Game isnt always fluent

[Vianom]

Hi this is my first post here,

I play Tremulous for about 2 months, and i have an annoying problem. I change all my graphics details to minimum, and if i look at small space i have all fps ( 90 ), but if im in open space i have biiig laaags (fps 10 -30). The same situation is when i 'meet' lots of enemies in their base when is the action(everyone shooting like rambo). i've spotted that when i have low fps then ping is raised to (200-300). I dont understand that, and i mainly cant play normally .
MY PC:
AMD Duron 1.6 GHZ
Good RAM 1GB
Radeon 9200 128MB

Can anyone help me? Maybe there are some ways to fix that(to rais fps)
Sorry for my english.

[Hendrich]

Ok, so basically my crap 733Mhz PC with an ATI RAGE 128 PRO card goes as fast as your computer- for some reason. Does your computer have dual cores? If so, (and as far as I know), Tremulous just lags with a PC containing dual cores unless you put in a console command to fix it.

Also, lowering the quality of the game is basically useless, as it only rose 10 frames for me, because Tremulous is dependent on the CPU. Also, maybe the servers you go to has high ping or too many structures on the screen (Ex. Unlimited Bp).

[Vianom]

thanks for the reply.

No,i dont have dual core, and the low fps i have on all servers

[Hendrich]

Strange, what OS are you using? Is there any other programs you had turned on while you played?

[Vianom]

I have Windows XP. While im playing only avast and sygate personal firewall are working  but they dont take lot of CPU. Maybe it helps - i have same problems in counter strike 1.6.

[Archangel]

I had the same issue, and I still do on servers I get decent ping on, whenever fighting a chaingun my ping spikes up to 250 or so. Recently getting a new video card has fixed the FPS side of the issue, but the momentary lag remains.

[Bissig]

Try to tune up maxpackets a bit. Like "42". And you can experiment with lowering or raising snaps.

[Vianom]

Sorry. but i dont understand that. Hmm do you mean i should write something in console ? Please tell me what.

[Colynn']

Hi.
Yes. Show the console by pushing ² (Near 1, 2, etc), and type /cl_maxpackets 42. 

[lavacano201014]

~, if you don't happen to have whatever whacked out keyboard Colynn' has. :-P

[Vianom]

Hmm, i dont see any difference  but thanks anyway.

[Archangel]

~, if you don't happen to have whatever whacked out keyboard Colynn' has. :-P

french

[Vianom]

Sorry for my impatience, but i want to play this game normally. This game based on Q3A engine this is old so why its so slowly?

[Bissig]

Nr. 1:

Radeon 9200 128MB is an outdated piece of junk. No offence. (I played with a Geforce2MX400 for a year. Even an old GF4 Ti4200 will raise your fps dramatically. For me: From 8-30 fps to 30-80fps depending on map. Also, this with a much higher screen res then before)

Nr.2:

While your processor is not too slow, it is STILL relatively slow. You can get Semprons for 30 bucks these days that are 2-3x faster.

By the way.. What is the screen resolution you are running tremulous at?

[Vianom]

Ow yeah, that was i waiting for ( i want to be sure my computer is crap ). I play on 1024x768 ;p
Thanks!

[kevlarman]

Ow yeah, that was i waiting for ( i want to be sure my computer is crap ). I play on 1024x768 ;p
Thanks!

trem runs perfectly smoothly* on my 850mhz k7 and radeon9250
*except for the room behind the alien base on nexus6 on 1.1 servers, svn's cgame fixes the issue.

[Bissig]

Ow yeah, that was i waiting for ( i want to be sure my computer is crap ). I play on 1024x768 ;p
Thanks!

Try playing at 800x600. Also, be sure to have set "Geometric Details" to "low" or at most at "medium".

[kevlarman]

Ow yeah, that was i waiting for ( i want to be sure my computer is crap ). I play on 1024x768 ;p
Thanks!

Try playing at 800x600. Also, be sure to have set "Geometric Details" to "low" or at most at "medium".

the only setting that makes any real difference even on underpowered graphics cards is vertex light.

[Bissig]

That was not true for me. Lowering "Geometrical Details" increased fps on my old card considerably.

[Einstein]

Tremulous just lags with a PC containing dual cores unless you put in a console command to fix it.

Orly? I'm curious now, I want to try it out. Anyone know the command to enable this optimization? (apologies for the slight necro)

[kevlarman]

Tremulous just lags with a PC containing dual cores unless you put in a console command to fix it.

Orly? I'm curious now, I want to try it out. Anyone know the command to enable this optimization? (apologies for the slight necro)

s/enable/disable/
see the sticky in the troubleshooting about nvidia's "optimization", other than that trem should run fine on multiple cores (as opposed to warsow which falls flat on its face if you don't set its affinity to 1 cpu (wswded too ))

[Bissig]

Hmm, when I got my dual-core I had to fiddle with xorg.conf to change agp port to behave like pci. Else, f.e. "glxgears" would first flicker and then die. Also, I had computer lag every 5 seconds. Very strange.

Following line added to xorg.conf:

Added into ""Section "Screen"":

Option         "NvAGP" "1"

[Archangel]

I recently assembled a Phenom Tricore machine, running Arch Linux, but I didn't do a fresh install, I just pulled the drives out of my P4 machine, and threw them in. I haven't got ANY Trem lag as of yet, but I'm still on a 686 kernel. Perhaps this is why. I have a GeForce 7300 PCI-E 8x in here.

[Bissig]

I think the multi-core problem only exists on AGP machines.