[[Enhance the ATI Experience]]
It is, of course, a well known fact that Doom 3 is a game which performs best when using boards by nVidia. This has left ATI fans frustrated and eager for a driver update or some other fix. Since ATI has not yet responded, a way of improving the way Doom 3 handles on ATI cards has been posted on the Beyond3D forums. According to the author, the performance increase can increase frame rate from 34fps in 1280x1024 to 48fps. Changes would, of course, depend on each individual set-up. A further suggestion from the forum is that the fix really kicks-in if vsync is enabled. Please feel free to post your experience with the fix on the MegaGames Forums.
The fix involves changing some code which can be found in the Doom 3 pak000.pk4 file. For those not interested in the technical side of the fix, an already changed file is available by following the download tab above. Extract so that the shader file goes under doom3baseglprogs. This replaces a dependent texture read with equivalent math, which runs better on ATI cards, but seems to run slower on NV boards, so only apply this if you got an ATI card.
...this should be good enough proof that ATI hardware can run Doom3 just as good if not better than nVidia, and that we can pass on all the "ATI suck in OpenGL", "ATI's drivers suck" etc. into the trashcan where it belongs.
The full, do-it-yourself, fix is as follows:
I picked up Doom3 today and let be begin by saying it's a kickass game so far. A few minuses like weapon reload (which I find add nothing to a game, except annoyance, so I don't know why many devs keep adding it to their games), but overall much above my expectations.
Anyway, to the fun part, exploring the technology.
I think I've found the source of why this game runs comparably slow on ATI hardware vs. nVidia at the moment, and found a solution to the problem.
First, open your doom3base folder. Doubleclick on the pak000.pk4 file. In the "window can't open this file .. .bla bla" dialog, go on and associate the file with an app like WinRar. With this file open in WinRar, go to the glprogs directory in the file. In there you'll find the shaders. The interaction.vfp file seems to be the main rendering shader. Altering this shader to output a constant color turns most objects into that constant color, except for stuff like computer screens etc.
So doubleclick the interaction.vfp file to open it (you may have to associate the .vfp extension with a text editor like notepad or wordpad first since we're going to edit the file). Scroll down to the fragment shader. You'll find these rows:
Code:
PARAM subOne = { -1, -1, -1, -1 };
PARAM scaleTwo = { 2, 2, 2, 2 };
Add this right below them:
Code:
PARAM specExp = { 16, 0, 0, 0 };
Now scroll down to this:
Code:
# perform a dependent table read for the specular falloff
TEX R1, specular, texture[6], 2D;
Comment out that line by adding a "#" to it, and add another line that will do the same thing with math instead, so it should look like this:
Code:
# perform a dependent table read for the specular falloff
# TEX R1, specular, texture[6], 2D;
POW R1, specular.x, specExp.x;
Save the file and close your text editor. WinRar will ask if you want to update the file in the archive, select yes. Close WinRar and enjoy about 40% higher performance in Doom3. Haven't done extensive testing yet, but my performance went from 34fps in 1280x1024 to 48fps.
Conclusion and discussion:
I don't want to complain about Carmack's work, I still consider him to be the industry leader in graphics engines. Though when I read the shader it striked me how many texture accesses it did compared to the relatively short shader, even for stuff that could just as well be done with math for a small cost in instructions. Using a dependent texture lookup for POW evaluation makes a lot of sense for R200 level hardware due to instruction set limits, but for R300 and up it's much better to just spend the three cycles it takes to evaluate POW with math instead of risking texture cache trashing with a dependent texture read, which may be much more costly, especially since the access pattern in this case will be far from linear. Also, using math improves the quality too, even though it may not be very noticable in this game.
I should point out though that I'm not sure if the constant specular factor 16 that I chose is the one that the game uses, so output may be slightly different, but if this solution will be worked into the game in a future patch, then this is easily configurable by the game so that there won't be a difference, except a lot faster.
