benchmarking video performance?

ok....here goes

after playing a lot of unreal tournament (2004, 05, 06)and winning, i invested into "counter strike: source". suddenly the computer's started to feel the stress of the game. the game started to pause at irregular intervals. not that the game stopped working. the game works but always pauses in flashes at the begining of the game. i did the "video stress test" through the game. the result said that the "frame rate is 59.94fps "

is that bad?

and can it be improved?

i am using

windows xp pro
amd 64 3400+
2.2ghz
1 gb ram
ati graphics card 9600/9700 (64mb)
80 gb hhd
directx 9c

2mb broadband (the basic supplied)

the game requirements
os: 98/me/2000/xp
processor: 1.2 ghz
memory: 256 mb
hhd: 4.5 gb
dvd: 8 speed
video card: directx 7.0

I don't know, but I would say max out the amount of RAM you can possibly have. When it comes to RAM, there is no such thing as "too much" :)

You may want to do some anti-malware scans on your computer too, defrag the hard drive, etc. etc. etc.

done all that.

isnt there some setting or something i could change to improve it
so far i reduced the resolution of the screen to 16 mb from 32 mb
the catalyst contol for ati, am shifting it to max performance.

lets see how it works

nope,

infact it reduced...came down to 59.54

You didn't mention if you've tried different video drivers. Did this problem occur after an update of drivers? I had this problem before and rolling back the driver fixed it.

If the problem happens during very graphic intense video games and not through normal use, I would guess you need to upgrade your video card.

64mb video cards are pretty weak for todays games. I would recommend at least 256. If you have the extra cash... 512 is even better. Its not just about the memory, you have to have a decent GPU.

I've always worked with video cards in the nvidia geforce series. However, I'm currently working with ATI's top of the line card. The 512mb X1900 Crossfire. http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1900/index.html

I will go with phishphreek80 on this one. That is not a "top end gaming card", and seems a little out of balance with the rest of your specs from a gaming viewpoint. This system is somewhat similar to yours, and has an ATi Radeon with 64Mb. It only has a single core 32bit Intel processor (2.26GHz) and I would consider that to be a more balanced build.

In your Windows advanced properties please check that you are giving priority to "Applications" and that you have a decent sized page file (although with 1Gb of RAM, that generally isn't an issue).

I cannot think of any tweaks that would immediately help. This is a Win 2000 box that is 4 years old. I ran WinASO Regdefrag 1.2, and the registry defragmenter from Sysinternals, and they found nothing to do, even after that amount of time! So I don't think that will help. XP is even better than Win 2000 in that department AFAIK. I only think it might help if you had experienced some sort of "event" and had to repair the Registry?

This is a good Windows tweaking site: http://www.x9k.net/

phish~ has forgotten more about gaming than I shall ever know, but from my limited knowledge of the hardware aspects, I would say that a new video card is the solution. He does have a good point about the drivers though.................ATi don't have the best reputation in that area :(

You will probably be tempted to overclock your video card. If you do, please follow these suggestions:

1. Replace the thermal paste with a silver based compound.
2. Give it a better fan.
3. Look for heatsinks for the memory chips.
4. Upgrade the case cooling.

Good Luck :)

EDIT: Is this a laptop we are talking about?

Yes, Counter Strike Source requires at LEAST an ati 9800 pro for decent graphics and overall smoothness, though I would recommend the nvidia 6600gt above the 9800 pro hands down...

sorry guys, forgot to mention that its a laptop.

and yes its the same machine i have in the profile. its a year old. costed me a fortune then. its come down to almost half the price since. :(

that time 128 mb graphics cards where the highest and was not available when i picked this one up.

laptops have a lot of advantages like,

1) they can ba carried anywhere
2) they are lan-friendly. so if you are with friends and such, all you need is a router or a switch. keep beer on the side, start game, place bets, and shoot everything that walks.
then drink some more

am competing against two sony vios with almost the same specs as mine but less on ram(512) and a compac with 64 mb intel( we upgraded his ram and shared some with his graphics card to make to 128)

all this makes my laptop the weakest :killcompu

these games are designed to work with the min spesc printed on the cover because they target the larger market.

had read in a magzine about benchmarking, where it does the tests and gives you results, then you change some settings and the performace improves. there are other tricks like removing some game options -ingame chats and such.

alright...

after changing some game settings i came up to 61.64 fps



found this in www.gamespot.com

on a 1024x768 res the ati9600 shows 60fps

this also shows that if i reduce the res more, i can go as high as 91fps. now thats what we are talking about.

also from the 3rd page

Quote:

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If you're paranoid about staying competitive with other Counter-Strike: Source players, there's a good chance the card you have right now will be sufficient. The Radeon 9800 Pro and 9600 XT performed very well in our CPU-limited Dust benchmark, and the even older GeForce4 MX440 and Ti4600 cards also put up decent numbers by falling back to a previous DirectX version. If image quality is a concern, then you'll likely need to upgrade to a DX9-capable card to gain access to the higher-quality effects, but note that GeForce FX-series cards currently use the DX8 path for Counter-Strike: Source.

