Frame Rate Swings

[Chuffmaster2k]

I own a Cel 2 566@850 and a GeForce 2 GTS. I notice dramatic frame rate swings in most games. In Unreal Tournament it can swing from 20fps to 160fps and average about 70. I am considering the radeon 32 DDR. Does anyone that have this card have the same problem? Is it this bad? Thanks for the help. Give me the selling points on a Radeon other than DVD playback. Thanks again.

 

[Hawk]

My fps are pretty constant (Radeon 64 MB) but can't guarantee yours to be too! =) Um, I like mine because the 2d image quality is much better than the average GTS, and also, preliminary benchmarks with "high polygon" games seem to do quite well with the Radeon...er, help me out here guys. =)

 

[Dark4ng3l]

the radeon wil have less fluctuation because with hyper z when there are alot of polygons on screen it wont spend time drawing them all so the frames dont start pumping out slowly.

 

[Chuffmaster2k]

That's what I was hoping for. I dowloaded a really cool UT map last night and it dropped down into the teens at one point (but still averaged 60) on my GTS at 800X600???? Think I am gonna make a run to Best Buy tonight and pick one up. If I like it as much as you guys, there will be a GTS for sale tomorrow in the forums. Thanks.

 

[TAsunder]

It still fluctuates with the Radeon. On the Galleon and Zeto (I think that's the one -- the challenge level second or third to last with snow blowing outside) levels I frequently see numbers around 20-30 fps even though I average about 60 or so (on most levels it's 70 or so average).

I wouldn't spend the money just to get more consistent frame rates... especially since they aren't consistent even with the radeon.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

they are more consistant it's just that ut is a glide based game and does not work well in d3d and ogl. You wil notice alot less frame rate fluctuation with a radeon.

 

[fodd3r]

well that's a problem with the ut engine not any vid cards. though me thinks the radeon won't have too much problems with ut for the most part. ati's dx drivers are quite good. as for gf's they've had problems with ut quite a fair bit. i'm not sure if it's been fixed as of yet.

 

[RoboTECH]

if UT is your thing, then a 5500 is the way to go by a longshot

 

[Chuffmaster2k]

I play all games: Counter-Strike, Quake 2, Quake 3, and UT. I've been playing mostly CS and UT lately though. I didn't make it out to pick up one as I planned. Oh well, now I have another day to decide... Thanks for the help and keep the comments coming.

 

[Fozzie]

Not that I know for certain, but you owe it to yourself to try out the Loki OpenGL patch with the S3TC textures in UT. Its possible that you will see less "swings" from texture swapping(if that is what is happening.). Checkout Gamebasement UT article .

BTW, don't overestimate HyperZ at the moment, maybe with future drivers it'll help more. It does reduce bandwidth usage, most of that seems to be the Z compression. But currently most people aren't even using most of it. At default only 2/3(afaik, may be 1/3) is enabled. And if you enable all three parts at the same time you get image corruption that looks like Z errors. Anands testing for Min framerate showed not a whole lot of difference between the Radeon and Geforce in UT.