And again - building the right rig

[brodders]

Hi guys,

Asked this Q about a year ago (was it more??) - but can't find answer here or in old forums.

At some point when TCO is out, I will build a rig to play it on. My old U / UT experiences were on machines now decommissioned. I've still got the bits though. This will be a clean build onto a new HD.

Here is my intent - do chip in if you see something which can be improved on ...

Hardware Stuff

AMD dual-core 3.8gig cpu
1 gig ram
nVid 7300 video card with 128M

(like, this is so much an overkill !!)

...in a QUIET box. Now the tricky bit-

Software Stuff

Win 98 or XP ? I'm going for XP with SP2a right now

SATA hd (OK, that's hardware but don't think I can get 98 drivers for SATA)

Unreal or UT99? Going for UT99 + 436 + OldSkool

S3TC from Disk2 or one of the new reworked ones? That really should be a Q on the TCO thread.

UT Bonus packs - well, put them all on

...will that work? Missed anything?

Um OpenGL or DirectX9? I'll just see how that goes on the day.

..any particular driver? I will stick to nvidia though I do have a recent low-end Radeon somewhere (these cards always seemed to have something not quite right with the drivers, across many differing uses)

Anything else? Custom tweeks? 32 / 16 bit?

I'm very tempted to "clone" the initial build and created N instances of it with RTNP, ONP, NC and more on. Never finished 7B... forget why that was...

OK, so what have I messed up??


brodders

// course there is the low tech option; got a Pentium 266 on a Socket 7 box, upgraded to 96M of ECO ram and a noisy 3gig disk. I could find perhaps an S3Virge to finally cripple it with; did have the 2M ram one. Or I could leave in the ATI Rage3D. Still boots '98, faster then a 1.8 gig laptop into Vista. Enough. //

[UB_]

1)Your rig is pretty good. Unreal/UT has a problem with multiple-core machines. There's a fix somewhere, someone else will answer to this.00.
2)I have no problem with my XP with SP2.
3)UT99 + 436 + Oldskool.
4)The reworked ones are more suited for Unreal 1 as they work even in MP. In UT they work only in SP. I think a TCO developer should answer this. For now, go with the UT's second disk S3TC textures.
5)Having all four Bonus Packs for UT is a must nowadays.
6)TCO is going to have an own OpenGl driver, as far as I know.
7)32 bit in-game? I have that and it's okay for me.

[Darkon]

Win 98 or XP ? I'm going for XP with SP2a right now

Win 98 is not officially supported anymore. There is a forum somewhere that takes care of those 98 things and you get some great stuff there, but.. for example Adobe Acrobat Reader stops at version 6 for win 98/ME. It's gonna stop somewhere.. so i would recommend to use XP.

Unreal or UT99? Going for UT99 + 436 + OldSkool

Or get Unreal Anthology or Totally Unreal.. then you have both.

S3TC from Disk2 or one of the new reworked ones? That really should be a Q on the TCO thread.

I would suggest the reworked ones.. since they would include the regular S3TC stuff.

Um OpenGL or DirectX9? I'll just see how that goes on the day.

You cannot compare those, since they are totally different. OpenGL is a video driver.. DirectX isn't.

course there is the low tech option; got a Pentium 266 on a Socket 7 box, upgraded to 96M of ECO ram and a noisy 3gig disk. I could find perhaps an S3Virge to finally cripple it with; did have the 2M ram one. Or I could leave in the ATI Rage3D. Still boots '98, faster then a 1.8 gig laptop into Vista. Enough.

I would suggest to go for a faster rig.

[Raven]

4)The reworked ones are more suited for Unreal 1 as they work even in MP. In UT they work only in SP. I think a TCO developer should answer this. For now, go with the UT's second disk S3TC textures.

I have no idea . On unrealtexture.com, there are special reworked textures for UT. Anyway it doesn't matter which textures you're using. I'd suggest reworked (but never tested 'em though).

[Hellscrag]

I asked a similar question recently, although with an eye to UT3 rather than just UT. If you want to spend a bit more on a rig that should keep you competitive for the next few years, you might want to get a similar spec to the spec that I've ended up with.

Some useful discussions are also had in this thread with respect to Win XP / Vista and 32 / 64-bit.

http://www.unrealsp.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=218

[UB_]

After reading Raven's post, I'm now safer to say that the reworked S3TC textures are good to use. They should work everywhere in UT; the only confirmed exception is multiplayer.

