Doom 3 Rediculously Slow (10 fps)
 

Hey all,

I just upgraded my GeForce FX 5200 (AGP, 128 MB) to a GeForce 6200 (AGP 8x, 256 MB) due to the fact that I broke my 5200. I got Doom 3 running in Linux and it looks beautiful--but the framerate is horrible. I just ran the demo1 timedemo and it got me a whopping 10 FPS. I ran it a second time immediately thereafter and got the exact same result. I tried it with a lightweight windowmanager (xfce4) and still, about 10 FPS.

I'm running this windowed at "medium quality" at 1152x864 (windowed because I'm running dual monitors, each at 1280x1024). No FSAA.

My system is an an Athlon XP 2600+ running on an Abit board (forget which one but it's fairly high-end), 1GB DDR Kingston memory, 10,000 RPM SATA HDD, BFG Tech GeForce 6200 OC (Overclocked). OS is Fedora Core 4; running the latest nVidia drivers as packaged by livna.

I know Doom 3 is very demanding and I don't have the fastest rig, but it seems like I should be getting better than 10 FPS? (especially when I see reviews like this one.)

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Yeah you should be, on a moderatly quicker machine with a 6600GT I'm getting around 70fps so 10 is too low.

I dunno how much of a computer pro you are but I'm not at all when it comes to hardware. I installed my video card myself and when I reinstalled the drivers and checked glxgears it was slow as hell but everything indicated the drivers were working fine. After a little while I figured out that I hadn't hooked up the molex power cable that the AGP cards require and it wasn't running at full clock speed. Did you hook the cable up? The FX series don't require one so it may not have occured to you. If so, download and install nvclock and check the clock speed it's running at etc and match sure it matches what the 6200 is supposed to be set at.

Hmm... interesting. I actually was not aware of any such power connection, although I'll definitely check it out now. As for NVClock, I ran it, and here's what it said:

Nope, no power connection...
 

Hey, I just pulled the card and looked all over it--front and back--for some kind of power connector. Other than the one that goes to the fan, there are none to be found.

So, we now know that the hardware is installed correctly and have no clue how fast the clock on the card is.

For the record, I also have Unreal Tournament 2004 (Linux) installed on this machine and it looks beautiful on maxed-out graphics settings and runs silky smooth. However, it ran pretty smoothly with the 5200 as well, so perhaps there's even more performance to be had there as well?

Still stumped.

I got the same error with nvclock 0.7, grab a snapshot for 0.8 and it should work fine. According to this page the 6200OC has a core clock speed of 375MHz. That should probably be only used as a somewhere-in-the-vicinity-of figure because different distributors ship their cards with different clock speeds and different memory speeds to try and get an edge. That page also doesn't list the molex connector as being in the box so I guess I was wrong about that. I know it caused me hell for my card though :p

Alright I got that installed and it ran once, and now it's just giving me bus errors. But in the time that it ran, I ran across two things that seemed a bit fishy...

1. It listed the memory type as 64-bit SDR (SD Ram, I suppose). This thing is supposed to be DDR and I'm guessing it's gotta be around 256-bit.

2. It listed "fast writes" as being disabled. I'm not entirely sure what that is, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be enabled.

Just for fun, here's the output of some relevent pseudo-files in /proc ...

glxgears...
 

For further diagnostic purposes, Here's what glxgears does...

The first three readings where immediately after I started glxgears (running in the default window); the last ones, I had the window maximized (running in 1280x1024). I'm not sure if it's supposed to drop off like that or not.

I don't mean to mucky the waters here--I could care less about my glxgears numbers; I'm still concerned with the low Doom 3 framerates. If these numbers don't suggest any other problem to you, then disregard them.

