[yellowblanka]

Specs:

Core 2 Quad 9450 @ 2.6 Ghz
4GB DDR2 Corsair XMS RAM
EVGA GTX 460 1024MB Superclocked
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP 1
Latest drivers for all components + I do fairly regular spyware scans with several free packages just to be on the safe side + other regular maintenance
I am not forcing AA for eDuke32, or globally in the Nvidia control panel
Latest version of eDuke32 + HRP (1920x1080 resolution)
Just defragmented the hard drive (though it is fairly full, this has not affected any other application or game to an appreciable level though)


For some reason (perhaps some weirdness with OpenGL and the 400 series, perhaps poor optimization), I am seeing pretty mediocre performance/very regular skips and pauses in the game while using the Polymer renderer. I wouldn't say it's unplayable, but there are many trouble spots where the framerate seems to take a dive (though using the in-game framerate display shows that it's in the mid to upper 30s to mid 40s during those moments, but it feels much lower, like I'm getting 15FPS - this does not just happen in large battles but certain parts of certain maps and it kills the experience (ie. E1M1 lags like crazy when I face the mirror in the hidden passage behind the theatre screen, then instantly speeds up when you face away from it, however the mirror in the bathroom of that level does not seem to cause any performance drop, strangely enough. In E2M1, the first hallway where you fight the enforcers lags pretty bad, as well as the subsequent room where you look out the bay window on the earth and the orbiting spaceship (oddly enough the room one floor up seems to run fine, but when you drop through the pillar with the water, it pauses for a moment and gets very choppy as I re-enter the lower floor). I am using the latest HRP, and I initially disabled high resolution textures, models and AF but the framerate/mouse feel in those situations remained the same (so not an issue with the added strain of the HRP with the models and associated effects etc.). I would like to utilize Polymer + fantastic looking high-resolution textures and models of the HRP, but it kind of kills my enjoyment when I have 2 - 3 second stutters going around corners sometimes and never knowing if a certain room or area is going to run like crap while other parts of the map seem fine.

The video card is relatively new, as I've recently upgraded from an 8800GTX (I was meticulous about wiping out old drivers with driver sweeper etc. though), and everything else runs as expected, Starcraft 2, Crysis, and many other games run great at max settings at my monitors native resolution of 1920x1080 (well, Crysis isn't 60fps, but it's very playable and feels smooth at max settings from what I've played so far, much better performance than my old 8800 GTX at 720p). I don't think it's an OpenGL issue because I ran the Unigine Heaven Benchmark in OpenGL mode with the same high settings as my DX11 run and it performed nearly identically. I have run the litany of other benchmarks, 3D Mark Vantage, 3D Mark 2011 etc. and am satisfied with the performance of the card, and I ran "FurMark" while monitoring the temperature and it rose to a max of 71 during that intense test, so it's a stable/fast card. Sorry for the wall of text, but I thought I should establish up front that I have everything updated and the card is performing well in every other application/game except eDuke32 + Polymer. Is there some setting I've missed? I really would like to use Polymer and by extension the HRP as it adds a lot to the game, but the very uneven and subpar performance kills it for me - does Polymer require a top-tier system for 1920x1080+ resolutions?. Sorry for the wall of text and thank you in advance for any enlightenment you can provide. I have attached my eduke32 log file for your perusal.

Attached File(s)

•  eduke32.log (183.34K)
  Number of downloads: 344

[E.C.S]

Good to see someone a very informative post. Well I'm not the right person to help you but, I will ask you something: have tried using a minor resolution? (like 1280*1024). Polymer is still in optimization and the quality difference between 1920*1080 and 1280*1024 isn't much, but the frames makes difference. Well that's my opinion. I hope someone else find a better solution.

[Tetsuo]

Considering this person runs games at 1920x1080 means they have a 16:9 monitor so a resolution of 1280x720 or 1600x900 16:9 resolutions would be a better fit than 1280x1024 which is a 5:9 resolution. With the latter he'd get pillar-boxing on his screen.

[Ost007]

I'll jump on that bandwagon!

Having played the rather underwhelming DNF, I found out that nothing could beat the Dukes first 3D outing.
Jumped online and found the Eduke32 HRP with all the bells and whistles - awesome.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that I only got 30-45 fps (even as low as 17 fps),
and some severe stuttering here and there (introduction of enemies on screen, RPG launch etc.).

