Connection, Framerate and Visual Tweaks
Framerate and Visual Tweaks
| We have compiled a variety of settings so see
which give you the best compromise between FPS and visual quality - Uppermost setting in
the table are best visual, lower FPS with the lowest visual quality and best FPS at the
bottom of the table. These settings provide far more flexibility than you can achieve by
using the in game menus. Sound does cause slowdown in Quake3 on some systems so we have
included sound tweaks. Be sure to visit the console
commands section to read about setting your com_hunkmegs, com_zonemegs
and com_soundmegs correctly. Please note that a lot of these tweaks and settings can be used in other Quake3 engine games such as Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory. Look very carefully at the curves, texture detail and HUD in the screenshots. There are differences, often subtle tweaks that result in over 60% increase in FPS. Aqua back in December 1999 used a variant of Lower Visual Quality, High FPS config to get 66-69 FPS in id software's demo002 with a Voodoo3 running at 800x600 on a Celeron 450. Enabling HSR in the Voodoo3/4/5 driver configuration tab will increase framerate substantially on fast CPUs as long as r_finish is set to "0" and vsync is disabled in the driver panel. The support for HSR in the latest and perhaps last ever 3dfx drivers is beta at this time and visual glitches are to be expected. Enabling Guardband clipping will help reduce CPU load, however do not enable both HSR and Guardband, only HSR or Guardband. If you have a dual processor system and your operating system and graphics card drivers support smp then enable dual processor support by using seta r_smp "1". Please be sure to read the FAQ How can I stop the frame rate / stuttering issues with dual core? If you are running Quake3 1.17 then be sure to also try the 1.17 point release speed .dlls available from ShugaShack and copy them to the baseq3 folder. The Quake 1.27g speed .dlls should be copied to the baseq3 folder and TeamArena 1.27g speed .dlls should be copied to the missionpack folder, all .dlls are from Shugashack. If you are running Quake3 1.32 and have an AMD CPU then be sure to try the AMD CPU Optimised DLLS for 1.32. Note that DLLs will not be loaded or used when playing on pure ( sv_pure "1" ) servers, to stop the warning dialog use the command com_blindlyLoadDLLs "1" . To test your FPS online type "cg_drawfps 1" at the console, when offline type "timedemo 1" and then "demo four" for Quake3 1.29, "demo demo127" for Quake3 1.27 or "demo demo002" for Quake3 1.17 . Lower console after demo has finished for FPS results. Once you have found a steady framerate you can limit FPS by using the console command 'com_maxfps'. If you wish to compare your older benchmarks for demo001 and demo002 in Quake3 1.27 then download the UC 1.17 Demos Converted for 1.27 Pack which were converted using [iQ]Strider's demo conversion utilty. We have created 'Intensive' demos for Team Arena, Quake3 1.1x, Quake3 1.27, Quake3 1.30/1.29 and Quake3 1.31 point releases that stress CPU and texture load. Quake3 1.17 users download the UC GuideDemo 1.17 demo pack. Quake3 1.27 users download the UC GuideDemo 1.27 or UC GuideTADemo 1.27 demo pack. Quake3 1.30/1.29 users download the UC GuideDemo 1.30/1.29 or UC GuideTADemo 1.30/1.29 demo pack Quake3 1.31 users download the UC GuideDemo 1.31 or UC GuideTADemo 1.31 demo pack Quake3 1.32 users download the UC GuideDemo 1.32 