Up until this week I had been using a fairly budget thrown together PC:

Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.4Ghz (Dual Core)
GeForce GTX 550ti 3GB
5GB DDR2 RAM

In 1on1 I could play comfortably with 462fps @ 1680x1050 which would remain solid mostly. In teamplay I would need to lower my FPS to 308 or 231 and still then it would struggle especially on e1m2 or of someone has a powerup nearby. I just assumed this was due to the average specs of the PC. In 4on4 I would use Qizmo Nail Filter to help a bit (need this in ezQuake). My config was basically just the nQuake config/setup that was available in end of 2011/beginning of 2012 with simple items and graphics turned down to look like SW. I also followed the smooth quake guide.

This week I built a new PC hoping to be able to play a bit more competitively but also play some modern games. The new PC i build was:

AMD FX 4100 @ 3.6Ghz (Quad Core)
GeForce GTX 770 2GB
8GB DD3 RAM
SSD

Whilst I have found I can bump the FPS up to 616fps and it is VERY smooth (a new level of smoothness I had not experienced in QW before), I still find the FPS drop dramatically as soon as I shoot the SNG. Clearly I must be doing something wrong in my CFG. I removed all the new nQuake models and textures from QW as a test so I could see if it was something there causing the problem and still I get the FPS drop (although less dramatically).

Anyone have any ideas? Other people I know have less spec'd graphics cards and PC's also running at 1680x1050 @ 616fps and do not drop a single frame. Is it possible QW is unable to utilise the tech in the new graphics cards? With this new setup I can play a more modern game like RAGE with the highest possible graphics settings and it is incredibly smooth. To be honest, with the GTX 770 I expected to be able to get something like 1000fps stable in any situation.

That's why ezquake needs an update on the rendering part...
Did you try cl_hidenails 1 ( so at least you're sure it's the nails themselves which make you drop fps, and not another bug ) ?

It sure does. It definitly also needs an update on the particle side. Try turning of particle effects as much as possible, they really suck up performance and are really inefficient.

I am guessing an updated renderer would be a hell of a lot of work... I can't see that happening :\

Are you able to tell me the specific commands if you know them?

There's definitely something wrong there, with a 660ti I was able to get 1000fps stable, now with a titan a *lot* more.. SNG has no effect on fps. I'm using ezquake stable.

That is kinda what I expected to be honest. What nVidia drivers are you using on the Titan (or your 660ti)? I am using 320.18 reference drivers. The drivers Gigabyte supply appear to just be the 320.08 reference drivers and both perform similarly.

I am guessing it is something with my configuration. Some FPS hogging setting that I just cannot figure out.

314.22 reference on both, I haven't updated to 320.18 yet.
3D settings in the nvidia control panel for ezquake-gl.exe are all set to defaults.

It is definitely CFG related. I just loaded someone elses config who uses 1680x1050 + 616fps + 120hz and did a timedemo (it is a 4on4 on e1m2) with their config and then one with my config and their config got 4x the fps as mine. Interestingly they have their graphics turned up and i have mine down.... I will use examdiff to see what is different...

crappy thing is that now i know it is CFG related it means that all this time since i started playing at the end of 2011, i could have been playing with a smoother qw

That sucks dirtbox. Always a good idea to try other cfg´s once in a while.

Well it took me literally 3 hours of changing command after command based on this other config and i finally found it... and you would never in a million years guess what it was....

Firstly i went for the obvious things and got rid of all of the gl_particle* settings and the gl_boom* settings and these did give a dramatic increase: almost double the fps in a 4on4 timedemo... but still way less that the other config.

I then went through and virtually made every single setting relating to graphics the same and STILL my config's fps would dramatically drop to an unacceptable level. Finally i just starting trying every setting until i hit it:

r_drawviewmodel 0 instead of 0.25 (transparent).

nQuake has pretty new interpolated graphics to show your own gun. I also had gun model shrunk to a very low size and this alone whilst firing the SNG would cause the FPS drop.

