All of my games that use the Quake III engine are runningy terribly on my computer. Games like ALice, Jedi Knight II, and Wolfenstein are all running at less than 1 frame per second. And they are like that throughout the program, not just in game, the intro movies and all of the menus are running that slow as well. Games that don’t use the Quake engine, like Postal, Unreal, and AvP run just fine. I have tried reinstalling my drivers and reinstalling the games but neither worked.
So, do you dopers have any idea what the problem is?
Sytem Info:
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
Audigy Sound Card
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 1 Build 2600
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~1740 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T, 7/9/2002
If you find that all your games that are based on the are running slow, I recommend an any based system. The advantages are tremendous when running the. First you get any improvements and then any speed. Secondly, any problems are simpler to troubleshoot. If the problem is consistent with, then perhaps any is the way to go.
Quake uses OpenGL, in contrast to other games like Unreal Tournament that use Direct3D. You may need to install an OpenGL ICD for your card, because at 1 fps, it sounds like the game is using the default software-based OpenGL driver.
I believe you can configure Unreal to use OpenGL instead of Direct3D. If that causes the same problem, there you go.
When was the last time you updated your graphics driver? Windows XP has built in support for OpenGL 1.1. Other versions (1.2, 1.3 and I think 1.4) are supplied by the video card manufacturers. Go to http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_43.45 to get the latest drivers for the NVidia card under WinXP. NVidia uses a unified driver architecture so you only need download the one driver for any of the cards…nice and easy. The current driver release is 43.45 for NVidia cards.
Also, make sure antialiasing is off. You do that through your display menu (right-click anywhere on your desktop with no icons under it, select PROPERTIES, select SETTINGS tab and click on the ADVANCED button…after that you’ll have to rummage around for antialiasing). Make sure it is off…it improves graphics but gives a severe hit to framerates (the newest cards out do pretty well with it on but not yours).
Additionally, hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and bring up your Task Manager. Make sure nothing is running in there. If you have some background apps running they can degrade performance. END TASK anything you see in there under APPLICATIONS.
Finally, check your settings within the game. Go into their Optins menu and decrease ALL graphic settings to their minimum, lower the resolution as low as it will go (640x480 or 800x600) and make sure you are using the display drivers for your video card and NOT software rendering (although you should get better than 1fps even in software on a P4). Start the game and see how it plays. It’ll probably look like crap but this is just a test to see if you still have problems. If all seems good go back in and start cranking the graphics back up. Keep tweaking till you get the best graphics with a framerate you can live with. Note that things like shadows are a MAJOR hog on your videocard. They look cool but given the hammer they lay on your video card they usually aren’t worth it unless you have a top notch video card that can handle it (at least GeForce 3 or better and even the GeForce 3 takes a noticeable hit…I know because that’s what I have).
Last but not least scan for viruses. Maybe something is hanging resident in memory and slowing things down.
I have done all of that, and remember that it is only Quake III games that are affected and when I say that they are getting less than 1 frame per second, I do not mean purely in the game state, I mean every where, from the very moment that the game starts the intro movies. Also, the slowness is consistent, no matter what game I open or what the game is doing.