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It being a laptop is most of the problem. Most laptops were not built with gamers in mind. They were built with the business person/student in mind. People who will be working in many different places and need portability. They'll throw in a couple of multimedia functions (music and dvds), but you don't get much as far as gaming is concerned.

I have a laptop too. But I only use it on the go. I use my desktops for gaming.

Now, some manufacturers have been building some laptops with gamers in mind. (alienware/dell) But, is that really the best choice? You're going to run into the same problem 1-2 years from now and be stuck all over again.

When gaming, its really best to have a desktop and upgrade when you specs fall behind.

alienware/dell fall in the higher price range.
am looking at hp with same specs and almost one third times cheaper.

anyway we are looking at something like 20-40% price drop in laptops within a year. probably the time vista comes out. till that time we will have to max out on the ones we have.

reducing more res, i reached 63.94fps

found two things through google
1) ati and nvidia, both have some beta drivers for half life 2
2) there is a patch available from counter strike and half life people for smoother online games

maybe this might help

Yeah if you got a laptop your kind of out of luck... You can change a bunch of settings but you won't be able to fully enjoy the graphics CS:S is capable of...

Quote:

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these games are designed to work with the min spesc printed on the cover because they target the larger market.

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While that may have been the case not to long ago (year or 2 ago), that's no longer the case. Yes they may work but not satisfactorily... I read somewhere that now game development companies are aiming for the folks with the 2 thousand dollar gaming machines... This could be for a number of reasons. For one, the PC gaming community was complaining that the games weren't fully taking advantage of their PC's hardware (vid cards, cpu's, etc).

Anyway, the pc gaming scene is now seeing that they have to upgrade some part of their PC every 6 months or so just to keep up with the new games...

I guess we can't change your mind about the laptop. But, why not keep your current laptop for everything else and build a desktop for your gaming? You can build 2-3x better desktop for the same price as the laptop.

It makes NO sense to me to try to play games on a laptop. You're going to have the same problems over and over. The only games I try to play on my laptop are internet games like texas holdem other misc. online java/flash games.

Quote:

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Anyway, the pc gaming scene is now seeing that they have to upgrade some part of their PC every 6 months or so just to keep up with the new games...

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Exactly. Right now, my vid. card is top of the line. It retails for $600-700 depending on where you look. 6 months from now... it's going to be the cookie cutter card. (well, maybe not that bad.) It will surely drop in price big time. I'm willing to bet it'll at least reduce by 50% in price.

I guess it just depends on how "serious" you are about gaming. It's one of my biggest hobbies at the moment. I've missed out on a lot of games when I was in school and now I need to make up for it. I'm sure it'll die down in the near future when I get back into school.

As the others have said, it is probably the graphics card giving you problems. I have a laptop with a 128MB ATi X700XL, and that just about copes with the larger, more detailed maps (eg. dust, dust2, italy, cbble, etc) - I get rates of about 35 up, when the settings are as low as they go (but native resolution). Luckily, the human eye can only see at around 30 FPS ;)

If you want to see how many FPS you're getting in-game, do the following:

1) Load up the game. When you're there, go to Options -> "Keyboard" tab -> "Advanced" button -> Enable developer console. Then, click "Ok" to close those windows, and press the ` or ~ key (it depends on your keyboard - I think it's ` for UK and ~ for US) - it's directly below the Esc key. Once the console is up, type in the following commands:

Code:

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net_graph 3
net_graphpos 2
net_graphheight 120

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That'll tell you the FPS and data speed in real-time. Join a server, and watch the FPS - if it goes under 30, that's pretty much a sign that you shouldn't play it on your laptop.