An interesting follow-up discussion may be why this dependent texture lookup is much slower on our hardware than on nVidia. Maybe there's an architectural difference that's to blame, or maybe something else? The main point here though is that this should be good enough proof that ATI hardware can run Doom3 just as good if not better than nVidia, and that we can pass on all the "ATI suck in OpenGL", "ATI's drivers suck" etc. into the trashcan where it belongs.
[[Previous Doom 3 Optimizations]]
Doom 3 has caused upheaval in the gaming community, especially since most players lack the necessary specs to make the most of their experience. Thanks to our readers we have traced a few ways that most gamers can enhance their experience fighting the hell-breathing monsters that are after their fellow marines.
Light at the end of the barrel
While gamers everywhere are struggling to calm their trigger fingers following the Doom 3 experience, many are already complaining about the need for more light. Thanks to a bit of duct tape and a lot of ingenuity, Glen 'FrenZon' Murphy has created the Duct Tape Mod, a solution to all our Mars vision troubles. A link to the files and a brief description of the mod is available by following the download tab above.
Cheap Cards Not Choppy Games
Another kind soul has taken pity on the poor gamers tackling Doom 3 with the Radeon 8500, 9000 and 9200 series of cards and has released a Graphics Optimization Guide, guaranteed to solve the OpenGL Blues of all low-end ATI card owners. A link to the guide is also available by following the download tab above.
Finally a kind Megagames reader, you know who you are Slijkhuis, has sent in another way to get a very definite performance boost. This guide works by releasing a lot of CPU resources and manages to do so by eliminating the need to decompress data while playing the game. According to our benefactor, there is a catch! By using the fix, you temporarily can't connect to pure multiplayer servers. You have been warned (although there is a way back)
The Guide
After installation, the Doom III Folder consists only of the doom3.exe and some .PK4 files. Those PK4 files includes the entire game (sounds, videos, textures etc.) compressed. They are normally uncompressed in mid game, which is very hard on your CPU. We can unpack them and thus take the strain of your CPU.
1. Make a copy of ALL the files in C:Program FilesDoom 3base. This is some big filage, but if you want to revert to MP without reinstalling you need to do it.
2. Unrar the following .pk4 files (just pretend they are .rar's and open them with winrar) into the C:Program FilesDoom 3base folder (each one should unrar a single folder such as textures or models):
pak000.pk4
pak001.pk4
pak002.pk4
pak003.pk4
pak004.pk4 (This one has many files, put them all in Base and overright any that apply.
3. Now delete the files above (pak000-004) or move them to another folder for storage so you can revert to multiplayer.
When you want to revert to multiplayer, restore everything you had before and get rid of the new stuff. I'm not sure if the folder maps is the same or not, so make sure you back that up.
When in the original Doom3 /base folder (that is, before the unpacking), you would have thse folders and files "maps" "savegames" "config.spec" "doomConfig.cfg" "doomkey" game00.pk4" and "gamex86.dll", nothing else.
ALSO DO THIS! If you open DoomConfig.cfg (C:programfilesdoom3base) in notepad and change (make sure to save a backup copy) seta image_cacheMegs "32" to a higher number, such as 128 or 265 (depends on RAM, use 256 for a gig, 128 for 512mb) you will see a big increase too. You also have to change the seta image_useCache to "1" and seta image_cacheMinK to approx "20480" (or higher)
There you have it, since the CPU wont have to unpack the textures, sounds, etc...there is a MASSIVE performance increase at the expense of no MP and requiring more HD space.
Please feel free to post your experiences using these fixes and Mod in the User Comments section.
SHOW COMMENTS (324)
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Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Jet Black (not verified) onThe question is, whether it will come. Hopefully sept 30th
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Daniel (not verified) onI can't play doom 3 on asus 9600 se, Windows xp sp2, amd xp 2600+, 512mb ram. Why?
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onsucks to have an ati right now :-(
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by DIp (not verified) onRight anyway the reason why people dont buy new computers is because...believe it or not...there are better things to spend over £1000. Its jsut sad when you see people wasting all their money on somehting that will be obsolete by next year. Anyway this guide worked well. I got a 2.6Ghz with GeForce FX5200. It was crap before on Medium but now works great. Thanks!
