Q3 Performance

[LovelyLisa]

Last year I purchased a Dell Studio XPS 435MT system (Core i7, 12GB) with an ATI 4670 512MB video card. The system is blazing fast in non-gaming but when I run Q3 Arena, it performs ok until there are more than about 15 players and I'm in a room will several players .. then it seems like I see about 1 out of every 20 frames.
I don't remember Q3 performing this badly on my old XP system with lesser hardware. Don't want to invest in additional hardware unless I know it will correct my problem. Can any of you guys help? Thanks - Lisa

[axbaby]

check out this quake3 tweak site.
http://www.planetquake3.net/tweak/fps_commands.html

In the quake3 console "press the ~ key" then type
/com_maxfps 125
see if your problems is less visible

[^misantropia^]

Is your 4670 integrated into the motherboard? If so, its memory bus might be the bottleneck. Borrow a decent video card from a friend and see if the problem goes away.

[SoM]

a/s/l?

with 12 gig ram shared memory shouldnt be a problem

you just gotta tweak your q3 cfg

[+JuggerNaut+]

a/s/l?

with 12 gig ram shared memory shouldnt be a problem

you just gotta tweak your q3 cfg

Pig.

I'm curious as to your reply to Mis's question.

[Eraser]

Is your 4670 integrated into the motherboard? If so, its memory bus might be the bottleneck. Borrow a decent video card from a friend and see if the problem goes away.

I'm pretty sure any graphics card that sports 512MB of RAM should run Quake 3 just fine. A doubt it's a hardware specs issue. Maybe it's punkbuster.

My tip is this:
Open the console with the tilde key (~) and type:

\pb_system

It will then tell you if pb_system is set to 1 or 0.
If it's set to 1, set it to 0 by typing

\seta pb_system 0

If it's set to 0, set it to 1 in similar fashion. The use of seta is not a typo by the way. Restart Quake 3 and see if your problems are gone.

[^misantropia^]

Well, let's take the NVIDIA video card in my otherwise spiffy laptop, an on-board card with 1024 MB dedicated memory. It's not bad but it barely maintains 125 FPS when there is a lot of action on the screen. Now imagine you have a video card without dedicated memory that borrows from main memory, like the one in my previous laptop. It couldn't manage a consistent 85 FPS, even with all details turned off.

I doubt it's PB because then she'd be having frame rate issues all the time, not just on busy moments.

[Eraser]

Hmm good point. I read over the part where it was just in specific moments.
Some gfx settings tweaking may be a start to isolate the problem then.

[axbaby]

would be nice to know if the problem only happens online.
i think she left, Sir Studly SoM scared her away

[SoM]

a/s/l?

with 12 gig ram shared memory shouldnt be a problem

you just gotta tweak your q3 cfg

Pig.

I'm curious as to your reply to Mis's question.

shes got 12gig and vid card with 512mb, so that leaves 11.5gig that isnt shared with big overhead for the system

[SoM]

would be nice to know if the problem only happens online.
i think she left, Sir Studly SoM scared her away

you know you love my hairy bod

[axbaby]

I guess she is not coming back
Somah. your pool playing skills are a turn off, you suck at the pool.