Trouble with framerate

[niglch]

I really like Nexuiz, and I like playing it, but I just can't seem to get a constantly playable frame rate with it. I admit my computer is about 5 years old and isn't quite the ideal gaming rig, and I know it isn't handling any HDR or dynamic anything anytime soon, but this is a little ridiculous.

Ok, these specs aren't the best but...
HP Pavilion 503n
Video Card= GeForce FX 5200 w/ 256MB PCI (originally intel onboard gfx)
Processor= 1.7ghz intel celeron
Memory= 640MB
OS= Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft (probably the only decent thing about my computer)
(just ask if you think you may require more info to help out)

I have installed the latest nVidia proprietary drivers for Linux and set it to "high performance" under OpenGL in the settings. I also turned off ALL effects in Nexuiz, set particles to a quality of 0.1, set textures to their lowest quality (4), and set the resolution at 640x480 (16-bit), and turned down anything else that seemed like it might affect video performance. I found that doing this helped out a lot while in small rooms or areas where I got around 50-100fps. However, whenever I try to look out onto a larger, more open portion of a map, the frame rate drops like a stone to on average 12fps, which is hardly playable in intense firefights. The overall result is very inconsistent frame rates while turning or moving to look at different portions of a map. Should performance really be this low, or should I just forget about it right now?

[torus]

>>Read this topic.<<

[sympathy]The 5200 is quite an old card, and is not suited for gaming (sorry).[/sympathy]

Updated 20060523
Any other cards are probably not well suited to Nexuiz and should not be purchased with Nexuiz in mind.

Warnings about some cards that are especially bad: (DO NOT BUY THESE CARDS)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 - slow
NVIDIA Quadro FX 540 - slow

Type r_showsurfaces 1 into the ingame console ([shift]+[esc]) and see if it helps.

If you can, I would recommend upgrading- even just a cheap graphics upgrade to a budget card costing 60-85 USD (although from experience HP doesnt make this easy)- will make a huge difference.

[esteel]

Well as others said the 5200 is not the best card to use for gaming and i'm not sure what stuff you did disable in the menus. For example the 'opengl 2.0 shaders' are a performance increase on MOST cards and should not be disabled by most people. However if i remember correct it WILL be faster on your card if you disable those. (r_glsl)
I wrote a bit about different variables to disable and some to play around with to test stuff here: http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?p=90#90

Other then that wait for the next version it will have a nice improvment on speed. On average it runs 30% faster for me, the most extreme increase i get is from 87fps to 270fps

[Urmel]

It's about time for the new release!

[niglch]

Well, I don't think I'm going to buy a new video card for this computer because I'm planning on getting a new one next year some time in which I'll make sure has good equipment. Plus, my current computer has no AGP or PCI-e slots which severely limits the number of even decent available cards. The strange thing about my card, however, is that it was advertised as having a core clock speed of 280MHz instead of 250MHz like a standard gffx5200. I installed cool-bits on Windows to check the actual core clock speed, but it was only 250MHz. So, I simply tried over-clocking to the advertised speed, and it worked without a problem. I'm wondering if I could do the same on Ubuntu, but I'm not sure how. Would anyone happen to know.
Also, I only installed the latest working version of Nexuiz available from the Ubuntu repositories (2.0). There is a Nexuiz 2.2.3 in the backported repository, but for some reason the package is broken and will not allow me to download 2.2.3. I might try to install it manually if this version significantly boosts performance.

Thank you for all the help!

[esteel]

Uhm yes 2.2.3 should be faster then 2.0 and also look quite a bit different. But what i mean is that the next prending version 2.3 will be even faster then that and i hope it will be out soon..
For your overclocking needs on linux there is nvclock..

[KadaverJack]

Plus, my current computer has no AGP or PCI-e slots which severely limits the number of even decent available cards.

So you have a PCI card? Nexuiz doesn't use texture compression, so PCI card will probably perform pretty bad compared to AGP cards with the same chipset, due to th low bandwidth of PCI...

I'm wondering if I could do the same on Ubuntu, but I'm not sure how. Would anyone happen to know.

No idea if this works with PCI cards, but i guess it will:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=197
http://www.linuxhardware.org/nvclock/

[Urmel]

Plus, my current computer has no AGP or PCI-e slots

So this FX5200 is a PCI version right? Well okay, no wonder then. It could have 480MHz clockspeed, but that wouldnt help a f*ck. Never mind.

argh, KadaverJack! Queue-jumper!

[niglch]

Lol, yeah it's time to start looking at a new computer...
[badjoke]So... does anyone want to try porting Nexuiz to Xbox 360 so I don't need to worry about having my crappy video card?[/badjoke]

Anyway, the alternative .cfg file you suggested works great and I now get a decent frame rate (for the most part >30fps). I can even enable bloom, decals, and coronas without much of a performance hit. For the record, what hurts the gffx5200 the most are the OpenGL 2.0 shaders. Just having them on without any other eye-candy enabled cuts the frame rate more than in half. So, if you have this card, TURN OFF the 2.0 shaders and you'll notice significant improvement albeit sacrificing a lot of the possible eye-candy.

[esteel]

Yeah just as i said, those shaders are really bad for your card but they are way faster for MOST other cards .
And again the current development engine got faster.. now timedemo demo1 runs 50% faster for me.. 150 instead of 95 fps..
And the single most increase in fps i found in a certain map was from 87fps to 600fps.. 700% faster.