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Middleman (not verified) onDoom2 < Doom3
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onte rog frumos care este parola la level monorali este un tren nu poate intra cauza parola latren te rog la domm 3
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onwhich one do u have?I got the 9600 sapphire ;x
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Pesho (not verified) onGood blog
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onis anyone here gonna talk about the performance change from the guide given to u guys?
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Sinisterambo (not verified) onThese are not my words but are interesting.How to run doom 3!I've been hearing a lot of stuff going around about how to run doom 3 better, how to improve your pc's performance with this monster of a game.Thats great and all, but the information on offer is complete nonsense and sometimes damaging. So here's my guide to running Doom 3 succesfully.But first the rumours.The first one i'm going to mention is the misleading torrent which was posted with an incorrect title, 'improve doom 3's running', or something like that, under the games section of a well known torrent site. This torrent in fact leads to a program known as GameGain. This is an app which claims to tweak your pc for you (because you arn't supposed to understand the technicalities of tweaking it says in the read-me) and improve the running of all games. DON'T TOUCH THIS PROGRAM. It does very little to improve your pc. In fact the first version of this program causes an error in the system registery by altering a value to a mispelt and incorrect value. Not only that but all tweaks made by the program are kept secret, if the program were to inform the user of how to tweak, what it does and the risks involved, fine. But to allow some internet based company free run on your pc is just plain dumb. Every pc is differant and tweaks will not react the same way on all of them. If you are interested in tweaking your version of windows, go to a reputable tweak site and do some research, then do it yourself.Second one i've heard that is worrying is a tweak which was posted saying to open one of the .cfg files within the doom 3 folder and change a value to improve performance. The value changed is part of the backup cache for imaging. Changing this value will in fact decrease performance by robbing the system of some of the ram necessary to run the game. It was also pretty obvious that the guy had no idea what he was doing with these figures, this is also just plain dumb. Never open any system rela
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Sinisterambo (not verified) onCont..Never open any system related file, neither for a game or anything else, and change values unless you absolutely know what you are doing. Even if some kid on the internet says it worked for him. Just don't mess with the numbers unless you know what those numbers mean. Anyone who offers a tweak to the variables which actually works will always explain what it does and why it works as a rule. If someone just says 'open file x and change value y to z, it worked for me', they're full of it and may damage your pc.Third one, which is not really dangerous, just noobish, was a rumour posted about unpacking the .pk4 files using winrar. The author claimed 'Either the people at id software are just stupid (lol!) or they have an agreement with hardware manufacturers to force people into buying new hardware by using compressed files to store the game data (textures, sounds, etc), which take more processing power to unpack and load than if the files were stored in an uncompressed state'. Game companies have in fact been using these pak type files since the first doom was released which contained similair files with the extension .wad, these files are NOT compressed, they act like folders in windows. Files which hold a directory of other files and folders. So by unpacking them all you do is alter the path needed to get to these files. In actual fact, doom 3 will take a minute extra amount of time to find these files because the expected .pk4 files are missing and it has to search for the needed file. To turn this normal practice of game folder managment into a conspiracy between id software and unnamed hardware manufacturers is incredibly paranoid and very nieve. Again if someone gives you advice based on wild claims and not hardware/software related facts, just don't listen to them.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) oncheapest way to play doom3? buy an xbox...
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Sinisterambo (not verified) onNo, I think you'll find that simply
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by DM (not verified) onlol to Jet Black with his big headphones on his *** :) (or something)I agree with the scarey ****, Im in the UK so I still have a few days to wait to get Doom3 (dammit!) but im gonna lock myself away for a few days in my living room with the lights out and the sound turned WAY UP and have me some zombie blasting fun :DI got some nice surround sound (none of that creative labs speaker crap that give out 10 watts but a real home cinema setup that makes the room shake) so its gonna be so **** creepy.By the way guys, just an observation here, if you want more immersion in a game invest a bit of money in some decent sound hardware - even a £50 pair of headphones sounds WAY better than crappy PC speakers you find in PC World and they would sound better than most of the Creative Labs 4.1 speakers too. I was playing Halo on my PC last night and I just got an Audigy 2zs linked up to my cinema amp and I didnt know it before but Halo has got propper 5.1 audio built in and it sounded sweet! With games that make an effort with the sound it DOES go a long way towards better immersion. For the people that find Doom3 a bit lacking give it a go, it may change your opinion a bit.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) onoh i agree, don't get me wrong.. i've spent thousands upgrading my pc over the years to get the best grahics i can, but thats my choice thats why i've got a pc... so i get the best. too many people moaning about there ageing systems, no-one said owning a pc was cheap.i remember playing quake for the first time, thinking **** i need more ram ,4mb was then £275!
