Doom 3 - very slow and jerky

Hi all, this is my first post here! I hope the info I provide is all that is needed to help with my problem.

I am having problems with running Doom 3. I'm not sure of the correct term but it is not running smoothly. When moving around it is very jerky and slow. Even on the intro movie it is like that. This happens even with the quality set to the lowest in the game options. I installed the latest driver for my graphics card just yesterday (23.08.04) and it made it a little better but still pretty slow and jerky.

I am dying to get into it but am afraid that when the screen gets too busy with monsters it will crash seeing how its not performing well already when I'm only at the start and there's nothing else moving.

What changes can I make to any settings to improve greatly on this? Any advice will be much appreciated!

By the way, I read in other threads 'xxFPS'. What is that?

My system is as follows:
P4 3.0Ghz / 512M RAM / ATI Radeon 9200SE (128M RAM) / is this all the info you need?!

 

it's youre 9200se that's causing the really slow framerates (aka jerkiness). you'll want to get a better video card to make the graphics smoother. as for the xx fps thing, fps stands for frames per second. that's how many still images you see in one second that makes the video. 18 fps is the threshold of smoothness for a human. 24fps is the framerate for movie theaters, 25 for pal (international standard video) and 29.97 for us standard ntsc. you'll want something at least 30 fps for your video.

 

Oh spewing! I only bought my PC about 3 months ago. They said that the graphics card will run most games. I guess Doom 3 is one of the games not included in the 'most' games.

Any other alternatives without changing the g.c? What is a good (not too expensive) g.c on the market at the moment?

 

I used to have to 9200Ultra. While it did run most games they where all at the lowest settings, and where choppy still. They ran but not that great.

Now i have a Radeon 9800Pro. Doom3 looks so good! I am playing at Ultra Quality, at a smaller resolution. I get solid 29FPS. Sometimes its higher, maybe lower.



cooked

 

Which of the following will work the best with Doom 3?
› Gigacube Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 8X 128MB
› Radeon 9700Pro

Everyone here seems to have a FPS figure. How do I get that info on my PC?

 

Oh, of course it's the video card.
I heard you need 512MB to play Doom in ultra mode.

 

get the 9800 pro...very nice card for the price now!
Oh and by the way, I play D3 on a GF3 ti200 and it is not that bad! I run it at 800x600 medium quality and its very playable. Of course, I've tweaked it a bit!

 

I've got a 9700 Pro, play at medium settings @ 1280x960 and it cranks along at about 35-40fps, depending on what's going on. I'd grab the 9800 if you can, but what would be better is a 256mb 9800 XT or anything in the X800 line, if you got the cheese

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Iceman - Thanks for the comment, I think I will get the 9800Pro.

A shop quoted me AUD$365 (USD$259) fully installed but I'll try to buy it on eBay and install it myself. I know a little about PC's but haven't done this before. Hope it's not too hard to do! Any advice from pros?!

Can't believe I'm going to spend the cash specifically for Doom 3. I've been dying for this game to come out!

 

Good choice man, that's a sweet card When you get it and are ready to install, just read the installation documentation that comes with the card, but here's a generic way to do it:

1. Go to www.ati.com and get the latest Catalyst drivers for your card.
2. Go into your Control Panel and then into Add/Remove Programs, and uninstall the drivers for your existing video card.
3. Power down the machine, and then remove the old video card. Install the Radeon, and make sure you hook up the power connector the card
4. Power back up, and cancel out of the Windows New Hardware Detected screens, and then install the Catalyst drivers you downloaded from Ati.
5. Reboot as necessary, when it comes back up it'll do the New Hardware Detected again for your monitor, and then you're good to go

 

1 gb of ram wouldn't hurt either!! Doom III will play on Ultra high without a 512mb vid card, but I did notice the activety lights on my 2 gb's of ram showed intense activity. This game is unbelievable on Ultra high at 1280 x 1024 resos.

 

How do I get a FPS reading on my PC?

 

Hi all,

I went ahead and bought and installed the 9800Pro. Wow!! What a great difference. Thanks for all the advice everyone!! However...

Here are a couple of questions I need help with. I am trying to stop the regular crashing after about 10 minutes of game play.

1. How do I reduce AGP 8x speed to 4x, 2x or even 1x?
2. What difference will I notice in Doom 3 when I do this?
3. Will it change the way my PC look or perform when not playing Doom 3?

 

i think you want to keep it at 8x as that is the fastest speed

 

http://www.fraps.com/downloads.htm

 

The bandwidth multiplier won't change the speed of the card, so reducing it won't help in this case. Doom3 will be programmed to take advantage of any bandwidth rate as much as it can.

You say crashing, but is it the game itself crashing or a lockup? Make sure you get all your drivers up to date (chipset drivers are very important here) and also that you've got any patches that might have been released by the authors. If your whole system is locking up, I'd probably suspect overheating initially.

We can link you to programs to test your hardware for overall stability under load, and each component individually if needed. What kind of cooling setup do you have? And is the room temperature hot? If its in a hot place, then overheating is more likley.