or UC GuideTADemo 1.32 demo pack All UC Guide demo packs contain two custom demos to be used for benchmarking and tweaking purposes that stress the graphics/cpu subsystem quite heavily but in different ways. Quake3 1.31, 1.30, 1.29, 1.27 and 1.17 Benchmark Instructions UCGuideDemo1 is recorded on the map Q3DM9 and is very texture intensive. UCGuideDemo2 is recorded on the map Q3DM17 and is very demanding on the CPU when many players are in view. Download and decompress the relevant UCGuideDemo pack ( UC GuideDemo 1.17 or UC GuideDemo 1.27 or UC GuideDemo 1.30/1.29 or UC GuideDemo 1.31 or UC GuideDemo 1.32 ) archive and copy the UCGuide0.pk3 or UCGuide1.pk3 or UCGuide3.pk3 or UCGuide4.pk3 to your baseq3 folder 1) Load Quake3 and enter the command "timedemo 1" at the console 2) Enter the command "demo UCGuideDemo1" or select UCGuideDemo1 from the demo menu 3) Wait until demo has finished and lower the console to see your average FPS 4) Repeat step 2 to 3 but this time replace UCGuideDemo1 with UCGuideDemo2 5) Adjust your settings/tweaks and repeat steps 2 to 4 until you find the settings with the best average FPS. Team Arena Benchmark Instructions UCGuideTADemo1 is recorded on the map MPTEAM7 and is very texture intensive. UCGuideTADemo2 is recorded on the map MPQ3CTF4 and is very demanding on the CPU when many players are in view. Download and decompress the relevant UC GuideTADemo pack ( UC GuideTADemo 1.27 or UC GuideTADemo 1.30/1.29 or UC GuideTADemo 1.31 or UC GuideTADemo 1.32 ) and copy the UCGuideTA0.pk3 or UCGuideTA1.pk3 or UCGuideTA2.pk3 or UCGuideTA3.pk3 to your baseq3 folder 1) Load Quake3 and enter the command "timedemo 1" at the console 2) Enter the command "demo UCGuideTADemo1" or select UCGuideTADemo1 from the demo menu 3) Wait until demo has finished and lower the console to see your average FPS 4) Repeat step 2 to 3 but this time replace UCGuideTADemo1 with UCGuideTADemo2 5) Adjust your settings/tweaks and repeat steps 2 to 4 until you find the settings with the best average FPS. Note that framerates no longer affect network performance as they did in Quake 1 and 2. A high FPS will not give you an advantage and similarly a low FPS will not give you a disadvantage as long as you are not 'stuttering' due to it being below your snaps setting. Your FPS has an affect on Quake3 physics - See Why Your Framerate Affects Jumping! for more information. Please make sure that you read the Display and Rendering Tweak Notes at the foot of this page. |
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Best Visual Quality, Lowest FPS //Quake3 & TeamArena |
High Visual Quality, Low FPS //Quake3 & TeamArena |
Good Visual Quality, Medium FPS //Quake3 & TeamArena |
Best Visual/FPS Compromise //Quake3 & TeamArena |
Lower Visual Quality, High FPS //Quake3 & TeamArena |
Worst Visual Quality, Best FPS //Quake3 & TeamArena |
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NOTE: ** Users of Geforce2 MX cards or any card that supports a zbuffer that can be different to colour depth can set this to 16 for extra FPS ( seta r_depthbits "16" ) |
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| Display and Rendering Tweak Notes | |
| cg_oldRail cg_oldRocket cg_oldPlasma |
Controls the appearance of weapon explosions and particle effects in 1.29
or above. Enabling the new effects (0 for cg_oldxxxx) will usually mean you lose
FPS. |
| cg_noProjectileTrail | Controls the projectile trail (smoke etc) for weapons in 1.29 or above.