Btw my specs are:

Intel i7 930 @ 3.0 Ghz
12GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 Mhz
Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "Goes Like Hell ED" (stock OC @ 800Mhz)
Win7 Ultimate 64
Fully updated and maintained.

I've enabled the pre-load map textures and enabled texture cache on disk.
Tried all three different texture detail settings etc. etc. I then disabled polymer in the Eduke32 launcher...
Suddenly my fps was 550-1050 fps ! I searched around on this forum,
and came to the conclusion that the polymer renderer is in dire need of optimization.
(please correct me if I'm wrong)

So unless there are any tips from some of the well versed members here...(?)
I'll just have to stick with the polymost renderer (which is fine).
(I'll just hope somone irons out the "bugs" sooner rether then later )

A shame really because it really does look damn sweet with all the stuff enabled.

Also... FIRST POST !!!

[yellowblanka]

Ost007, on 13 June 2011 - 10:19 PM, said:

I'll jump on that bandwagon!

Having played the rather underwhelming DNF, I found out that nothing could beat the Dukes first 3D outing.
Jumped online and found the Eduke32 HRP with all the bells and whistles - awesome.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that I only got 30-45 fps (even as low as 17 fps),
and some severe stuttering here and there (introduction of enemies on screen, RPG launch etc.).

Btw my specs are:

Intel i7 930 @ 3.0 Ghz
12GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 Mhz
Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB "Goes Like Hell ED" (stock OC @ 800Mhz)
Win7 Ultimate 64
Fully updated and maintained.

I've enabled the pre-load map textures and enabled texture cache on disk.
Tried all three different texture detail settings etc. etc. I then disabled polymer in the Eduke32 launcher...
Suddenly my fps was 550-1050 fps ! I searched around on this forum,
and came to the conclusion that the polymer renderer is in dire need of optimization.
(please correct me if I'm wrong)

So unless there are any tips from some of the well versed members here...(?)
I'll just have to stick with the polymost renderer (which is fine).
(I'll just hope somone irons out the "bugs" sooner rether then later )

A shame really because it really does look damn sweet with all the stuff enabled.

Also... FIRST POST !!!

It's reassuring to hear that I'm not the only one having this problem, if a GTX 460 and up can't handle the polymer engine, even with the HRP goodies disabled at 1920x1080, I don't know what can - if this were some ultra-modern bleeding edge shooter I might understand, and even be willing to drop my resolution, but it's an alternative renderer for the build engine which is ancient...I guess I'm stuck with the default duke nukem 3D look for now, it's a shame as the HRP + associated effects really do look nice, but the performance in large firefights + certain areas of levels can get too choppy/skippy to control. Once again, thanks in advance if anyone can provide a solution.

[Spiker]

There's not much you can do about the performance right now. But hopefully Polymer will be optimized some time in the future. You can try reducing texture quality in the settings or try some of these commands in the console. The numbers in "" are of course just examples, you should experiment with them to get the best result without loosing too much quality.

r_pr_specularmapping "0"
r_pr_shadowcount "1"
r_pr_shadowdetail "1"
r_pr_maxlightpasses "1"
r_pr_maxlightpriority "4"

EDIT: Forgot may you have too type "restartvid" in the console after you use these commands.

[Danukem]

Spiker, on 14 June 2011 - 11:44 AM, said:

There's not much you can do about the performance right now. But hopefully Polymer will be optimized some time in the future. You can try reducing texture quality in the settings or try some of these commands in the console. The numbers in "" are of course just examples, you should experiment with them to get the best result without loosing too much quality.

r_pr_specularmapping "0"
r_pr_shadowcount "1"
r_pr_shadowdetail "1"
r_pr_maxlightpasses "1"
r_pr_maxlightpriority "4"

EDIT: Forgot may you have too type "restartvid" in the console after you use these commands.

I would advise starting with shadowcount 2, shadowdetail 2, maxlightpasses 2 and leaving the other settings alone. If that's not enough, then change the others one by one get more aggressive. That collection of settings you have there is like taking a meat axe to the renderer.

