Better performance on 5/5 settings than 1/1?

[lothix01]

Ever since getting UT3 I've had the most bizarre performance issues with this game.

The issue that I can not figure out is why I have been getting good performance only on 5/5 settings. On 5/5 the game is usually smooth and I get a decent framerate. If I lower the settings to 4/4 or 1/1 or anything lower than 5/5, my frame rate goes down from 35-60 to 15-25 and the game gets very choppy.

So basically I'm stuck playing on 5/5 settings which is a problem since my card is only 256 MB and on some Warfare maps the game is extremely choppy and unplayable because I'm using highest quality textures (I think).

My system specs are:
Windows XP 32-bit
AMD X2 4200
1gb DDR400 RAM
ATI HD 2600 XT 256mb AGP (Omega 7.10 drivers)
UT3 is on a RAID-1 SATA array about 90 MB/s read speed.

UT3 patch101 installed.
AMD Dual Core optimizer installed.

I may be having problems because UT3 is not taking advantage of both cores very well. If I turn off the second core, I lose 2 fps.

Initially I've had massive issues with the game crashing but installing patch101, turning settings to 5/5, installing AMD Dual Core optimizer and OpenAL drivers solved all but one crash issue. (Sometimes I would crash right after the core blows up).

[General.Jung]

Hello lothix01,

I noticed that also between 5/5 and 4/4, but I am not sure. I use Windows XP Professional 32bit on an ASUS EN8800GTS 640MB with Forceware 169.09 beta. Unreal Tournament runs as a normal user.

My Full System Profile: http://www.sysprofile.de/id34301

[lothix01]

General.Jung,

Thanks for your reply. The only similarities I could find in our systems are:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Windsor
1280x1024 resolution

I wonder if this is an AMD issue.

[Twist]

I have the same issue. The game runs best with all settings at 5-5. I think my older CPU must be my primary bottleneck as I only gain a frame or two per second when I drop my resolution from 1600x1200 to anything else.

Strangely, my frames don't drop much when I lower the settings, but I start to experience a kind of hitching. It feels like the frame rate is lower and less steady even though the frame rate doesn't suggest much of a difference from the higher settings.

My system:

Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit
Intel P4C 3.4 Ghz
2 Gb DDR400 RAM
ATI X1950 Pro AGP 512 MB
Standard Catalyst 7.11 Drivers

I also have the second beta of the patch applied.

I do have hyperthreading, but I alt-tab out and change the affinity to one CPU. I benchmarked this with Fraps and it regularly gives me 3-5 more frames per second. I wish there was a way to automatically load UT3 with this affinity setting.

Anyways... it'd be nice to gain some smoother, improved performance by dropping the standard settings.

Edit: I should note I've never had any problems with crashing or stability and I haven't done any special tweaking other than turning the intro movies off and alt-tabbing to change the cpu affinity for UT3.

[lothix01]

Twist,

On my system, once I set CPU affinity to lets say CPU0 on UT3.exe, close the game and open it again it keeps the game running on the same CPU. Try it. You can also try launching the game with "-onethread" parameter.

[lothix01]

I figured it out,

Setting Texture Detail to 5, also sets OnlyStreamInTextures=True, any lower setting sets OnlyStreamInTextures=False.

I can now get rid of the framerate stutter / choppiness by setting desirable Texture Detail, and then opening up UTEngine.ini and setting:

[SystemSettings]
OnlyStreamInTextures=True

I also have (UTEngine.ini):

[Engine.Engine]
bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming=False

[Engine.GameEngine]
bUseBackgroundLevelStreaming=False

Perhaps this has to do with UE3 trying to stream in additional data which slows down systems with low memory bandwidth (ie: DDR400 ram).

[Twist]

Ah, very interesting.

I've tried the CPU affinity toggle, but it doesn't hold when I close and restart UT3. However, I didn't know about the "-onethread" parameter. I'm eager to get home and try this one tonight.

I'm also eager to try your texture streaming tweak suggestions. Your reasoning makes sense to me. I hope it works for me as well!

Thanks!