How Do I Get More Fps?

GreenRecon · June 2004

<div class="IPBDescription">How do I get more fps with what I have..</div> Computer Specs: AMD Athlon 1.4 ghz
512 DDR
Geforce FX 5200 (128 RAM)

How do I get more fps with what I have?

I am interested in any thing I can change in console or tweaking my graphic card. I know about fps_max but there has to be more I can do.

Thanks for the help.

Soylent_green · June 2004

Besides using lower poly models and trying different driver versions I doubt there is much you can do. HL is a very old game and will tax your CPU much more than your graphics card.

edit: People may give you lots of ideas for decreasing the load on your graphics card but if you are CPU bound they will do nothing but make the game uglier. If lowering your resolution doesn't give a noticiable bost there is little hope for uglier filtering methods, worse looking textures and such.

BigBull · June 2004

Your particular videocard, Im sorry to say is crap.

It benchmarks the lowest in the whole series.

Buy a need vid card. Best bet.

I use to have the same one you have.

Soylent_green · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Your particular videocard, Im sorry to say is crap.

It benchmarks the lowest in the whole series.

Buy a need vid card. Best bet.

I use to have the same one you have.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I'm sorry to say that your wrong. HL doesn't need a good video card. In fact, a gf4 mx440 was faster than my 9800 pro is when there are large amounts of e-polys(common in NS). As long as I didn't use anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering or other goodies it worked without a hitch. As I said, if changing your res does nothing, you are CPU bound so he should check that out before listening to the senseless "OMG! upgrade!!!111" people.

Jabba_The_Hunt · June 2004

That video card is quite sufficent, I can get constant 100FPS with a geforce 4 ti4200 if you want to get higher fps then use a resolution of 800 * 600 or possibly even 640 * 480.

You can also turn off particle effects in the options menu, and make sure cl_decals is 300 or lower.

Make sure anti aliasing and antisotropic filtering are turned off in your nvida control panel.

Talesin · June 2004

Jabba, unfortunately the FX5200 is beaten out by a stock GF3, much less a GF4 Ti <anything>. It's the economy card of economy cards. A joke. It almost manages to be worse than the GF4MX.

More information would be useful, Green. What drivers are you running on, what resolution are you using, what refresh rate are you using, do you have vsync enabled, are you somehow trying to get over 100fps (which cannot actually be done with Half-Life)? What's your current average FPS rate, and are you running in 16 or 32-bit mode?

Kaze · June 2004

Yeah.

Anyway here's a great guide from the Tech Support forum about PC settings and in-game settings that should help. I used this and it helped a lot

<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34027' target='_blank'>FPS Guide</a>

Edit: <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8100' target='_blank'>And this one</a>

N1Rampage · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Jabba The Hunt @ Jun 1 2004, 06:51 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> That video card is quite sufficent, I can get constant 100FPS with a geforce 4 ti4200 if you want to get higher fps then use a resolution of 800 * 600 or possibly even 640 * 480.

You can also turn off particle effects in the options menu, and make sure cl_decals is 300 or lower.

Make sure anti aliasing and antisotropic filtering are turned off in your nvida control panel.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
This is 100% correct.

brute_force · June 2004

Um, just wondering something... is it normal to get 70-80 fps in NS when alot of things are happening at the same time (ie many models, marines shooting, weapons on the ground, spores, etc)? I have an AMD Athlon 2800+ and a Radeon 9200 with 768 MB DDR RAM. I was thinking the 9200 might need exchanging (I am saving for a 9800 at the moment, but it's going pretty slow...). Any tips for me to be able to increase my fps in NS would be appreciated. I'm running on 1024x768x32, I have Windows XP Home edition. When I try to play with 1600x1200, I start to lag (ie drop to 30-40fps) when alot of things are happening.

Thanks <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' />

Once_Only · June 2004

Shame they dont sell them anymore, but I bet a voodoo[insert number] (the card of the time) would do HL very well....Just not with anything else you may have.

