about VIA 4in1 drivers?

 

[magtab]

Would a ATI Radeon be a better choice for games like this anyone any experiance with this card.

 

[LiekOMG]

I'm having trouble finding the openGL stuff for UT, but here is pretty much what you need to know/do

http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/UTFAQ/#I've2

Its a bit outdated I think though

 

[BenSkywalker]

This link gives you the instructions and run down how to make UT fly and look sweet on a GF.

 

[LiekOMG]

Thanks Benskywalker, thats exactly the link I was looking for. Unfortunatly Google wasn't being too cooperative today : )

 

[Wingznut]

&quot;It's not Nvidia's problem&quot;

LOL... yeah, neither are the Q3 sky problems. Or the incompatibilities with some motherboards. Or...

I'm sorry, but I just find it funny when you guys always say that the issues with the GeForce cards aren't nVidia's fault. I'm certain that if the Voodoo line had a similar problem, it would definitely be 3dfx's fault.

 

[magtab]

Thanks for all your help so far guys, but I have tried all the suggestions you mention in the links.

Lets hope NVIDIA release some optimized drivers for this problem soon.

 

[Jumpem]

DOACleric, thanks for pointing out that little history lesson. I'm aware that the Voodoo1 was the only real card back then(I had a Canopus 6MB V1). My point was just that for Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex, the developers should have used different engines or more radically altered the Unreal engine. No offense taken, btw.

Wingznut PEZ, I agree with you that the points you mention are faults with Nvidia's cards. My point was simply that the Unreal engine was developed primarily for a proprietary API, and therefore it could not possibly run as well on a non-3Dfx card. I used to consider 3Dfx as a notable chipset producer, but since the Voodoo2 they have gone downhill(IMHO).

 

[BenSkywalker]

magtab-

&quot;Thanks for all your help so far guys, but I have tried all the suggestions you mention in the links.&quot;

And what is the problem under OpenGL with your board? I run 1280x960 32bit on a GeForce DDR and only drop a couple FPS from 640x480 16bit under D3D.

Wingnut

&quot;LOL... yeah, neither are the Q3 sky problems&quot;

Funny that I was able to fix this by editing the Quake3 executable. nVidia's drivers now overwriting game executables to trash games?? They must have it in for people.

 

[xtreme2k]

ever since 3dfx started to make their own cards

they went down

 

[magtab]

BenSkywalker playing at 1280x960 32 bit on my pc is a jerk fest with frame rates as low as 3fps upto 18fps thats under Direct3d. I will try it under OpenGL later when i get home from work and let you know.

 

[BenSkywalker]

magtab-

Follow the instructions on the link I provided above. The Loki .dll offers both superior performance(for GeForce/GF2 owners) and significantly improved visuals.

 

[LiekOMG]

Jumpem, your saying that Epic should have used a different engine when making UT? Epic planned Unreal to be used for a LONG time (and that quite obvious the way they are rewriting the renderer and pushing the engine to its limits). Perhaps Epic should have lisenced the Q3 engine for UT? <grins>

As for Deus Ex using the Unreal engine - well... take a look at the size of the levels! They are HUGE. You load a new map maybe once every 1 hour if you take your time and explore. Look what happened to Elite Force. You load every 5 minutes, and each map takes a few min to load as well! I think Ion Storm went the right way in using the Unreal Engine.

 

[Wingznut]

Ben, what I'm saying is that whenever a GTS doesn't run something very well, you guys ALWAYS point the finger somewhere else. Yet if the V5 would have a similar problem, it's simply dismissed as &quot;3dfx sucks.&quot;

 

[Fozzie]

Ohh? Care to point to an issue that would prove your opinion Wingznut? I've seen a lot of people claim this board is nVidia biased, but I think recent history would disprove that. Of course there are those who are biased to a point where they would try and dismiss any compliant about companies products, including nVidia, ATI and 3dfx.

I would suggest that there are those at the same time that would try and blow out of proportion potential problems on a companies products out of their bias and ignore the facts of the issue which are almost never black and white. To say that &quot;you guys&quot; would defend nVidia to a fault and ignore facts is just as much an ad hominem attack as saying &quot;3dfx sucks&quot;.

 

[Noriaki]

<< ever since 3dfx started to make their own cards

they went down >>



I don't know if that's entirely true. The VSA-100 is a bit of diaster, but the Voodoo3 is an excellent card. Both for price/performance and when it first came out raw performance.
When the V3 first came out it fought with the TNT1...that was a joke.
Then the TNT2 came. Well they were pretty even in D3D, and the TNT2 had an openGL edge, but the V3 also had glide. I also think that even a TNT2 could barely be playable at 32bit colour, and with the V3's 22bit post filter it's 16bit was far superior, it was also cheaper and has less compatiblity problems with AMD systems. At the time I did some research into the v3, and it's drivers had far better 3Dnow! optimizations (I think by now nVidia has caught up, but we are talking August 1999 when I bought this card). It almost made quake3 playable on my K6-2/350...the TNT2 wouldn't run...
I think the V3 is still an excellent all-round card. And 3dfx manufactured it themselves.

The VSA-100 chip was rather a disater..but the V3 was good and hoepfully rampage will be to.

 

[Wingznut]

You are correct, Fozzie. And my comment does require clarification.

By &quot;you guys&quot;, I meant specifically those people who do support nVidia to a fault. As if the GTS is the perfect video card and that any issues it has is somebody else's fault.

I certainly wasn't meaning to insult every nVidia owner, or the product itself. I have stated many times on these forums that the GeForce line of cards are excellent products. I myself, had a very hard time deciding which card to spend my $300 dollars on. And very recently installed a couple GeForce MX cards for people, based on my recommendation.

As for this board being nVidia biased... It's not so much that, as it's just &quot;in style&quot; around here to bash 3dfx.