Shader 3.0, Linux, Windows, Performance...

[drunk_harlot]

I'd been staying away from trying to run anything above shader 2.0 due to huge a huge performance drop the first time I attempted it, but I changed to shader 3.0 again today, pulled down all the terrain distance and detail to bottom, and only ran medium textures, I got an FPS of around 70 in the clear and 45 outside Samal with a few other players. Haven't tried war yet...

(this might be playable, we shall see)


I just wanted to see how RO looked with the new prettiness for a bit I guess.


My issue is I'm running an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU @ 2.40 GHZ, 3 GIG of memory and a GeForce 7600 GT Nvidia card, running kubuntu 9.10 with the latest distro recommended drivers. On Windows games I run through Wine I get blinding performance with high detail settings. Now, before anyone gets spikey, I do understand this isn't a large corporate game, and isn't going to have the same performance (I've followed RO from the beginning, ignoring my 1.08 holiday period).

However...


I'm just curious as to how other players with both Linux and Windows systems are finding things now the dust has settled, what settings are people playing with, how powerful are their systems etc. It's just disappointing I can run some really pretty games through an emulation layer, on a reasonably modern system, yet on RO I'm struggling to get a playable FPS with the new technology at all.

[Syd_Vicious]

I run a dual boot system with individual hard drives for each OS between Windows 7 x64 and Ubuntu 10.04 32 bit (alpha 3 is pretty stable for me). Running the 195 NVidia Drivers through shader 4.0 with all settings turned down accept for animation qualities @ 1600 x 900 windowed, I can get anywhere from 200 fps down to 45 fps in large battle situations through direct x, in linux with the 195 beta drivers I typically get between 150-50 fps @ 1280 x 1024 windowed through OpenGL. Driver performance might improve in linux once the driver is out of beta for the distro.

I play with most items turned down for part of that more classic feel, but also because I think the way shadows are done cause to much of an impact on video card performance. Due to previous texture issues when the new client was first released I dont really trust those settings for textures anymore. My 150 fps high in linux can turn into a 60 fps high real quick with shadows enabled with horrible lows in combat. In windows through direct x the shadows make the fps take a nose dive, but not as dramatic as what I have seen in my linux client.

One thing I have noticed in Windows is that it seems that my Character switching takes a lot less time than in Linux. In Windows I never wait more than 20 seconds to switch between character A logging out and getting to the character selection screen. In linux I seem to have waited a minute or longer in some cases where I thought I just stalled getting to the character selection screen.

My Base system is as follows
PHENOM X3 720 BE
3 gig of ram
NVIDIA 9600 GT
Windows 7 on an 80 gig SATA drive
Linux on a 250 gig SATA drive

[SlackerLinux2]

you should be able to max the settings on your system syd

mines an AMD x2 6000+(3.0ghz) 2gb ram and GF 9600gt with latest drivers and it is quite happy with everything maxed i get 90fps - about 25-30fps(depends on where i am and whats going on doesn't get much lower then this) on shader model 4.

the engine changes isn't really showing how well it can look yet we wont start to see that until all the assets for the game start to get upgraded.

[Linuxmage]

I'm playing with a 5 year old AMD 64 3000+, 1Gb RAM, GeForce6200 256Mb graphics card. I cant improve on this card though as it is an agp 8x port, and I havent seen any better nvidia cards for sale locally that are better than this, but on AGP.

As it is, the card technically supports shader 3.0, but I only get 1-2FPS with that, and on fixed pipeline, I can get about 35-40fps.

That unfortunately is the best I can do.

[Darcyeti]

Originally Posted by Linuxmage

I'm playing with a 5 year old AMD 64 3000+, 1Gb RAM, GeForce6200 256Mb graphics card. I cant improve on this card though as it is an agp 8x port, and I havent seen any better nvidia cards for sale locally that are better than this, but on AGP.

As it is, the card technically supports shader 3.0, but I only get 1-2FPS with that, and on fixed pipeline, I can get about 35-40fps.

That unfortunately is the best I can do.

You could use the 6200 512MB. Not much more FPS, but staying stable on Shader 2.0 (of course thats under windows at my pc)

[Arafails]

Originally Posted by Linuxmage

I'm playing with a 5 year old AMD 64 3000+, 1Gb RAM, GeForce6200 256Mb graphics card. I cant improve on this card though as it is an agp 8x port, and I havent seen any better nvidia cards for sale locally that are better than this, but on AGP.

As it is, the card technically supports shader 3.0, but I only get 1-2FPS with that, and on fixed pipeline, I can get about 35-40fps.

That unfortunately is the best I can do.

Interesting. I'm playing on a similar spec system:
Athlon64 3200+ (2.5GHz)
1.5GB DDR2 (RO's VM doesn't exceed 850MB verfy often though)
ATI Radeon HD2600 (AGP 8x, 256MB)

I'm using Debian unstable with the 10.2 Catalyst drivers.

I get 15-60 fps on shader model 4.0 depending on where I'm looking. Fixed pipeline rarely drops below 100fps. That difference bothers me a little ... are the shaders being uploaded to the GPU more often than they need to be? oO

[drunk_harlot]

Thanks for the replies all, I just wanted to make sure everyone else with a reasonable spec system wasn't throwing all the the new glitter on and saying goodbye to FPS worries


If we're all suffering roughly equally that's just fine lol

[JzJ75]

I too use shader model 4.0 and running above 100fps(avg 120fps) ,
I'm using
Ubuntu 9.10 32bit
9.10 Catalyst drivers
ATI 4670 512MB 1440x900 res. (overdrive enabled and card bumped to core 770Mhz , mem 1025Mhz.)
AMD Phenom II 720 2.8Ghz
4GB Ram

setting ----
Shadows ON - low setting
Multi Texture On - med settings
Teranin Detail Off (don't really like the way the grass looks)
Post Process FULL
Particles & Weather On

[Immune]

I don't even have the option to use shader 3.0... it's not in the list of shaders I can choose from. There are only fixed pipeline and 2.0. Other options I'm restricted from using are shadows, terrain detail, and hardware skinning (don't even know what that is).
Everything else I use at medium/high options, and get 30-40fps. (Good considering I used to have to deal with 15-25fps on low settings).

I think it's because I use an unsupported video card. That's what it says in the options anyways... unsupported hardware.

Windows Vista™ Home Basic
Genuine Intel(R) CPU 2140 @ 1.60GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.6GHz
2036MB RAM
96 GB drive
Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chipset Family

[Syd_Vicious]

Originally Posted by linuxslacker2

you should be able to max the settings on your system syd ... the engine changes isn't really showing how well it can look yet we wont start to see that until all the assets for the game start to get upgraded.

Part 1. I don't run my system maxed out because the shadows are a pet peeve of mine, it is more personal preference on my part - I can't stand to see shadows of objects floating on other objects without a trailing shadow back to the light blocking object. Also during the GMT -0700 nights the server seems to be very fickle on Horus and individuals with high performance systems and low performance systems alike suffer as lag drops all fps.

Part 2. I may run my system at higher levels later once everything is polished in a couple months/years.