Shouldn't I be getting a much higher FPS here??

[martinblank]

DM-Sanctuary has always been beastly on my FPS, but this can't be right. I have a killer PC with the following specs:

-Asus Rampage Formula (latest BIOS 0410)
-4x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 1066 RAM overclocked to DDR2 1103
-C2Q Q9450 overclocked to 3.67GHz (459*8)
-2x 4870X2 CFX overclocked to 800/925 (750/900 stock) with Catalyst 8.10 RC2 (8.ten, not 8.one)
-PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 1200

I score X12900 on the 3DMark Vantage extreme preset and 21300 in 3DMark06.

And yet in UT3, particularly in DM-Sanctuary, there are certain areas where the FPS will drop to the high 30s to low 40s. I find that unacceptable considering my PC specs, and I can feel a big difference compared to when the FPS is above 60. Here is a screenshot of one such area:
[screenshot]http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/9582/ut32008100319505318jf0.jpg[/screenshot]

And my ingame settings are not crazy, either. I have all the ingame settings to maximum, and I do not use any AA, and 16x AF. Back when I had a single 2900XT, I played with the same graphic settings, except the resolution was 1600x1200, which is not much smaller than 1920x1200. My FPS was almost always above 60 with that configuration, and in DM-Sanctuary in the same spot as the screenshot, I would get roughly the same FPS as I do now.

There has got to be something wrong here. I mean a 2900XT has only 0.49TFlops of processing power, and 2x 4870X2 CFX has 4.8TFlops of processing power, higher for me because it's overclocked. My FPS with this configuration shouldn't even be remotely similar to what I got with a single 2900XT, especially because UT3 is one of the games that is supposed to scale well with quadfire.

Can anybody help me figure out what is going on here?

[JohnDoe641]

Why are you using fraps to get your fps.

Just type "stat fps" in the console.

[martinblank]

I compared the two and they both showed the same FPS, and fraps was easier to see in a shrunken screenshot, so that is what I used.

[Sincreator]

I will try the same settings and let you know what I get. Ill report back in 2-3 minutes. BRB

[Sincreator]

Just went there. looking right at the building iwould get 48fpsmin. Looking at the bio 175ish, and the same looking skyward. You should be well above me for sure.

My personal settings:

Catalyst 8.9 suite
Game maxed out(texture/world) with 100%FOV
No AA
16xAF from the game itself, CCC set to let application decide
No adaptive AA
Catalyst AI set to advanced
Mipmap detail on highest
Triple buffering enabled
Fan speed tweaked Via Rivatuner. Set to 70% on both cards. Idle=40 degrees. Load=60 degrees MAX

Maybe try matching these settings and see if it makes any differences.

[martinblank]

Tried your settings... same result. Thanks for trying to help. This is so annoying. The fact that you have an A64 X2 @ 3.45GHz confirms there is a problem here, because clock for clock, a Q9450 is significantly faster than an A64, and it's higher clocked to boot with 4 cores...

But I can't understand what could be going wrong here, as my vantage score and performance in other games is as it should be. OMG

And I tried with Catalyst AI disabled, standard and advanced. Very little difference between the settings.

[Sincreator]

Have you tried just 1 card yet? You have 2X4870X2's right? Ive read around that quad crossfire is still only good in a few games. Maybe UT3 is'nt one of them yet.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon...w-crossfire/21
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6196419/index.html

[VoodooMaster]

I believe all the cards in the world woudn't help.. its a map optimization problem as I see it.

[martinblank]

I believe all the cards in the world woudn't help.. its a map optimization problem as I see it.

What FPS do you get in that spot? Can anybody else report what they get in that area, and what game settings and hardware you are using?

[Sincreator]

Tried your settings... same result. Thanks for trying to help. This is so annoying. The fact that you have an A64 X2 @ 3.45GHz confirms there is a problem here, because clock for clock, a Q9450 is significantly faster than an A64, and it's higher clocked to boot with 4 cores...

But I can't understand what could be going wrong here, as my vantage score and performance in other games is as it should be. OMG

And I tried with Catalyst AI disabled, standard and advanced. Very little difference between the settings.

I am on XP though. Can you install xp on a different partition? Just to see. My brother has 2 8800gtx's with ,4gb DDR-2 800 ram, e8400 @ 3.84ghz(4ghz for benchmarking). Vista32 and XP installed on different drives, and he tells me all the time that Vista kills fps. In vista his average fps is about 130-150fps(pretty close to myself), but in XP its a whole different story. His average in XP is over 200fps for sure. I've even seen it go over 300fps at times in certain maps. Ive also read that turning some background services in Vista can help alot as well. http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

Before the flames start, I would just like to say that my brother lives and plays UT3 with me, pretty regularly. He also is a certified Computer Specialist. He went to school for many years studying Netorking, Programming, Hardware, All PC/Mac OS, and he tells me all the time that he likes Vista overall and it will probally become alot better than XP eventually, but for right now XP performs game functions much better, for most titles.

I will trust him on this and will wait and see what Windows 7 offers. XP isnt going any where for a while anyway. Im in no rush. Also waiting for the 5800 series ATI, which will probally come out 6 months from now, the way GPU's are being spit out these days. lol

[martinblank]

I would be using XP if it were not for the fact that I would not be able to use my second 4870X2.

[Sincreator]

I would be using XP if it were not for the fact that I would not be able to use my second 4870X2.

**** I forgot about that. Doh! You could try a dual boot any way. Just for the comparison on 1 card. For some reason, I bet even 1 4870X2 in XP would outperform the 2 cards in Vista. Just a hunch. Would definitly be interesting to hear your findings if you try this.

[Sincreator]

http://www.mediafire.com/?yrl2yzndtyz I took a screen shot. 47fps in the same spot. Had to do it in 1080p resolution. 1920x1080 since im on a HDTV. Really wierd though I had to do it windowed. If not I was around 10fps lol. Maybe try it windowed at 1900x1200. Might help.

EDIT: Oops thats on the oppisite side of the map. lol. I was on the bio side in my screen.

[martinblank]

Now here's an interesting development. I force-enabled 8xAA in the catalyst drivers, and my FPS on Sanctuary remained unchanged, not the slightest drop anywhere, even in that one slow spot. And AA is indeed working, I can see the smoothing it is doing.

So obviously the FPS in that area is not due to a GPU limitation if it takes 8xAA with zero hit, what the hell is going on here??

[Henrik]

The AA is handled by the card/s. I would say that it is something to do with the CPU, as improbable as it may seem.. because UT3 is much more CPU bound than a lot of games.. most Unreal Engine games are CPU bound. If you open task manager while UT3 is running, how many cores is it actually using?

The overclock you have seems pretty high for a Q9450. It is a full ghz above the stock clockspeed. If you are pushing the cpu that hard it will heat up and you will notice slowdowns.

I just bought a Q9550 with a single 9600GT, and am in the middle of redownloading UT3, so once I have it set up I will check out what kind of performance I get at that spot.

Might be worth checking that you have all your chipset drivers etc updated also. Sometimes it is weird stuff that causes bottlenecks, one bad driver could be killing your performance.