When I was playing qw full-time in australia from 2001-2004 i always used 320x200 sw mode... with r_drawviewmodel 0.... this is the first time i have experiencing the same level of qw smoothness since then!

Now I get why Dimman always says there's a lot of stufff tu redo on ezquake... Thanks for sharing the answer !

So there was actually 3 things causing a huge drain on FPS.

- The biggest one was all the gl_particle commands. With these disabled, the FPS doubled in almost every situation.
- Next biggest one was disabling r_drawviewmodel which stopped the FPS drops when SNG was being fired (no other weapons caused a problem).
- The final thing was disabling the RADAR from the hud. It only makes a difference when spectating or watching demos but when you are using a timedemo for testing FPS this will more than half your FPS.

I might have a chat to empezar as these things are all enabled in most or almost all default nQuake graphic presets.

Sounds more like graphics/moderboard driver/issue to me than actual cfg/nquake trouble. But what do I know?

/Jon

Dunno about AMD and QW but with these setup You should get like 1001 fps stable ez.
This topic may be quite handy:
Your text to link here...

It is fixed now... it was the QW config (due to the 3 things i mentioned above)

My config is so fast and smooth now that I put it on my 2009 laptop that has mobile geforce in it and I am able to get 308fps smooth when previously before when I played on that same laptop i would struggle with 154fps

A bit of an update on the FPS issues I was having. I have made some further discoveries...

Thanks to the forum thread ER provided and the wisdom from Renzo in that thread I futher tweaked my NVidia settings, Disabled MMCSS and disabled CPU Parking. With the changes to my configuration done a while ago and these extra chances I feel that everything is now as optimally as it should be on my computer.

However:
- I still can really only hold 770fps stable in QW when fighting an opponent (1on1)
- Without an opponent my FPS can really go up to 3000fps (if I uncap it for testing)
- My CPU% seems to flat-line at 50% in QW

What does this mean. My CPU is actually not fast enough to utilise my GeForce GTX 770 and is causing a bottle-neck.
- For testing I use an intensive e1m2 4on4 game. Timedemo gets around 570fps (once all the above tweats are done)
- I overclock my CPU from 3.6Ghz to 4.2Ghz and still it flat-lines at 50% in QW however I get around 630fps in the same timedemo.
- I overclock my CPU to 4.4Ghz and it goes up further to 670fps in the same timedemo (Unfortunately I don't have extra cooling so I can't keep it like that permanently)

So my options from here.
- I can replace my CPU but then I would have to also replace my 16GB of PC-12800 RAM as it wouldn't be fast enough. (cheap option)
- I can replace Mobo/CPU/RAM.... (expensive option)

Does anyone else have an AMD FX and a fast Geforce like a 770 or faster? If so, which CPU?

The "problem" is with Windows scheduling of CPU time. Alt-tab out of qw, fire up Task manager, right click your ezquake-gl.exe process and hit 'Set affinitty', unlick all but 1 CPU core there and you should see 100% cpu usage. In reality I doubt it changes anything because basically when having two cores, if using only one of them to the max you'r using 50% of the capacity.

ezQuake shouldn't be multithreaded in that sense so it should be better to have all execution on one CPU only (for cache synchronization) so you might gain some fps.

There are a lot of issues with the gl renderer of ezquake. First off it's old and uses old API's. Secondly it's not optimally designed (quite far from). Thirdly the particle code is really, really, really slow..

I will try that tonight, thanks.

I have disabled all of the particle options. My CFG is optimised for speed rather than GFX.

OK, so replacing just the CPU isn't an option. The single-thread performance of all of the AMD FX series CPU's is pretty similar to each other when I look at benchmarks... Replacing the CPU and mobo may be the only option if I decide to go down that road...

It is worth noting that I get a decent FPS increase on the latest GeForce drivers which came out last week. Around 25fps more on average.