Trying to track down a performance bottleneck

Luke Bigum catach at tpg.com.au
Wed Jun 9 03:19:23 EDT 2004


Hi guys,

I've got a bottleneck somewhere thats killing my UT2004 frame rate. So far 
i've found plenty of things that don't seem to be the problem, and am fast 
running out of ideas.

I have:
Athlon64 3200+ (running as an AthlonXP)
1Gb RAM
128Mb GeForceFX 5600
SoundBlaster Audigy
WindowsXP on one HD
Gentoo Linux on another
The 2 disc DVD version, patched with the latest from www.unrealtournament.com

My lowest frame rate in Windows is 35fps by spectating really high on the 
Convoy assault map (no bots)  and looking down at all the trucks, but in 
Linux it sits around 10fps. I did the same test in the DM-Morpheus3 map (no 
bots), looking down from above, and it still only hits 10fps. If I look at 
the skybox (no geometry), Linux can reach about 100fps.  Other crazy stuff 
includes looking at a wall but in the general direction of the rest of the 
map (only the wall polygon is on screen) is low frame rate, but looking at a 
wall facing out of the map is a high frame rate.

I've tested with highest graphics settings and lowest graphics settings = no 
change (dont think it's GPU limited).
1280x1024 vs 300x240 = no change (prob. not fill limited). 
Running from console with no sound (-nosound option) = no change (hopefully 
not OpenAL limited). 
I've messed with the ~/.ut2004/System/UT2004.ini: adding more cache, turning 
on and off precache = no change. 
I even tried enabling the stencil buffer in openGL (which culls almost all of 
the geometry) = no change.
full bots or no bots = no change (it COULD be CPU limited, but it's an athlon 
3200 and runs fine in Windows).

top reports 60-70% cpu usage and 40% memory usage when running.

The only other things I can think of are kernel and driver (nVidia) issues. 
glxinfo reports direct rendering working, dmesg gives me this:

agpgart: Detected AGP bridge 0
agpgart: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xe0000000
0: NVRM: not using NVAGP, AGPGART is loaded!!

Which i'm not sure is a problem or not...

Anyway, if you could help me out or point me in the direction of something 
that can, that'd be excelent!

Thanks,

-- 
*********************
Luke Bigum
catach at tpg.com.au
lbigum at cs.rmit.edu.au
*********************



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