But yeah, CPU it is. The high amount of entities and things going means theres lots of caluclations. 800x600 is also the optimum resolution for the textures (they dont need to be resized for the resoloution = ~5 more fps and faster loading)

Diablo_fx · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Talesin @ Jun 1 2004, 01:37 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Jabba, unfortunately the FX5200 is beaten out by a stock GF3, much less a GF4 Ti <anything>. It's the economy card of economy cards. A joke. It almost manages to be worse than the GF4MX.

are you somehow trying to get over 100fps (which cannot actually be done with Half-Life)?  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
First thing is true, i bet my gf3 ti 200 does better...

It is posible to get over 100 fps, i remember i've had 240ish and 280 if looking into a wall. just turn fps_max 999 and dev 1 and u will get high... refresh rate don't matter... that was with my old moniter IBM something, now i have a flat panel one 17' and it can't go over 85hz at 1024*768. someway that applys to the game now i am stuck on 85 fps <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif' />

Soylent_green · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>More information would be useful, Green. What drivers are you running on, what resolution are you using, what refresh rate are you using, do you have vsync enabled, are you somehow trying to get over 100fps (which cannot actually be done with Half-Life)? What's your current average FPS rate, and are you running in 16 or 32-bit mode?</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

I don't need any help(nothing you can help with or much of a problem) but if you care to know.

I'm using 1024x764, vsync on, at 120 Hz, developer 1(you CAN get more than 100 FPS rendered and drawn to the screen out of the HL engine more on that below, the problem exists even if I'm using 100 Hz or below), 32-bit, 6X AA, 16X AF on quality, double buffering because triple buffering in HL somehow manages to cause horrible mouse lag. I'm using winXP and my processor is a 2.8 GHz p4(C variety) using 2 DDR-400 dimms in dual channel and hyperthreading disabled(it does not matter if I turn it on or off).

I've tried some <3.0 drivers, all the 4.0 and above(cause more stuttering in HL than older ones) and the 3.6(I'm currently using these for HL), 3.7 and 3.10's,. No matter what resolution, even 640x480 without any goodies, I get the same framerate. 120 FPS in usual calm situations with a few occasional drops more akin to stuttering(Every once in a while a frame is not completely rendered during the time it takes to refresh the screen with the previously rendered frame(this is not a regular phenomenon(i.e. it's not caused by the game not being capable of cranking out more than 100 FPS as this happens at any refresh rate) and I have strong reasons to suspect it is due to CPU usage getting to high(CPU usage in HL is allways through the roof and I rarely see it leave 90-100%). Even if I shut everything running in the background of, do a spyware scan, virus check, run memtest86 and prime95 to test stabillity and don't do any overclocking(often a pointless and troublesome excercise) or tweaking(usually I have very narrow memory timings but it doesn't cause any problems that I am aware of, I have tried using very lax timings but it doesn't matter) of any sort this happens(yes I listed those to not get asked))).

Say 3-5 aliens or marines and I start dropping frames, it's not even so it's not the graphics card because load would be roughly the same over time not random, I should get allmost constant 60 FPS when I start dropping frames, it isn't my graphics card it's my processor. Get around 10-20 players and the framerate is in the 30's.

Try the same thing on my gf4 mx and I get no framerate drops of any kind until I am looking at about 10 other players as long as I forgo all eye candy and play at 800x600 and avoid looking at lots of additive or texture sprites(CS smoke, resource nozzles) which cause the framerate to drop to an even 60 FPS, 40FPS etc.(no stuttering). Even so, in this resolution CPU usage is still the limiting factor when there are lots of player models around(uneven framerate), unless they are all huddled around you and causing lots of overdraw.

Now onto the capabillities of the HL engine. Steam HL is capable of running at higher than 100FPS, an easy and IMO practically conclusive way to see this is to set your refresh rate higher than 100 Hz and set developer to 1 and to 0 and compare.

When developer is zero every few frames there is a frame not updated(looks like stuttering at regular intervalls, just turn your player model and you'll easilly notice). Turn developer 1 on and things will smoothen out, no more regular stutters and very few stutters. Now try setting fps_max 100, the stuttering returns and looks exactly the same as using developer 1.

I wrote this messilly, if you need more info or the recursive parenthesis usage is confusing just ask.

BigBull · June 2004

<img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif' />
Dont call me one of those UPGRADE PEOPLE

i have one of those cards.

its crappy.