Disabling the projectile trail can help with FPS or visibility |
| cg_hudFiles | Controls the type or layout of the HUD being displayed, in Team Arena a
smaller HUD gives you a slight gain in FPS. |
| r_inGameVideo | Team Arena maps have pre-recorded 'videos' of the level being played
shown on 'monitors' in some area. This cvar disables or enables them being shown, quite a
gain in FPS when disabled. 1 is enabled, 0 is disabled |
| s_doppler | Team Arena and Quake3 1.27g or above play a sound when, for example, you
overtake a projectile that has been fired. This is called the 'doppler' effect and
disabling it gives a minor improvement to FPS. 1 is enabled, 0 is disabled |
| cg_scorePlums | Controls the showing of the floating score bubbles in Team Arena and
quake3 1.27g or above. 1 is enabled, 0 is disabled |
| cg_draw3dIcons | The HUD defaults to display ammunition, 'head', last attacker etc. using
3D models. You can gain FPS by forcing those to a 2D icon or sprite and not lose any HUD
information. 0 disables drawing of 3D icons on the HUD and forces 2D icons, 1 enables 3D
icons on the HUD. |
| r_ext_compressed_textures r_ext_compress_textures |
See notes in r_roundImagesDown and r_texturebits sections. These settings
control the video cards texture compression option if it exists. This alleviates the
problems with texture thrashing and AGP memory bandwidth problems when levels are played
that are texture intensive. Helps FPS at the expense of visual quality, note that r_ext_compressed_textures
is the cvar to used for 1.27g and above and r_ext_compress_textures is the cvar
to be used for 1.17 and below. |
| com_blood cg_gibs |
Controls the showing of blood or gibs on the screen, on it's own a very
minor FPS increase. When combined with gibs disabled this gives a large improvement to FPS
1 is enabled, 0 is disabled |
| cg_marks |
Controls the showing of marks or decals when a weapon's projectile hits
ground, walls etc. Helps with FPS when disabled. 1 is enabled, 0 is disabled |
| cg_brassTime | Controls how long the 'brass' or 'cartridges' are left on the ground when
using weapons such as Machinegun and Shotgun. Helps with FPS when disabled. Range is 0 to
3000 with 0 being disabled |
| cg_trueLightning | Controls the lightning gun shaft, similar to OSP and CMPA truelightning.
Try values of 0, 0.5 and 1. |
| r_swapInterval | Controls vsync in Quake3 and defaults to 0 which is vsync off. Set to 1
to reduce tearing problems, you may lose FPS as it will be capped to monitor refresh rate. |
| r_drawSun | Controls the way lighting of models and objects is handled by simulating
effects of sunlight. Defaults to 0 which is the suggested setting, 1 is enabled, 0 is
disabled. |
| r_flares | Controls drawing of flares on maps that have them. Helps with FPS when
disabled. 1 is enabled, 0 is disabled |
| r_subdivisions | Controls world geometry, range 1 to 10000 where 10000 is lowest geometry
and 1 is highest. Over 90 causes visual problems such as see through walls or smearing of
textures on curved surfaces for some maps. If you are only playing on the ThreeWave or
standard CTF maps then this can be set to 999 with no visual problems. |
| r_lodCurveError | Controls distance at which curves are dropped, range 0 to 10000 where 0
is always drop curves and 10000 is never drop curves. |
| r_lodBias | Controls model or weapon etc mipmap/geometry detail, range -2 to +2 where
+2 is lowest geometry and -2 is highest. |
| cg_shadows | If you wish to have high quality shadows and your driver supports it set
this to 2 and make sure that r_stencilbits is set to 8 and r_depthbits is set to 24.
Unless you have a hardware stencil buffer a setting of 2 will be very CPU intensive. A
setting of 3 will create lifelike shadows, however again with a CPU performance hit.
