[!] [GUIDE] [!] The (un)OFFICIAL Better Performance and Gameplay Guide! - By DDRRE.

[legacy-LittleFlower]

Originally posted by -=SmileY=-
The netspeed shouldnt be higher depending on if your PC can handle it tho... this little trick is pure for getting smooth gameplay (and is mostly handy/noticable when your monitor has 85 Hz or more)
<snip>

basically EVERYONE with 85Hz monitors should use netspeed 5400 / 5300 / 5500
maybe you are lucky enough and your monitor can handle more then 85Hz.. in that case you can do the calculation thingy I posted before, to see what netspeed matches your computer

Ah, thanks for jumping into this discussion. Indeed, as I expected, those numbers are only a way to try and synchronize your FPS, your refresh rate and the amount of packets you send.

Note that the netcode has changed in UT2004. I don't think outgoing packet will be 64 bytes anymore. Besides that fact, even though UT might send 64 bytes, because of header overhead (which can be 150% on ADSL) the real number of bytes sent over the wire is much higher.

In UT and UT2003, if you have and FPS of 80, UT would send 80 * 64 bytes = 5120 bytes/second. That would be 40 Kbps. However, if you play on ADLS, you actually need an upstream speed of 100 Kbps to be able to send that data. (64 bytes of UT changes into 159 bytes of ATM/AAL5/PPP/IP/UDP/UT headers+data).

Maybe someone can explain what has changed in the UT2004 netcode. Are outgoing packetrates still tied to FPS ? Did outgoing packets change from 64 bytes to 40 bytes ? Inquiring minds would like to know ....

[legacy-DDRRE]

MOO :up: :up:

[Ultron]

I'd rather set my netspeed to 7k manually while I'm on broadband, regardless of the FPS implications. Why? Because I force vsync on. If you run at netspeed 5k or 10k or 20k on broadband, it won't matter, even on slower PC's except that below 5K you'll rapidly see your FPS max decrease. There's no reason to do that. Just enable Vsync and make sure the netspeed is above 5k. The most you'll download is going to be about 7-8k.

Screen-tearing sucks, and even if you gain a frame or two by turning it off, it's not worth it.

The three most CPU intensive things you can disable, without sacrificing visual quality, is detail textures, trilinear filter, and triple buffering. That's alot of extra RAM that is freed up.

And trust me, both TF and TB improve visual quality.

If you're on a modem, leave the netspeed between 2600 and 3200 or else you could fall victim to the creeping ping problem of old.

BTW good guide, it should help out people with lowend system, although I'd still make them use 32-bit color but follow the rest of your instructions. I'd also have them use D3D actually but your guide is still pretty good.

[legacy-DDRRE]

Originally posted by Ultron
I'd rather set my netspeed to 7k manually while I'm on broadband, regardless of the FPS implications. Why? Because I force vsync on. If you run at netspeed 5k or 10k or 20k on broadband, it won't matter, even on slower PC's except that below 5K you'll rapidly see your FPS max decrease. There's no reason to do that. Just enable Vsync and make sure the netspeed is above 5k. The most you'll download is going to be about 7-8k.

Screen-tearing sucks, and even if you gain a frame or two by turning it off, it's not worth it.

The three most CPU intensive things you can disable, without sacrificing visual quality, is detail textures, trilinear filter, and triple buffering. That's alot of extra RAM that is freed up.

And trust me, both TF and TB improve visual quality.

If you're on a modem, leave the netspeed between 2600 and 3200 or else you could fall victim to the creeping ping problem of old.

BTW good guide, it should help out people with lowend system, although I'd still make them use 32-bit color but follow the rest of your instructions. I'd also have them use D3D actually but your guide is still pretty good.

Dude, there's no TB in ut2k4, well, not a selectable one. TB makes gaming smoother, while TF makes the textures look smoother. Performance vs. quality..

[legacy-DDRRE]

Originally posted by -=SmileY=-
The netspeed shouldnt be higher depending on if your PC can handle it tho... this little trick is pure for getting smooth gameplay (and is mostly handy/noticable when your monitor has 85 Hz or more)

for example, for netspeed 20000 users.. I quote the mighty TNSe:

"let me just inform you that your hardware probably can't hold an even 20000/64 = 312fps average during an entire match anyway. Another bottleneck here, is your internet connection. If you got a state-of-the-art 9600 modem, it can only send and receive 9600/8 = 1200 bytes/second anyway, and what happens if you exceed that limit, is that data must wait before it can be transmitted to/from you. This causes the wellknown "ping spike". So use netspeed to make sure your connection does not get overloaded and "spiked". If the spikes last too long, you might even get packetloss, since the packets get ****** off waiting in queues and kill themselves."

basically EVERYONE with 85Hz monitors should use netspeed 5400 / 5300 / 5500
maybe you are lucky enough and your monitor can handle more then 85Hz.. in that case you can do the calculation thingy I posted before, to see what netspeed matches your computer

I hope this helps you

Smiley, your tip was added. No need to post the method.

[Plumb_Drumb]

When i still played UT, back in the day, and got rid of my Voodoo3 3000 in favor of a GeForce2 GTS, (only because 3dfx was bought out, and i knew Glide would be phased out) i noticed 16-bit color sucked and gave me graphical errors. (and 32 bit was slow on UT with Nvidia cards).

So, i turned to a friend who said to turn off that evil W-Buffer in the DX settings of RivaTuner (or whatever utility you are using).
Lo and behold, it got rid of the funky texture issues associated with 16bit color.

Not sure if this works with the newer Uengines, but it's worth a shot i suppose.

[legacy-DDRRE]

I'll see if I can do something about Triple Buffering...

[legacy-Powerslave666]

Why does the menu look like total **** when I use OpenGL (and if the menu looks like ****, I assume the game will look like ****)?

[legacy-DDRRE]

Well, PowerSlave666 I have got no idea. The menu looks great at my PC while using OpenGL. You can now also use D3D and excpect high FPS - I have added a new section in the guide -> refer to the first page.

[legacy-: DX :-THeGAME]

Originally posted by koopa
<guess>Because the second time you ran it everything was already in the Windows disk caches?

Would be true if I didnt clean out the caches at reboot.

Changing the settings has a noticible boost in performance.

[legacy-Beliavski]

ss

reason why turn down graphics is not to go from 100 to 150 fps...its to prevent having any major losses in Fps when u really really need it such as in hectic battle in an fps demanding location (see antalus)
my few cents anyway..

[legacy-DDRRE]

M3H W4N75 7H15 7HR34D 70 B3 571CKY

Make this thread Sticky! PLEASE

Dr.sin
Vogel

ANYONE
PLEASE

And if not, tell me why.

[legacy-StoneY_BolognA]

Dat's good info!
Thx

[Ultron]

Originally posted by DDRRE
Dude, there's no TB in ut2k4, well, not a selectable one. TB makes gaming smoother, while TF makes the textures look smoother. Performance vs. quality..

I'm not sure what you mean by selectable. You mean in the menu system right? It can be enabled in the UT2004.ini.

And by graphical quality I meant the frames would be smoother with TB on, especially with Vsync enabled.

[legacy-SirYawnalot]

Nice guide, but I have a high-end PC and would like to see a guide on how to get the game *looking* better too. I'm not sure if setting the texture detail settings to above Normal (console>preferences>rendering>Player Detail, World Detail etc) makes any difference in the demo... UT2003's demo didn't include high-detail textures to lower the filesize, and I have a sneaking suspicion the same applies to the UT04 demo, but it'd be nice if someone could clarify plz.