They suggest a problem. My card is quicker than yours, but here are my figures doing the same as you...
This thread should help you get fastwrites enabled, most of the stuff shouldn't be too distro-specific. That page I found about your card lists the memory type as DDR-SDRAM, not a hardware person so I'm not sure of the specifics of that, nvclock claims mine is 128bit DDR and my box says it's DDR3 memory so nvclock is probably correct. Try enabling fastwrites and see if it makes a major improvement, I wouldn't have thought it would but you never know. If you can get nvclock to run again check what speed it's running at. I got (and you would have too) better numbers on the FX5200 so there is something wrong somewhere. Might even be a faulty card, who knows?

cs-ram: Thanks for the link (and your continued help!).

I read through those posts and it appears that the gains to be had by fast writes are miniscule, at best. I also read a remark about fast writes being disabled by the driver because they're unnecessary with memory speeds as they are.

Moreover, since my target/estimated performance with this card is on order of magnitude of several times higher than what it's actually doing (i.e. ~60 fps vs. 10 fps), I think it's safe to say that the problem doesn't lie in anything that's going to give minor performance enhancements.

I wonder if it's just my Doom 3 installation? Like something is not configured right internally? I do know that Unreal Tournament 2004 runs great and very playable at the highest detail setting (at 1152x864, windowed).

The only other little piece of diagnostic information I have is that I ran the Doom 3 timedemo again with the nVidia Settings window open on the other monitor and watched the chip temperature as it ran. It started off at 46degC and warmed up to a max of 55degC.

Oh yeah, and as for the clock speeds... I haven't been able to get past that "Bus Error" problem, but I do recall reading the sliders when I did have it running and they were like at 375 MHz and 500 MHz, I believe.

Thanks again for your help, cs-cam!

Try reinstalling your nvidia driver. I know that DOOM 3 sucks up resources like no tomorrow. Also, try turning down the details. Set everything to medium, turn off shadows and max resolution to 800x600

Heh I don't know much about the temps, I have conky reporting them on my desktop but my case sucks and the card runs pretty hot. Normal desktop usage it sits at 55-60, when running an older game that doesn't take much oomph it will get up to about 65, running Quake 4... it'll lock the PC if I play too long :(

Exchanged the card...
 

Well guys, after doing everything you suggested, I ended up exchanging the card (for the same thing). Interestingly enough, when I went to pick out the replacement one off the shelf, I accidently picked up a PCI version of the same card. Not PCI-Express--old fashoned PCI. Didn't know they still made video cards like that anymore...

Anyway, the AGP version was sitting right behind it and, among other differences, I noticed that the PCI version had the same style of heatsink as the AGP one I returned. The other AGP ones, however, had a different heatsink than what I returned--the PCI one was a dinky square one, and the AGP ones were a little bigger and differently shaped. The RAM chips looked different (and appeared to be in different numbers as well) than what I replaced.

I wasn't totally convinced that the card was defective, but I was noticing a randomly-occuring distorted "stripe" appear across both screens every so often, so I figured that couldn't be right. Ultimately, however, this card is getting me the same performance as the previous one.

So I'll do a bit more troubleshooting on my own and see what I can come up with. I'll post back soon...

Well I'm just going to close this issue and say that it's either: a) some descrepency between the Windows benchmarks I was comparing my results and the Linux verison I'm running -- and/or -- b) the fill-rate on this card is deplorable, because it actually gives decent results at much lower resolutions.

As for now, I'm just playing the game in 800x600, full screen and it's very playable. I'm getting about 30 FPS or so on the timedemo, so that'll work for me.

Thanks again for all the help.

Heh, what resolution were you running it at? Obviously that and the colour depth play huge role in how quick everything will run. Example, take my glxgears results from above. When I knock my colour depth back to 16bit that number with it running in the standard window jumps to around 13000fps. I'm currently looking at upgrading my 6600GT as it's getting old so a 6200 is no powerhouse. Doom 3 is a pretty intensive game, run it at 800x600x16 and you'll be fine :)

from what i have read in tweaking the game( and quake 4)
the games are maxed at 60fps
unlike the 300+ fps you'd get out of q3


from upsetchaps, and I'm sure I can post more on this