ANd I was thinking ahead...better games etc. the card he has wont cut it.

Soylent_green · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> First thing is true, i bet my gf3 ti 200 does better...

It is posible to get over 100 fps, i remember i've had 240ish and 280 if looking into a wall. just turn fps_max 999 and dev 1 and u will get high... refresh rate don't matter... that was with my old moniter IBM something, now i have a flat panel one 17' and it can't go over 85hz at 1024*768. someway that applys to the game now i am stuck on 85 fps</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

*sigh*, you can only draw as many frames on your monitor as your refresh rate allows. 85 Hz means 85 images are drawn no matter what, even if you are running at 2k FPS or 5 FPS.

Secondly, you can most likely turn off vertical sync with that monitor as well and get a framerate higher than your refresh rate but why would you want to? It would server no purpose other than to allways run on full GPU or full CPU usage and really ugly frame tears.

Soylent_green · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Dont call me one of those UPGRADE PEOPLE

i have one of those cards.

its crappy.

ANd I was thinking ahead...better games etc. the card he has wont cut it.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

He didn't ask for advice on hardware for future or even current games.

He said in his first post, the first line under his specs:

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>How do I get more fps with what I have?</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Rapier7 · June 2004

<span style='color:red'>*COMMENT NUKED*</span>

I'm stuck with a GeForce 2 mx400, and NS works....at 25 FPS. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done (in most cases).

brute_force · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Rapier7 @ Jun 1 2004, 02:58 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <span style='color:red'>*COMMENT NUKED*</span>

I'm stuck with a GeForce 2 mx400, and NS works....at 25 FPS. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done (in most cases). </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
I know how it is, I used to have the exact same card before I got this computer <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' />

Talesin · June 2004

Soylent, I was actually talking to GreenRecon, the starter of the thread. I need to know more about HIS setup to give any kind of good advice.

And for the last time. Diablo_fx, developer 1 does NOT raise the FPS above 100. It gives *pseudo-fps*. What the game could theoretically do with the scene. However, the HL engine is hard-coded to 100fps. It literally cannot do any higher, no matter what developer 1 may give as a reading.

And ShdwStal, the 9200 is a budget card. Don't be surprised that you're not getting a solid 100fps with it. It'll give better performance than an FX5200, but it's no thoroughbred. That CPU should be fine if you don't have insane amounts of overhead (thirty browsers, WinAMP, ICQ/MSN/AIM/etc) running in the background while you're trying to play. My 9500 Pro gets 100fps solid at 1600x1200 with vsync disabled, or enabled at 1024x768. Turn on triple-buffering in the OpenGL tab's 'compatability' button, and enable vsync. turn ati_npatch to 0, and ati_subdiv to 0. Disable TruForm in the drivers. Turn off fast writes, and make sure your motherboard AGP drivers are updated. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' />

Verthandi · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Soylent green @ Jun 1 2004, 09:42 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Secondly, you can most likely turn off vertical sync with that monitor as well and get a framerate higher than your refresh rate but why would you want to? It would server no purpose other than to allways run on full GPU or full CPU usage and really ugly frame tears.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
And I was afraid nobody in the world knew the purpose of VSync! <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

CommunistWithAGun · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (BigBull @ Jun 1 2004, 06:30 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Your particular videocard, Im sorry to say is crap.

It benchmarks the lowest in the whole series.

Buy a need vid card. Best bet.

I use to have the same one you have.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
Its not his video card, its his CPU speed. Half-Life dosen't need graphical power

Soylent_green · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Soylent, I was actually talking to GreenRecon, the starter of the thread. I need to know more about HIS setup to give any kind of good advice.
</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

oops <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />. Anyway, developer 1 does indeed allow framerates higher than 100 FPS. Try what I suggested above please and see if you still come to the same conclusion. It does not matter what the framerate counter says as there are other simple ways to see the difference. Short of changing your refresh rate automagically to 100 Hz without the screen going black I can think of no other explanation for the above observation.

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> And I was afraid nobody in the world knew the purpose of VSync!</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

Then be very afraid to venture into the cs forums on steam powered, I've even seen suggested that "vsync reduces the quality of your pixels to increase frame rate!", and my sarcasm-o-meter was flat-lined.