Disabling shadows using 0 will give a large boost to FPS. |
| cg_simpleItems | Setting this to 1 can greatly increase your framerates if you have a slow
CPU and are not using a graphics card with a GPU / T&L unit such as a Radeon,
Savage2000 or Geforce. Weapons, powerups and ammunition will be shown as icons rather than
fully rendered models. |
| cg_forceModel | Setting this to 1 will force all models to be the same character as
yourself. Really only of use when playing on internet servers as the variety of models
used is far greater and results in more memory and graphics card load than the single
player game. Best suited for tweaking if you have less than 128 Megabytes of memory and
play online a lot. |
| r_fastsky | Try to keep this set to 0 so you can see through portals and see
opponents reflections in mirrors. When set to 0 you also not have the problem of a blank
sky causing legibility problems when reading team/player messages on some systems that
display sky as white. FPS gain with good drivers is minimal 0.2 FPS or so, however when
you are near a portal or mirror the FPS hit will be quite large. If you really need the
FPS then set r_fastsky to 1 and use a toggle key such as bind f toggle r_fastsky
so you can see through portals and reflections in mirrors as and when needed. |
| r_finish | Set this to 1 if you experience the FPS induced keyboard/mouse input lag
with some graphic cards. Setting this to 0 will increase framerate but you may experience
the problem mentioned. With the new beta HSR Voodoo3/4/5 drivers you should leave this at
0 to gain benefits if you have HSR enabled. |
| r_textureMode | Controls the method used for texturing 7 filtering ( bilinear ,
trilinear etc.), on majority of cards available bilinear filtering is much faster than
trilinear. |
| r_colorbits | Voodoo 3 and Banshee users can benefit from the 32bit setting with no
slowdown. While the 3dfx cards mentioned cannot display 32bit you do get improved visuals
by setting this to 32 with some OpenGL or driver sets such as Wicked3D. This is mainly due
to the 3dfx post filter on the Voodoo range of cards dithering to 22bit. If you have a card capable of 32 bit rendering that has limited fillrate such as a TNT, TNT2 or a Geforce SDR card that you are running at 800x600 or above then you should try setting this to 16 for a FPS gain. |
| r_vertexLight | Quake3 can use two forms of lighting on maps, Vertex and lightmap. Vertex
lighting requires no lightmap for textures and can help when texture memory is limited,
albeit making the game ugly. Lightmap is default in all modes except fastest and is the
preferred method. 1 is Vertex lighting enabled, 0 is disabled |
| r_ignorefastpath | This cvar determines if the rendering engine uses the fast shader
rendering path of either diffuse lighting or multi-texture lighting. Defaults to 1 and on
some driver sets a setting of 0 will give minimal FPS gain. |
| r_detailtextures | If a shader has a detail stage this setting determines if it is rendered
or not. Defaults to 1 but 0 may give minimal FPS gain. |
| r_texturebits | If you have a card that supports 32 bit rendering but have limited
texture memory due to running at high resolutions try setting this to 16 while keeping
r_colorbits at 32. Example, on a Geforce 32MB DDR running at 1024x768+ you may wish to set
this to 16 in order to stop texture thrashing on maps such as Q3DM9 and MPTEAM7. |
| r_depthbits | This controls the z buffer depth used, defaults to 24 bits when using 32
bit colour but some driver sets support 16 bit z buffer depth when rendering in 32 bit
colour. If you have a card that supports 32 bit rendering but have limited memory or
memory bandwidth due to running at high resolutions or a card with SDRAM then try setting
this to 16. If you notice visual problems set this back to it's default of 0 which then
uses desktop colour depth. |
| r_roundImagesDown | When textures need to be resized they are rounded up or down based on the
value of the r_roundImagesDown cvar setting. A setting of 1 or 2 results in less detailed textures as they are being rounded down when they need to be resized, this means less chance of speed problems and running out of local texture memory on the card. A setting of 0 means more detailed textures as they are rounded up when they need to be resized but can result in texture thrashing and slowdowns. Bad drivers or AGP texturing problems can cause the machine to lockup when local texture memory is full. Note that round_down is not the same as picmip. Picmip is texture mipmap size of the original texture, round_down determines how that texture is resized. |
| s_khz | Controls sound quality, a setting of 11 is low quality sound and a
setting of 22 is high quality sound. Helps with FPS when sound is set to low quality |
| s_musicvolume | Self explanatory, control the volume of the in game music. A setting of 0
disables music and helps with FPS or stuttering. |
| s_mixahead | Controls the delay used to mix and combine sounds, if set too low can
cause 'crackles' and 'distortion' or reduced sound quality. Can help with FPS, default
setting is 0.2 but a setting of 0.14 seems a 'safe' compromise on majority of systems for
that little bit extra FPS. Avoid setting this cvar to less than 0.1 or you will experience
sound problems. In 1.27h a new algorithm automatically determines the amount of sound
frames to be mixed ahead so this cvar in 1.27h is redundant. |
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