Display & Other Problems

[Chazar]

PDF said:

Do you have some links to get some 3rd-party OpenGL drivers ? I'm still unhappy with a 2.4GHz rig w/Radeon 9600 having comparable perfs with Dom than my previous 500Mhz/GF2 ...

I use the Omega-Drivers that have been pointed to by others already. Runs pretty well with ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility.

[Arryn]

I installed the newest (4.8-based) Omega ATI drivers Last night and it did nada for improving Dom 2 framerates on my (128mb video RAM) 9600XT versus ATI's own drivers. I get ~30fps at "normal" detail level. No offense to the IW guys, but I suspect the "problem" (for lack of a better word) is in their engine and not in the Open GL drivers, because the Omega drivers did improve performance for Doom 3. OTOH, Dom 3 also plays well on my 600MHz Celeron laptop (8mb video RAM). Overall, a game that plays well on antique (anything 2+ years old) hardware does have something good to be said about it. It would just be a nice bonus if it would actually take advantage of all the fancy horsepower my (3.5GHz) desktop has. Still, I bought Dom for it's strategic depth, not it's graphics, so I'm not complaining. heh

[Edi]

30 fps? And what exactly is the problem, if one may ask? My setup (32 MB Matrox G400 on a 500 Celeron with 256 MB SDRAM) barely manages 10 fps on low detail after the installation of new drivers and applying Refresh Force. Granted, the system is 4 years old, but I'd be bloody ecstatic to have 30+ fps...

Edi

[reverend]

You wouldn't be, if the same system managed 35+ fps in Doom3. (8xAF, 2xAA, 1280x1024, High Detail).

Like I said. FPS aren't crucial in Dom2, so nobody actually complains about it.

[Arryn]

Edi, from your perspective, I can readily see why you'd be delighted to get 30fps. One of my old PCs gathering dust downstairs (from 2 upgrade cycles and 7 years ago) has a 350MHz CPU, 512mb SDRAM, and the same video card. My IBM laptop (600MHz Celeron w/8mb video ram circa 5 years ago) isn't any better. I don't expect these machines to purr (much less roar). I'm quite happy that they run the game at all without choking and spitting up hairballs.

However, my recently-rebuilt desktop now sports a 3.5GHz-equivalent AMD CPU, 1Gb RAM, and a 128Mb ATI 9600XT video card. It's really sad to see 3D games that use pixel shading, light maps, textures, etc. (IOW, all the latest graphic bells and whistles) outperform a 2D sprite-based game that doesn't do all those per-pixel calcs. Given the game's 2D nature (foreground, not background, which is 3D), and my system's capabilities, I should be getting well over 100fps. 30fps is tolerable on the eyes, so I leave the detail at "normal" (I get about 10fps at the highest setting).

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not complaining much less advocating that IW do something drastic (and foolish) like maintain a parallel code base for the game using DirectX. All I'm saying is that the game's performance, graphically, is lacking. A simple statement of fact. Graphics aren't important enough in this game for the devs to take time away from other tweaks they could (and should) do, just so they can eke out a few more fps from their engine. But I would not be surprised if there's some rather inefficient code lurking somewhere that's causing the lackluster performance.

[deccan]

Hehe, the devs did say that they were learning how to program as they went along making the game. Bloated code is to be expected.

[Arryn]

deccan said:
Hehe, the devs did say that they were learning how to program as they went along making the game. Bloated code is to be expected.

Perhaps they were using Microsoft code as examples when they were learning?

{One should never pass up a chance to take a free cheap shot at M$}

[alexti]

Arryn said:But I would not be surprised if there's some rather inefficient code lurking somewhere that's causing the lackluster performance.

Unlikely, it runs fine on 4 (or maybe 5) years old GF2MX. On another hand, most people avoid ATI on Linux (OpenGL) due to amazingly poor performance. We should count ourselves lucky that Dom2 runs on ATI at all. Some other games can't run in OpenGL on ATI at all.

Also, I remember reading that when there're many relatively simple objects (like 5000-6000 units on the battlefield), ATI is not that good (presumably they mostly optimizie for first person shooters). This would also explain, why Dom2 is so slow on ATI.

[Arryn]

Sigh. Half-Life 2 had better be worth it, as the coupon for a free copy was the only reason I got the ATI card over the nVidia.

[Johan K]

Arryn said:
No offense to the IW guys, but I suspect the "problem" (for lack of a better word) is in their engine and not in the Open GL drivers, because the Omega drivers did improve performance for Doom 3.

Doom 3 is a popluar benchmark, so ATI optimizes their drivers especially for it in order to score well. If Dominions was a popular benchmark as well, I bet your driver upgrade would have made wonders for the framerate. Hmmm... we should get a hardware reviewer to play Dominions and make it the next major graphics benchmark