🚀 go-pugleaf

There are 101 ways to improve your PC's improvement besides upping the
CPU type/speed/brand,, or adding more RAM or splashing out for a new
video card (even though this all helps a lot quicker).. A poorly setup
system will not getting radically better by adding more bits and
pieces. You may indeed just amplify the problem(s) while partially
sacrificing some of the potential performance gain...

Regular maintenance,like a clean registry, defragging regularly,
updated drivers and system files, may well be just a few of the many
ways to help things. Then there are also the hidden things which may
not improve, but may decrease system performance,,, viruses (virii for
the purests).. There are also other things to consider like all those
friggin icons in the taskbar which load up at bootup time.. These each
rob a small amount of RAM and slowly degrade gaming performance. I
have seen PC's which have maybe a dozen icons in the taskbar and the
owners complain of the time it takes to bootup. I wonder why...  I
cannot get it throught their thick skulls how saturating this way
is... Not only that, but with each icon present in the taskbar, you
run the risk of having memory clashes which result in hung games,
crashes, or just slower games...

Here's the BIGGEST software trick which may improve or degrade your
gaming performance. I am going through it right now... It's called
"Having the correct Operating System"...

I have gone on about the virtues of Win98SE over XP for games, in the
past and in the present, and even this very evening, I still verify
the fact (at least in my small computer world) that Win98 SE pisses
all over XP for game performance. I cannot say that this statement
could be universally applied to all computer users, as I haven't seen
every system. But,, on the other hand I cannot say that adding more
hardware (which has been suggested) to enhance XP's performance is a
logical approach to "fixing" things.. You simply don't buy an O/S then
build a PC around it. You update O/S's onto an existing PC. All things
being equal,, your system should be at least as good as it was with
its previous O/S or maybe even better. I think I am not the only one
to admit that XP is an exception to that suggestion, at least in many
cases for those who updated from Win98SE... It offers many things
which 98 doesn't but it simply wont comply totally when it comes to
games...

At the moment, I run both O/S's side by side on removable HDD's and in
every case where I have the same game installed on both HDD's,, 98SE
comes out ontop when it comes to share game speed and performance. The
"one" thing that XP has over 98 is that it looks better. In some
cases,, a lot better but I soon grow tired of good looking scenery and
textures if the game begins to act like a slug...

With UT2003,, I have changed many settings in XP and I have finally
got some reasonable performance out of it. In 98SE, I can shunt these
settings upwards and still have better speed...

I have an XP2000+ CPU and with at least one of my O/S's I can say that
I do not need to go any higher to get good performance out of UT2003.
Of course a better CPU will always ultimately help things along, but
this almost a universal fact of computer life... I am not sure if your
baseline of an XP2100 as being the minimum CPU is valid or not but I
think as time goes on, you will be able to go higher with that
"minimum" desired standard of acceptance for UT2003 and indeed any
game.. It really depends on how we define "playable" and
"acceptable"...

It has been an interesting chat...

May the gods of UT2003 smile down at us all.......


On 22 Jan 2003 10:31:47 -0800, lld...@yahoo.com (LL Deja) wrote:

>I don't have any background programs running.  Also, changing
>resolution settings hardly makes any difference either.  The thing is
>that once I decided to push the speed to near 1660MHz by putting the
>FSB to 144, I started getting much better results, around 50 to 60
>fps.
>
>I got 10576 in my 3D Mark benchmark, which showed that my Graphics
>card is performing as expected compared to other 1800+ CPUs and isn't
>being slowed down by some background app.  All this indicates to me
>that even my Athlon 1800+ is a bottleneck for a game like UT2003
>because whatever graphics details is thrown at the 9700 can be handled
>well, but it's the physics of the bots running around the map which
>saturates the CPU so much.  I checked benchmarks with that of
>Anandtech.com, and the numbers seem to check out where even the 2.8GHz
>P4 is only achieving around 66 at 1024x768.
>
>So my bottom line, UT2003 players should have at least an Athlon XP
>2100+ to get something playable.
>
>"Jules Augley" <aug...@HOMEbtinternet.com> wrote in message news:<b0lohc$fkt$1...@knossos.btinternet.com>...
>> "Johnny5" <know...@knowhere.com> wrote in message
>> news:LyqX9.31408$vd6.6193979@news3.news.adelphia.net...
>> > I would check and make sure you don't have some cheesy program running at
>> > startup sucking up all your cpu cycles. I have seen some programs put the
>> > cpu in 100% utilization......Not good. Also disable any antivirus program
>> > you have when you play games.
>> > "LL Deja" <lld...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> > news:c4d04f8b.0301212001.303ccd2b@posting.google.com...
>> > > I just got my Radeon 9700 (non-pro) and expected to be able to fly in
>> > > Unreal Tournament 2003, but in DM-Antalus with 8 bots and the
>> > > following settings (1024x768 32bit and most of the bells and whistles
>> > > turned on to High), I am getting an average of 39 FPS.  Is this
>> > > normal?  I am using all the default settings that came with the driver
>> > > installation.
>> > >
>> > > I have the driver date 12/18/2002 (not sure what driver version) from
>> > > the ATI website.
>> > >
>> > > I have Athlon 1800+, 512MB, and Epox 8KHA+.  My CPU might not be top
>> > > of the line, but 39 FPS just plain sucks.  Any help would be
>> > > appreciated.  I have also found my Unreal Tournament (non-2003)
>> > > framerate to have not improved much either at 1024x768.
>> >
>> >
>> If you are running the benchmarks in the UT2003/Benchmark folder then that
>> is about right. I have 9700 pro on XP2400+ and I get just over 41fps at the
>> same settings. If it is not the benchmark exe then I know nothing.
>> 
>> Jules