Low fps with 6600gt

Fanny Cradock

Ok, so i realise that the card is a bit of a fossil by some standards, but it does me... that is up until recently.

after a long break i have recently got back into playing wolfenstein: enemy territory. if you don't know what this is it's a free fps that was released about 2-3 years ago. the problem i'm facing all of a sudden is that i'm getting horribly low fps - sometimes as low as 15 on certain maps. admittedly i'm playing on an american based server with heavy traffic (60 players), but i would have thought that ping issues the cause lag (which i get) would be separate to fps. by this i mean: if my ping, which is about 130, causes a bit of lag surely this wouldn't ALSO drop my fps.

system requirements for enemy territory
Windows, Mac, or Linux OS.
Pentium III 600 Mhz processor or equivalent.
128 MB RAM.
32 MB OpenGL compliant 3D video card.
DirectX 8.1 or higher.
271 MB free hard disk space.
500 MB free hard disk space for swap files.

my system is as follows:
3000+ AMD 64
2 x 512 MB twin moss RAM
6600GT agp (slightly overclocked core 500 Mhz and memory 1000 Mhz)
XP home

this has system little problem playing oblivion at medium spec, yet struggles on this old game.

can the low fps be attributed to the server location and high player numbers, or it it something more, i.e. something up with my system??

thanks for reading

iggyman

im guessing the high pings would contribute to make your fps lower but im no expert..

i play enemy territory all the time with about 2-45 fps and ive ****ty intel extreme internal gfx and only 512 ram and a celeron d processor..so not sure whats going on...

Fanny Cradock

yeah, it's an odd one.

would you play on european based servers and what numbers would you be talking about?

8T8

No real idea myself either as to the cause, v-sync isn't enabled in game is it ?

Try updating the graphics card driver as well.

dazftw

Maybe graphics drivers are in need of a download... It has happened to me I have a 6200.. and i get like 50 fps in counter-strike 1.6 it was a hundred constant before but like now its all over the place !

TerrorFirmer

Yeah, I would also try new drivers. Enemy territory runs smoothly on a Geforce 256 card let alone a 6600GT....

Shouldn't be linked to the ping...

Fanny Cradock

i've tried it with v-sync on and off and it still is choppy. i've also downloaded the latest drivers, but to no avail.


i think the next step will be to uninstall/install the game. i was thinking though, could this be something to do with OpenGL and Direct3d? Assuming my card has been set to run Direct 3d, and if oblivion, which im guessing uses Direct3d, runs fine on this rig - would the poor performance of ET be explained if it used OpenGL?

christophicus

It shouldnt really because Doom 3 uses open GL and the 6600 GT iwas alot better at running doom 3 then its nearest ATI rival for a long time.

TerrorFirmer

Try running some other game using OpenGL that runs on the QIII Engine and see how you get on.

I had a problem recently with an ati x200, it could run Direct 3d games perfectly but could not run any openGL game over 20 frames per second (15 fps in ET and MOH), regardless of whether it was a game from 2006 or 1999.

Never found a solution to it, had to return the entire laptop.

8T8

OpenGL shouldn't be the cause, ET is based off the Return to Castle Wolfenstein game and that is an OpenGL title that uses an enhanced version of the Quake 3 engine.

If it is OpenGL then it should run quite well especially on an NVIDIA GPU so there must be something up, AA or AF isn't forced on globally in the control panel is it or turned on for the games profile in NVIDIA's drivers ?

I would try un-installing the game and see if that makes any difference.

Fanny Cradock

ok, i think i may have found the problem (fingers crossed). i was snooping around the bios, and i noticed that the graphics aperature size was set to 64mb. i've now set this to 128mb and appear to be getting lows of 40 and highs of 125fps (capped).