Hi,

I'm not sure if this should be in "networking", but a moderator will soon let me kno

The thing is this: I am finally able to connect to DoD servers and play online. The graphics are ok, but my download speeds, as reported by netgraph, are appalling, as are my framerates.

fps 7.5
In 200 1.5 k/s
Out 23 0.45 k/s

cl_rate typed in the console gives

Max 0.000000
Min 0.000000

I hesitate to change these, but do they look right?

In my autoexec.cfg for HL I followed a howto, which was supposed to increase fps. These are the changes made

cl_particlefx 0
cl_weatherdis 0
loadas8bit
cl_download_ingame 0
voice_enable 0
cl_allowupload 0
cl_bulletejects 0
cl_himodels 0
gl_max_size 128
cl_minimap 0
cl_numshotrubble 0
_ah 0
hpk_maxsize 0
fps_max 100
fps_modem 100

These changes were also applied to config.cfg.

I have noticed an increase in fps to 10, but as soon as I move about, it drops to 4 or so.

Outside of the game, I can download mp3's and files, on average at 50 odd k/s. Can anyone see something I've missed, or is it a case of connecting to a slow server. I doubt that all six servers I have as favourites can all be bad.

I should say, I am not firewalled, so that doesnt impact upon the game, and I have switched off all services (in Mandrake9.1) bar:

atd
autofs
bind
cnxadslctl
crond
devfsd
dm
keytable
kheader
named
network
nfslock
numlock
partmon
random
sound
xfs
xinetd

as these sounded as if they need to be running. I use blackbox instead of KDE to launch HLDoD to conserve system resources, and I'm running out of ideas and things to try...

Any suggestions, apart from buy a new system, welcome

Thanks in advance......

I would try setting cl_rate "xxxx" as a certain value instead of 0.000. Try like 5000 to start with if it helps try 10000 etc, just play around with it. Hopefully it will help. For the framerate problem, that is video related as to drivers for your video card. Do you have the latest drivers installed? or just the ones that are automatically detected when you install mandrake. Another note, you are running HL with wine, wine is mainly used for applications, but can be used for games. WineX is more appropriately used for games. It yeilds better FPS and playability and a wider range of games. WineX does cost money to subsribe, but you can download the CVS version for free.

Thanks mint567,

Yes, I have the most up to date powervr drivers installed. glxinfo reports that hardware acceleration for my card is enabled and working.

I will give that cl_rate a tweak and see how I go.

I'll have a look at winex too. Will I need to uninstall wine if I try using winex? I know it (wine) doesnt work brilliantly at the moment, but it took a couple of days to get it sorted in the first place

How is it though, that I experience such a downturn in download rates ingame? There must be a tweak out there

I found a reference to running HL outside of a desktop, thereby saving resources, but (stupidly) never bookmarked it. It was something to do with editing one of the rc.d local files to enable X, but without starting KDE, BlackBox et al. Ring any bells with anyone? You then had to change it back when you didnt want to play HL.

Anyway, thanks again. I'll keep searchin, but for now, I'm off to take the dogs for a walk with the missus, so I'll look in again when I'm back.

Cheers

Jon

How many megs is this powervr card? ever thought about getting an NVIDIA card, one of the really economic ones? they are extremely cheap if you do not get top of the line. Even a little mx440 or something will run half life with decent frames.

How many FPS does glxgears report you are able to get?

WineX is nice, if you subscribe you get binary packages for system dependant and support directly from them. I think its like 5$ a month. alternatively you can get the CVS version for free, no support, no point2play app. but It still works.

As far as X independantly I am not sure. I do not have much experience in scripting, the main game I play is quake3, awaiting doom3. which is natively supported and I would like to know how to start the game in X, without having a desktop/wm running. I beleive the same concept that you are talking about with whine, oops wine

Bleh I gotta go to work, 28 hours in two days really sucks.

He he he

Got this weekend off, and two days to do next week, so far. Plenty of time to tweak.

My card is a Hercules Prophet 4500 64MB

glxgears reports between 280 and 320 fps. This is running on top of KDE as I write this.

I'm gonna google to see if I can find out how to disable windows mangers, yet still play games graphically.

Cya in a bit

Jon

Yah I am off work now. Ok your card is not working properly or atleast the GL, for sure. glxgears should report a lot higher than what you list it as. I know with a mx440 you get up into the thousands. A window manager wont make that much of a difference, but it does help a tad with the lighter ones..

Are you still running the mandrake 2.4 kernel?

I hope you don't plan on running 2.6 kernel with that video card...
from www.powervr.com
One question: which drivers did you install? the ones from www.powervr.com? which version also? Possibly don't use the distro specific installers and use the rpm/tgz one and read the readme and make sure everything is set. One file not being replaced or renamed can make the drivers not work properly also in your XF86Config-4..

Also in your profile i see mdk custom.
did you build the drivers for a custom kernel?

http://www.powervr.com/Downloads/Dri...ted_310304.txt

take a good look at the readme, there is a lot involved in instlaling your drivers if you do not have them installed properly or maybe just check over.
your problem definitely stems from the driver installation.

Hope this helps, let me know if I can help.

To check and see if your installation is good.
instead of glxgears, type glxinfo

VERIFYING YOUR INSTALLATION
===========================

To check your installation, run "glxinfo".
The output should contain the lines:

OpenGL vendor string: Imagination Technologies
OpenGL renderer string: PowerVR KYRO
OpenGL version string: 1.2.1

Hi mint, just got back from workin away a coupla days.

I built the powervr drivers from the tgz file. The 'custom' part of my distro is because I recompiled the 2.4.21-0.13mdk kernel, so that I could build and compile the Conexant drivers for my ADSL card.

The version of my KYRO drivers is powervr-2.01.21-7

I saw in the 2.6.6 docs,that support for the KYRO is able to be compiled as a module, or in the kernel. StiG Microelectronics or something like it. Its in the video character devices section I think.

Trouble is, I'm on Mandrake 9.1 at mo, and to upgrade stuff to compile the 2.6.6 breaks my sytem. I know, Ive done it already. Luckily I'm back to a working system in about 1hr or so. Thank God for CD-RW (even tho mine blew up a month or so back lol)

If you know of a glxinfo/gears prog for Win98 that reports fps etc, I could boot to Windoze to test what my card should be able to achieve.

Catchya l8r

Jon

I would run half life and see how many fps you get in windows etc.
as far as the 2.6.6 breaks your system. You should make sure you have updated all of the necessary files before installing, like module init etc. all of those should be updated to the required minimum. I am sure mandrake 9.1 isn't 2.6 compatible out of the box.

did you try glxinfo? what exactly did it output? it is definitely driver related.