IIRC there is a startup setting you can use to make CS:Source run with DirectX 8 or 7 instead of 9 (this will greatly improve the speed). I'm not sure of the exact location, but I think you can do it by bringing up the Steam window (NOT in the game, but the main Steam window), go to the "Games" tab, right-click on Counter-Strike:Source, hit "Properties" and add the following parameter (as is): -dxlevel 8
If it doesn't work, just take it off :)

Lowering your resolution isn't the perfect solution, as you can't experience the game as it should be played. Neither is lowering the settings. But, if that is what you have to do, then so be it - you can't miss out on CS:Source, no matter how low the settings are :D


[edit] Just realised there's just one point in my ordered list! lol

its coool....lovely

the frame rate changes all the time and you can see it all.

had me scared for a minute.

the game starts at something like 40-45fps thats the time your player is moving in pauses, like moves-stops-then moves again. does it for something like 5-7 seconds then the frame rate picks up goes to something like 75-80fps :wow: even on the almost full servers

and i was like :3pow: and :shootem:

all this on the high settings.

this pausing and the moving in the begining is the one i am trying to get rid of as this is the time one gets to choose the weapons and you dont want to miss out on the weapons

got my a** kicked on the asian servers

counter strike source has this preloading software called "steam"

some survey came up and and it sent the laptops details over to them and they compared it to all the others they already had and sent me this

its a valve (developers of CS: source) survey summary

interesting thing is in the status tab on top

Quote:

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Average unique users per month: 2,812,865
Average player minutes per month: 5.713 billion

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thats a lot of people

i found the directx 9 control. if you go option>"video" tab>"advanced" button you will see it at the bottom, its not highlighted for me (i cant change that)

Quote:

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Originally posted here by bagggi
and i was like :3pow: and :shootem:

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LOL!

Anyway, back to the topic... Hehe!

What do you have beside "Choke" and "Loss"? Those could be causing the jagged movements. See the definitions here if you don't know what they are: http://cs.wireplay.co.uk/index.php?p...ers&view=faq#6

Quote:

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i found the directx 9 control. if you go option>"video" tab>"advanced" button you will see it at the bottom, its not highlighted for me (i cant change that)

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Ah.. Well, I know that there's a way of changing it when loading the app by adding a parameter :p

About the survey - the stats of three different PCs of mine are on there. Oh, and if you want to play a map or two with/against me, just fire me a PM - we (TAZ) have our own server.


Anyway, I'm glad net_graph is working... Let me know the loss/choke when you start the app, and a few minutes into it, and I'll try to fix what is wrong.

Just a quickie - open up the console again, and enter the following commands:

Code:

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rate 20000
cl_updaterate 66
cl_cmdrate 66

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Let me know if those help at all!

thanx

that last one really did it. problem solved for good. have printed the commands out and pasted them on the cd case.

also maybe that loss and choke was because of the wireless router

dlink
802.11g/2.4 ghz

ran the commands and connected the cable and guess what...... i am killing more ;)


as for the game together, its a done deal :deal:

still getting used to fact that one has to get back into the buying zone to get ammo and there are no heath packs unlike unreal which has them all over the place.

wont give you the pleasure of shooting me all the time

also i have noticed that there is some kind of rating system going on in the game, i mean does it get recorded how many points i have made in killing and abnormal world ranking which keeps changing all the time?

cheers

P.S. got to go.......game's waiting

Quote:

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Originally posted here by bagggi
thanx

that last one really did it. problem solved for good. have printed the commands out and pasted them on the cd case.

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I'm glad they worked!

Oh, and wiring up does make a huge difference... The Lord knows that current wireless standards/protocols aren't very fast :p

Quote:

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also i have noticed that there is some kind of rating system going on in the game, i mean does it get recorded how many points i have made in killing and abnormal world ranking which keeps changing all the time?

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That will depend on the server. If you type 'statsme' you should be able to see what it is. If it is Mani Admin Plugin's stats, a small box on the left will pop up telling you your rank, kills, deaths, and kpd (kills per death ratio). If the server is running HLStatsX, a larger window will pop up, ranking you in a different way - Mani's is by kpd and number of kills, whereas HLStatsX ranks you by the number of points you have. You start on 1000 points. If I have 1500 points and you (with 1000) kill me, you might get about 5 or 6 points. However, if you killed someone with 2500 points, you could get around 14 points for that kill. It's like gambling, but without wasting money :D


[edit] TAZServer is found at: 81.19.208.38:27015

I'll be around tomorrow, and I always join when there are other people on. If I'm on the PC and you want to play, shoot me a PM and I'll try to meet you in there! ;)

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my vid. card is top of the line. It retails for $600-700 depending on where you look.

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Um, in six months, when you have to replace it, could you, like, send it to me.
I could do "post traumatic stress tests" on it.
:cool:

This can point out some things you might want to check out.


http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/