[ut2003io] CPU Performance (was: Color depth)

[Daniel Borgmann]

On Thu, 2002-09-19 at 03:24, Michael wrote:
> > Thank you all. :)
> > Unfortunatly 16 bit did only increase the benchmark result by 0.02 FPS. 
> 
> Bear in mind that the benchmark uses highest detail settings, not the
> settings you've tweaked. Which, if I understand the readme makes tweak /
> benchmark / tweak / benchmark something you can't use it for. 

For me it does use the tweaks. For example, when I set texture quality
to low, the benchmark has plain textures. Same for world detail and all
the other stuff. And of course it can't change the color depth when it's
not even possible to change that in the game. :) My benchmarks are
definitely not on max detail.


> Too late now, but there was little point adding a ti4600 / Radeon 9700 or
> whatever comes out in the future to a machine with a 1ghz PIII. You have
> to match the system to the graphics card.

Well, I did this at a time when the demo was about to come out in "less
than two weeks" ;) and it was said that "any Pentium 3" would run the
game well if there is just a strong GPU. :/ There was also a benchmark
testing at different CPU speeds with all the cards and the Ti4600 still
performed _much_ better than a Geforce 2 PRO with 1000 Mhz. It was just
around E3 when they announced that the game would be more about the CPU
speeds now and Geforce 3 or Geforce 4 wouldn't even really matter. 
 

> You'd have been better buying new mobo + processor + ram + ti4200 -
> possibly for not much more than the ti4600 cost.

Hm, for one the Ti4200 wasn't out there yet and the demo was about to
come "really soon now" so it probably was a mistake not to wait. ;) And
I buyed this mobo+CPU just a short while ago so there was no way in hell
that I could have justified a complete upgrade (which would also have
been much more expensive). It didn't want to upgrade everything just a
little for a lot of money for just one game and then do the same again
for the next game. However, I (and many others for sure) just would be
very very happy if this game would contain more options to reduce the
extremely high CPU requirement. Like Mark Rein said in the italien PR
show: "One health item in UT2003 contains as much polygons as an entire
screen in UT". Low-poly models that can be toggled via an option could
go a very long way to increase the performance for me. Or simply more
options to reduce effects during fighting because this is the time when
frames go mostly down. I also just found out that reducing the audio
channels to 8 or even 4 (I use 4 right now) increases the performance a
LOT, almost as much as disabling the sound, while it still sounds very
good mostly. Tweaks like this are great, even if they make the game a
little bit less beautiful, they make it a lot more playable and fun.

Daniel