[yellowblanka]

That's too bad, I appreciate the help though. I guess I will have to come back to it down the line and hope it's properly optimized.

*EDIT* - Tried changing resolution, even down to 720P, it had a minimal impact on my framerate, so I disabled polymer and the models (keeping max res textures), and I get 696 FPS in the same situations I had been getting 35-45 with the models + Polymer renderer,
clearly something is EXTREMELY unoptimized there. I've taken the resolution down to 1024x768 with no appreciable change in framerate, lowered texture resolution and anistropic filtering etc, nothing seems to make an impact, clearly there's some incompatibility, I tried running in admin, XP compat mode, nothing has made a difference. Too bad.

I just watched a youtube video of a guy with an 8800 GTX playing with it looked like max settings and getting consistantly smooth framerates, and no hitching, so I don't know what's going on, perhaps the newest Nvidia drivers and Polymer don't get along - it's a shame, and apparently when you have the HRP enabled with Polymost it causes glitches like explosion effects being misaligned etc, so I can't use High-Res textures without it, but with Polymer I get many orders of magnitude less performance...bummer.

*EDIT* - Problem Solved! I downloaded the latest eDuke32 binary, and instead of the self extracting package, I downloaded the latest HRP 5.0 archive, I also downloaded the HRP update + the maphacks and placed those in the autoload folder, I don't know what fixed it, but it works perfectly, still a little stutter going around some corners, but it's very minimal, it runs great.

[Helixhorned]

Up until now I put those reports off as being the usual occasional hangups when caching big chunks of textures, but I think there's something more going on here since I'm lately also experiencing "stuttering" without any disk activity at this time; CPU is up to 100% though. It's especially noticable in Polymer (in the order of seconds) but I think Polymost isn't spared, too. For now, I'll have this just for the record since I have only a vague idea how to deal with this. (It involves catching the program right at this time... woohoo).

[4g63whtgst]

I have similar problems. It seems to have a problem when rendering new textures and light but once they have loaded they seem to be fine. I don't go over 70 fps which is pretty weak considering my system. AMD Phenom II X4 OCed to 4.0 Ghz, AMD Sapphire 7970, 4 Gb ddr3 at 1600 cl 9 9 9 25 (planning on buying new ram with tighter timings), Ocz vertex 3 ssd sata 3.0. Kind of a bummer because it does look quite nice with polymer enabled.

[Micky C]

Just to clarify, polymer is currently in a very, very, very very, extremely unoptimised state. No one is getting over 70 fps if there are lights on screen. Low framerates and the occasional lag (like when new textures are being loaded) is considered normal behavior. If it's playable there's probably nothing to worry about. Note that many people (particularly those with AMD graphics cards such as yourself) can't play the game with polymer at all. Don't worry it'll be sped up sooner or later, but work is slow and it'll probably be at least a year before we see any noticeable improvement.

[Martin]

My computer sucks ass, and polymer runs fine for me. I get more or less a constant 60fps, with the occasional hiccup. I have an intel processor and an nVidia card, but they're old as dirt.

[High Treason]

I swear my GTX260 used to actually run Polymer better than the GTX460 I'm running now, but every other OpenGL app I run performs better, I suspect this is due to the lack of "optimization" but it makes me miss the GTX260 even more, I liked that card. It still performs a damn sight better than any AMD I've ever tried it with though. I'm an Intel and nVidia man as you can tell, but I would quickly jump ship if AMD released better hardware (for what I do) - I have no alligence to any particular company in this field except the company preducing the most appropriate hardware for me at the time I am looking to make a purchase.

[Danukem]

A couple of points:

1) Saying how well Polymer runs for you is pretty meaningless unless you specify what settings you are using and what content you are using it with. Obviously, the Polymer HRP (especially with maphacks that add lights) is a huge hit on performance versus using Polymer with 8-bit art. Which maps you play also makes a huge difference -- the original maps are very simple and run relatively well. If you are using a mod such as DukePlus, that can make a difference too (mainly because of the extra load on the CPU -- see below). Finally, there are various settings you can tweak in the cfg files (such as setting the max number of light passes) that can make a huge difference. In conclusion, just saying "Polymer runs great for me" without giving any details tells us absolutely nothing.