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by hard core crap (not verified) onAnonymousat 20:44 9/8/2004whats this crap about True Gamers?Thats exactly what it is - CrapPeople who claim to be True Gamers are basicaly looking to increase their social standing from
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by DM (not verified) onabout the Xbox comment, I know a lot of poeple like to slag stuff off in here but i personally like the Xbox, considering the hardware spec and the age of it I think its great that Doom3 will be coming out on it and I know Im gonna get Xbox version as well as the PC version.The Xbox is a good way for people who cant afford £1200 to buy a gaming PC to get hold of some decent FPS games like Halo and Doom3, then theres Splinter Cell also. Admitedly they are the only good games on the Xbox IMO coz I think most console games suck. Plus I think after playing the PC version of Doom3 when it arrives in the UK will be great for the immersion and the atmosphere, but then the Co-op play on the Xbox should be good for a laugh too.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Jet Black (not verified) onI have a tiny Weiner
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Jet Black (not verified) onI like Half-Life, it's not scary like Doom 3
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onDoom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by blade (not verified) onhalf-life is for noobs and 12 year old kiddies. the same goes with counter strike. the game requires no brain, perfect for idiots.half-life is doom3d.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by KLAAS (not verified) onblade you dumb f**k its exactly the opposite Doom3 is the most prescripted game ever developed. The enemies are stupid and you know exactly where they are gonna be. Everytime you cross a certain point in the game it triggers some enemy jumping out the wall, dumb **** like that. HL2 will dominate!!!
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Irishdave (not verified) onListen guys Doom 3 does what it's supposed too ...It's a remake of the previous versions but much prettier..That's it ...It's evolution not revolution and Halflife won't be either. I've played the HL2 beta and it's good the AI enemies are really good, cool physics too...but again I think Single player games are slowly dying ..Pity really as I don't play online much due to my connection.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) onthats what i mean, want to play doom3 or even hl2 on the cheap get an xbox, graphics will look cracking, no matter what graphics fanboys may think, i have xbox too, pleased with it i am. though will be buying it on pc when released in uk.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) onsorry that comment was for dm
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by KLAAS (not verified) onI like 10 year old twats
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) ongood for you, throw the monkey a bannana.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onLook. I think Doom 3 is good. I won't pass judgement on HL2 coss I havnt played it yet. I do believe that the Doom 3 engines gonna be used for a very long time, just as the Quake 3 engine was. Doom 3 is the new benchmark. Can't wait to see what comes from this.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) onerm..well usaully bigger and better thing's. if it's world peace your after,i don't think thats gonna happen.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onnvidia currently ****** on ATI in doom3, but I wonder if the same thing will happen in HL2? and all the other games....
