[ut2004] Performance Issues

[Matthew Arnold]

rix wrote:

>> I'm running UT2004 on Linux 2.6.5, with a 3.2 gHz P4, with a GeForce 
>> FX 5200.
>> I'm getting pretty bad performance (about 20-30 fps, with constant 
>> drops to 15 or so). Is I can do besides turning down the graphics (I'm 
>> running at 1024x768, with the default settings)? Things like heapsize 
>> in Quake 3?

>    From what I undestand the big thing to do is to increase the VARSize 
> from 32 to 64 in the ut2004.ini file. Here's what it says at 
> http://www.thehaus.net/Tips/UT/ut2k4tips.shtml:
> 
> 
>      Speeding up AS-Mothership
> 
> Note: this tip may be specific to the Linux version and/or the OpenGL 
> renderer. I was having major framerate issues with the AS-Mothership map 
> with the Linux version of UT2K4 with my Athlon XP 1800+, 512M RAM, and 
> an NVIDIA GeForceFX 5700 Ultra. No amount of in-game tweaking seemed to 
> do any good. Ryan "icculus" Gordon (who did the Linux port for Epic) 
> suggested opening up my UT2004.ini and changing VARSize=32 to VARSize=64 
> to see if that would help. That made a dramatic change. VARSize controls 
> how much static geometry in megabytes can be cached in AGP memory.

This is really only going to help with AS-Mothership.

How much memory do you have? Is this on every map or just big, open 
ones? Your 3.2 P4 should be fine. The 5200 could very well be a bottle 
neck. What NVIDIA drivers are you using?