2) Polymer does not use GPUs efficiently. It makes your graphics card wait around with nothing to do while it makes the CPU(s) do a lot of work. That's one of the main things that will be improved when Polymer is optimized. So upgrading your graphics card isn't necessarily going to help your performance much.

[Micky C]

Martin, on 23 February 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

My computer sucks ass, and polymer runs fine for me. I get more or less a constant 60fps, with the occasional hiccup. I have an intel processor and an nVidia card, but they're old as dirt.

DeeperThought, on 23 February 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:

Saying how well Polymer runs for you is pretty meaningless unless you specify what settings you are using and what content you are using it with.

Exactly. Clearly you haven't played Parkade.map by Paul and me using polymer. In the outdoor areas (where no lights are visible) you're lucky to get over 20fps. There's really no reason for it to be that slow, just that there are a lot of sectors visible unlike the original maps. If you look at the other end of scale at my lighting job of Spiker's Project Zero map, which would have a lot less sectors visible at any one time than Parkade.map, yet has un uncompromising amount of lights (not excessive, but I didn't really cut back for the sake of improving performance) then you're lucky if you get 2 fps. I don't think I need to go into detail about Duke Nukem Eternity either.

[Martin]

DeeperThought, on 23 February 2012 - 06:30 PM, said:

A couple of points:

1) Saying how well Polymer runs for you is pretty meaningless unless you specify what settings you are using and what content you are using it with. Obviously, the Polymer HRP (especially with maphacks that add lights) is a huge hit on performance versus using Polymer with 8-bit art. Which maps you play also makes a huge difference -- the original maps are very simple and run relatively well. If you are using a mod such as DukePlus, that can make a difference too (mainly because of the extra load on the CPU -- see below). Finally, there are various settings you can tweak in the cfg files (such as setting the max number of light passes) that can make a huge difference. In conclusion, just saying "Polymer runs great for me" without giving any details tells us absolutely nothing.

Everything on full, HRP 5, polymer enabled. My resolution is 1050p (damn 16:10 monitor!). I can't remember all the specs of my computer. It has an old Q666 (something like that) Intel Core 2 Quad at 2.4 or 2.6GHz, 4GB of RAM, and an old GeForce 8800 512MB (not sure what exact model). EDuke polymer with those settings and this rig runs around 60fps, with an occasional hiccup if I open a door with loads of stuff and lights and shit inside (I guess that's the sector thing Micky C talks about).

Micky C, on 23 February 2012 - 09:02 PM, said:

Exactly. Clearly you haven't played Parkade.map by Paul and me using polymer. In the outdoor areas (where no lights are visible) you're lucky to get over 20fps. There's really no reason for it to be that slow, just that there are a lot of sectors visible unlike the original maps. If you look at the other end of scale at my lighting job of Spiker's Project Zero map, which would have a lot less sectors visible at any one time than Parkade.map, yet has un uncompromising amount of lights (not excessive, but I didn't really cut back for the sake of improving performance) then you're lucky if you get 2 fps. I don't think I need to go into detail about Duke Nukem Eternity either.

Not trying to be a prick or anything, but what's the point in creating maps that perform so badly? 20fps? 2fps!? Who the hell wants to play anything like that? Did you create them like that in the hope that EDuke/polymer will catch up one day and your maps will actually be playable?

[rasmus thorup]

You weren't supposed to play it with 2 fps, it's just what happens if you do what he said.

[Micky C]

We did the best we could to improve the framerate for that map, but there was nothing we could do; we already got rid of most of the polymer lights and we tried to cover up as many windows as we could. That's exactly what I'm saying though, on modern (large, complex) maps, polymer doesn't work so well. Most of the people can play the original levels in polymer with HRP and everything because I made performance a high priority when making those maphacks, and if you ever looked at those maps in mapster you'll see they're very small and simple.

But yeah with the 2fps one I was hoping that polymer will catch up and it'll be playable.

[Martin]

Well, fair enough. My original post was simply in response to the "polymer has terrible performance" thing. I guess it must do if the tech-heads are saying it does. I was just saying that from what I played (which is just the original four episodes), it seemed mostly fine on my ancient piece of shit computer. Then people started getting a little uppity at what I said, so I said something else, and now we're here.