[Raven]

http://www.unrealtexture.com/UT/Website ... xtures.htm more details. Those are created only for UT, so I assume they work in multi as well. I've downloaded 'em but didn't have a chance to test 'em.

[UB_]

http://www.unrealtexture.com/UT/Website/Downloads/Textures/Textures.htm more details. Those are created only for UT, so I assume they work in multi as well. I've downloaded 'em but didn't have a chance to test 'em.

Looks like this passed right under my nose and never realized it. I'm going to try them.

[brodders]

..all sounds like goodness; some great links here and feeling more confident about the new rig build.

Still not got a handle on the graphics stack after OpenGL != DirectX9 stuff.

This is likely wrong - but I'm thinking the signal path in the stack is:

game >> DirectX >> OpenGL >> card driver >> card firmware / hardware

..that really does not seem right to me.


and if someone can pls post "before / after" screenies for the new textures, that would be v.interesting!

brodders

[Semfry]

Is this just for UT or modern games too? Because if it's the latter then I'm pretty sure the 7300 is crap for anything the slightest bit new (of course, it should work fine if you only want to play UT).

[Ryu]

1)Your rig is pretty good. Unreal/UT has a problem with multiple-core machines. There's a fix somewhere, someone else will answer to this.00.

What types of problems? May be whats screwing up my game, since my old machine wasn't dual core.



Edit: Nvm found out.


HyperNl:

These issues can have more than one cause:

1. The first reason is power management / speedstep / Cool & Quiet technology which is found on many modern processors and especially in laptops. To play Unreal, you should disable these technologies, and set the power management profile to desktop or always on.

2. The second reason is vertical synchronisation or VSync. Especially on modern computers, Unreal can run at framerates of over 200 FPS. When this happens, the game will run faster. You will especially notice this when looking close to a wall. Because no monitor can display all those 200 frames per second, you should ENABLE the option of VSync (Vertical Synchronisation). VSync ensures that the number of rendered frames per second are not higher than what the monitor can display. This results in a more steady framerate and better image quality, and will also fix the overspeed issues.. You can enable VSync in the advanced options of the Windows display control panel, usually under a tab of your graphics card manufacturer. (ATI, Matrox, nVidia etc.)

3. When you have an nVidia graphics card, you'll need to DISABLE dual/multi core optimizations for Unreal.

4. The last reason is the dual core incompatibility. Unreal can run a bit choppy on SMP (Multiprocessor / dual core) systems. This is because the main thread is executed on one processor core, but sometimes the thread it constantly being switched from one core to the other and back. To avoid this behaviour, you can use the dual core fix.

After you applied the first three steps and still have a choppy framerate AND you have a SMP setup, get the dual core fix from the lab page. Please note that this is a tool for intermediate/advanced users.

http://hypernl.thenerdnetwork.net/downloads.htm#Tools

[Darkon]

This is likely wrong - but I'm thinking the signal path in the stack is:

game >> DirectX >> OpenGL >> card driver >> card firmware / hardware

..that really does not seem right to me.

afaik it is supposed to be:
game >> OpenGL >> DirectX >> card driver >> card firmware / hardware

Kind of.. directx is just a helper for the driver I think to make more of your hardware. Not just the card, but all of the machine.... To make your multimedia stuff run better in windows.
So maybe it's supposed to be like:
game >> OpenGL >> DirectX >> Windows >> card driver >> card firmware / hardware

Doesn't look right.. but directx is just to "enhance" multimedia under windows. (or did I already say that? )

[brodders]

Yep the 7300 is only for the older games like UT (and stuff like OpenArena, Sauerbrauten etc).

Mentioning those, I came across them in a Linux games CD and was well impressed; these are OpenGL only and run in the 70+ fps region on the 7300.


However the very last time I tried to install UT on a Linux box (about a year ago) the installer on CD2 would not run; well it is 10 years nearly. Oh well.

Will go with XP - far more stable then my old 98SE box ever was. Zero point to even think about Vista - what I've seen of looks smart, but nothing special + very slow. Crashwise - between 98SE and XP.


Anyone got the new compressed textures running??

[UB_]

Anyone got the new compressed textures running??

I have them, and I'm using the latest OpenGL drivers from OldUnreal. They work perfectly for me and they are amazing.