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onI still don't know how some of you guys got scared playing Doom 3. If you want a really scary game, try Undying or the Silent Hill series.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onoh ya, Undying is for PC and no need to worry if you don't have a console, Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4(coming in sept 2004) are on PC.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by wehew! (not verified) oni knew ATi and HL2 are going to shiat on doom3 and nvidia. as soon as hl2 comes out. they should add a gay banner like
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onI personally would take the HL2 engine over the doom3 engine, so far the half life 2 engine looks alot more polished and solid in the demo vids... doom3 looks mad, but with a little creativity you can get better looking levels out of the unreal warfare engine... not saying doom3 is ****, just the graphics engine isn't anything really special, the character models just have good texturing and shadow mapping... the poly count is absolute **** i can't stand it, i'd prefer high polygon counts as it will always look better no matter how many techniques are used on a character model, the model will always look better with more polys in it.. anyway getting back on track the half life 2 engine can crunch through alot more poly's and effects than the doom3 engine could ever dream of doing, there fore equalling 1. better looking graphics.. 2. Bigger Terrains.. and 3. overall better gaming as the story line will be mad and game play looks alot more tactical and requires alot more skill to play then doom3 does.. half life 2 will be a gamers game, doom3 is basically
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onTo the guy below me.I think your right..And this is why.Half Life 2 is PC onlyDoom 3 has an xbox counterpartThat explains your low polygon count.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on**** someof you kids are really stupid, specially the one that said HL2 sucks because isn't scary? lol I bet he just bought D3 to show and tell his friends how
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by cx (not verified) onI have a PIII 1ghz - 256 SDRram - Geforce 2MX 32 SDRand i play the game at 640x480 everything turned off .. and i get a steady 20 fps . ( except when doors are getting opened )So far I've been playing the game for 2 days and I Love it so muchHL was one of the worst games i've ever played ... ( maybe cuz i first played it after UT2003 came out :P ) but i won't even think of DOWNLOADING hl2 ... i tried the beta and it HAS SCRIPTED AI !liars ..iD software 4 life !
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onDoom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) oncx you fall in the category I said below vv
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onReply to: which one do u have?I got the 9600 sapphire ;x------------------------------JETWAY 9600XT 256MB (not too good)
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Doom3 (not verified) onCX, I had just this for you. You aren't a real player. Half Life has the best single player in years. Doom 3 is a great game but, we don't even know how gonna come HL2, so if you play firt UT than hl you still suck.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by huff_diggler (not verified) onyahda yahda, clamidia this a.i.d's that, polygon count.....dribble dribble, hats of to the poor soul playing it 640x480 with everything off running a g-force 2mx, p3 1ghz steady 20 fps, christ man! get an xbox or get a flicker book. press fire wait a second or so... boom! muzzle fire...watch tracer...zombie moves...missed by 3 seconds,dear lord...
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onJet Blackat 22:14 9/8/2004no i wasn't surrounded by friends. it was day time when i played it, and i never play any game in the dark because i'm already blinded enough as is from playing UT for like 5 years. I did have the sound on, i played the game with the 5.1 speakers i bought less than a week ago used inconjuction with nvidia's famed soundstorm audio system. your need to bash me because i wasn't scared means the game probably scared the **** out of you, lmao, and you can't take it.I remember a time, i think it was quake 2, *shrugs*, when a goon popped up out of the blue from the ground with a loud bang as he appeared from the floor. I remember exactly how I didn't even flinch and just calmly pushed the fire button. Either i was too tired to give a **** or it just didn't work on me. Either way i remember thinking
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onhappen out of the blue (zombie with crowbar).
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) ondoom3 is scary **** all the whinners complaining about the darkness and how un scary it is oviously have no clue how to watch/play a horror flick? i mean with britney spears/nsync beats in the background and playing the game during the day proberly with sun glare(no wonder u can't see) on easy mode just doesn't help.
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by 3-6M (not verified) onGame is prescripted and AI stinks. Shame on you carmack, this game is written with the commercial Xbox idiot in mind who cant aim with a mouse. I cant stand that whenever you cross a certain point in the game that it triggers some imp jumping out the wall and its the same over and over and over and over and over again and again and again. Good eyecandy though with the considerable low polygon count.8.4/10 for this one if you play on veteran
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onthe most recent horror flick i seen was the japanese version of
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onIM PLAYING DOOM3 WHILE RUNNING FARCRY AT THE BACKGROUND. ALSO PLAYING MY MEDIA PLAYER AS MUSIC AT THE SAME TIME.btw i have only 8mb video card from intel. BEAT THAT SUCKASS.GAYMERS FOR LIFE!!!!
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onFOKOF JOU DOM POES
Doom 3 Enhance the Experience Pt2
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) onThe cheese is old and mouldy where is the bathroom
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