<span style='color:red'>*COMMENT NUKED.* Flaming is prohibited, as is taking flamebait. -Talesin</span>

<span style='color:blue'>since when is sarcasm flaming? Do I need to add smilies or something?</span>

Diablo_fx · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Soylent green @ Jun 1 2004, 02:42 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> *sigh*, you can only draw as many frames on your monitor as your refresh rate allows. 85 Hz means 85 images are drawn no matter what, even if you are running at 2k FPS or 5 FPS.

Secondly, you can most likely turn off vertical sync with that monitor as well and get a framerate higher than your refresh rate but why would you want to? It would server no purpose other than to allways run on full GPU or full CPU usage and really ugly frame tears.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
First thing is yes, you can. i ahve vsync turned off but it still stuck to 60fps ingame until i "fix" some advanced settings under my gfx card. The force draw fps stuff for eg 1024*768 force 85hz (max for my moniter).

why i would want to? because 60 fps is bad for your eyes thats why. i use 60hz in windows at 1200*1024 it hurts your eyes...

Diablo_fx · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Talesin @ Jun 1 2004, 03:15 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> And for the last time. Diablo_fx, developer 1 does NOT raise the FPS above 100. It gives *pseudo-fps*. What the game could theoretically do with the scene. However, the HL engine is hard-coded to 100fps. It literally cannot do any higher, no matter what developer 1 may give as a reading.
 </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
I know, but i like to read 240ish instead of 59.9-60 fps. kthx

Jabba_The_Hunt · June 2004

I used to play ns off a geforce2 mx440 on a 1 GHz machine, if that was sufficent then a 1.4Ghz machine with a geforce 5200 if perfectly sufficent now, there is no need to upgrade to play half life mods, that card should even be able to run hl2 though obviously at reduced settings.

I cant say which is better a geforce 4200 or a 5200 as I havn't tried a 5200, but I can say it will run NS fine. Personally I think targetting 85fps is about where you want to be, 85hz has a good step down if you have vsync enabled (so you wont see a sudden drop from 100fps to 50fps if your computer can not handle it). It also seems to give a nice medium between performance and graphics.

KaMiKaZe1 · June 2004

I ran NS off of 677mhz processor with a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 for a year and a half with no complaints. I mean, I did struggle to push out 20 FPS, but I didn't complain.

Damn I'm helpful.

Soylent_green · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>why i would want to? because 60 fps is bad for your eyes thats why. i use 60hz in windows at 1200*1024 it hurts your eyes...</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

60 Hz with vsync off is even worse for your eyes, then you got horrible 60 Hz and frame tears as well as half-life telling you you have 200+ FPS. Again why would you want to do that instead of increasing your refresh rate?

camO_o · June 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (GreenRecon @ Jun 1 2004, 06:19 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Computer Specs: AMD Athlon 1.4 ghz
512 DDR
Geforce FX 5200 (128 RAM)

How do I get more fps with what I have?

I am interested in any thing I can change in console or tweaking my graphic card. I know about fps_max but there has to be more I can do.

Thanks for the help.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
i have nearly the same setup as you, except for 350~mb of sdram and a PCI fx 5200.

1. Use lowpoly models. Search in the customization forums, use the ugliest, blockiest, shittiest models you can find (search - lowpoly). this did wonders for my fps.
2. minimum resolution. turn off 3d sound, turn off 16bit sound, turn off high quality sound.
3. setting gl_max_size 64 will help your fps, but it corrupts text, so it might not be the best idea (unless you want to read your console for text msgs...)

Roberto · June 2004

My setup:
Athlon 1600+ (1.4 Ghz)
1024 ddr
geforce 4 ti4600 with the latest drivers

v-sync off
aa- off
anisotropic filtering- off
image settings- high performance
forced mipmaps- off
75 Hz

In game settings- 1024 x 768
open gl
16 bit

60-80 fps in game walking around and in combat

EEK · June 2004

Find out what your monitor refresh rate is, then set your fps_max to that. Going over your refresh rate for more frames is downright stupid. I laugh at people bragging about 100 fps who then tell me their refresh rate is 60 hz.

How Do I Get More Fps?

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