I just bought Doom3 some weeks ago to play with my kids here at home. Have it working flawlessly on 2 PCs. But the 3rd PC, which is the fastest has severe performance problems. Oh, please - help!
Symptom:
While running the game, FPS drops down to like 2-3 for about 15-20 seconds, then something clears up and FPS goes up to 40-60, but only for a few seconds, then drops back down to 203 FPS. Cycle continues endlessly. It's better when I set all advance options to no or off, and set the game video down to the lowest resolution. But, even crunched down to the worst game settings the game menu allows, it's unplayable. These stall periods happen every 10-15 seconds and last 10-15 seconds. You can't even get up the stairs without wanting to throw the monitor out the window.
PC is a reasonable box, I've built myself:
ASUS M2N-MX SE motherboard
AMD Athlon64 X2 3.01Ghz 6000+ CPU
2GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM ATI Radeon HD2400 PCI Express x16 graphics card with 256MB DDR2 vram
WD VelociRaptor 300GB 10Krpm SATAII HD
OS:
Windows XP SP3
DirectX 9.0c
All recent updates and patches loaded and installed.
Doom3:
Patched to 1.3.1
System Options:
Low Quality 640 x 480
All Advance Options set to NO or OFF
ATI Video Drivers:
I've installed the latest drivers and ATI Catalyst software from AMD web site:
Driver Packaging Version 8.95
Catalyst Version: 12.3
2D Driver Version: 6.14.10.7256
Direct 3D Version: 6.14.10.0894
OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.11554
...I have tried setting all 3D settings down to performance. No help.
I've reset all 3D and catalyst settings back to factor default, which is pretty much "Balanced" (half way between performance and quality).
DoomConfig.cfg definitely reflects finding 256MB video ram, so the game is detecting the video card's abilities correctly, to some extent.
I have studied the Doom3 tweaks for hours. I've tried tinkering with the anisotropic and anti-aliasing settings but I can't seem to make a difference. I am so frustrated, I could scream.
I found on some web site help for my older PC using an ATI Radeon 7500 (All-In-Wonder) card. The game was un-playable until I found this trick to set:
seta r_useVertexBuffers "0"
seta image_usenormalcompression "1"
I did. I originally installed Doom3 using the onboard video. I experiences the same stalling and FPS dropping that I have with the new card. In fact, the stalling issues is what prompted me to go out and buy the ATI card on eBay. I got it pretty inexpensively (as I don't have money to spend on this game). I'm hoping to find a way to make the game work with this card. Definitely, won't work with the onboard graphics.
well your system looks perfect but that graphics card is so bad :/ i hope you didn't pay over 20 dollars for it.. do any other games have the same problems? also you dont have both nvidia and ati's video driver's installed at the same time right?
Originally posted by Kannz: well your system looks perfect but that graphics card is so bad :/ i hope you didn't pay over 20 dollars for it.. do any other games have the same problems? also you dont have both nvidia and ati's video driver's installed at the same time right?
Right. I uninstalled all the nvidia video drivers before installing the ATI. I do have an NVidia chipset for the bridge, disk, and network devices, but that shouldn't affect anything. Yeah, I'm giving up on both the onboard geforce 6150 se and the ati hd 2400. I just picked up a used AsusGeForce 7900 GTX. It's not new technology, but it's some reasonable video power with 512 MB vram. If this demonstrates the same power - I'm throwing the whole machine out the window!
I wanted to post my solution. A GREAT GUY known as tbelvin on the Doom2World.org Doom3 forums posted a reply to my cry for help explaining that the CPU I was using actually isn't supported by my motherboard. Turns out ASUS messed up when publishing the specs for the motherboard. They since updated the specs dropping this 6000+ CPU of the list of supported processors. Here's a post tbelvin referred me to:
So, I went out and bought a used slower processor, the immediate predecessor: 5600+ 2.8 Ghz processor. Just came in the mail today.
I slapped that baby in, and BING-O. DOOM3 absolutely ROCKS on this machine, now! I can run in ultra-high video with all advanced options enabled. WOW!
Oh, this is so awesome, I actually don't mind stepping back to an even slower processor. I can't even tell the difference.
Thank you God!
I hope this post helps someone else out sometime/someday.
