Talk:Smooth Quake

WORK IN PROGRESS: JUNE 2023

Hardware

• Monitor

IPS panel with 240Hz minimum is recommended.
TN has bad colors and viewing angles, VA has slow response time and Oled has higher input lag.
The pixels response time must stay inside de refresh cycle (1000/Hz) to avoid blur and take full advantage of the monitor's Hz.
Example: the refresh cycle of a 240hz monitor is 1000/240=4.16ms, if the pixel response time is above that, its going to generate blur.
How to know the pixel response time for my monitor? Rtings has some reviews. Order them by rise/fall time.
Some monitors have a fast enough response time but at the cost of ghosting. Take this into account.
UFO Test shows how your monitor responds so you can select a proper overdrive setting.
Example products: Asus VG279QM Aperture Grille's review.

• Mouse

Any modern mouse should be ok.
A good sensor should not have problems such as smoothing, angle snapping, jitter and DPI deviation.
1000Hz and DPI of 1600 minimum is recommended. Use only native DPI values to avoid interpolation.
Example products: Pixart 3389 sensor fills all these requirements.
Battle(non)sense DPI analysis.

Note: with 1000Hz+ mouse and keyboard you should use separate dedicated usb chips or a PCIe USB card.

• Keyboard

1000Hz minimum is recommended simply because it has lower input lag than regular 125hz keyboards. Explanation.
Example products: EVGA Z20 and Corsair K70 Rapidfire/Champion models are fast but expensive.

Configuration

• BIOS

- Spread Spectrum ; Memory Scrambler: Disable
- Extreme Memory Profile (XMP): Enable

• Windows

- Start > Settings > Privacy > Background apps > Disable all but "Windows Security"
- Control Panel > Mouse > Pointer Options > Untick 'Enhance pointer precision' and leave pointer speed at 6th notch.
- Control Panel > Power Options > High performance > Change plan settings > Change advanced settings > PCI Express > ASPM: disable
- MSI Interrupt Mode Utility: Change supported devices to MSI. A negative value means it's working. Do not enable devices if the supported modes field doesn't include MSI. Interrupt priority should be undefined for all. Windows sets SATA to high and some ethernet drivers too.

• NVIDIA

- NVCP: Create a new profile for ezquake and disable 'Threaded Optimization'
- NvidiaProfileInspector: change the following value in Section 'Other' > Maximum Frames Allowed = 1

• AMD/ATI

(someone write something)

ezQuake Launch
You can change Windows power plan to High Performance while playing QuakeWorld and restore its value back to Balanced when finished.
Open command line and type powercfg -l to see their GUID. They should match the ones below.
Devices interrupts go to cpu0 by default. Excluding it for ezQuake will improve fps and stabilize frametime. Cpu affinity calculator shows you what hexadecimal value you need to set in the cmdline after the /affinity (replace the word HexVal with the value you got from the calculator). Open notepad and place these 3 lines (without the comment), change game path, and save as bat extension.

powercfg -s 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (high performance power profile)
start "" /wait /affinity HexVal "D:\QW\ezquake" -mem 1024
powercfg -s 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (balanced power profile)

ezQuake Settings
in progress...

Issues: in progress...

• Network: lag spikes

- Network Throttling: (10/70 seems to be working. in progress...)
- Interrupt Moderation: (turned on seems to cause no issues. in progress...)

• Network: packet loss

- ezQuake console > setinfo dupe 2 (cfg_save won't keep it, set it in cl_onload for permanent use).

• Performance: unstable FPS

- Uninstall or disable any RGB software (monitor; mouse; keyboard). They cause issues with the system.
- NVCP > ezQuake profile > Power management mode > prefer maximum performance (sets gpu at max frequency).
If the gpu jumps from max frequency to boost frequency often it will cause stutter. You can check this using MSI Afterburner. If this is the case you can lock the gpu at boost frequency but it will consume more electricity since it won't step down. Type gtx or rtx in the search below.
- Winkey+R > regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class > CTRL+F > gtx (or) rtx > New DWORD > DisableDynamicPstate = 1

Advanced Windows Settings in progress
- cmdprompt(admin) > bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes (keeps the system ticking but not good for laptops)
- Winkey+R > regedit > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl > Win32PrioritySeparation = in progress
text info to be added
- Interrupt affinity: You can set devices interrupts to a specific cpu. Mouse readings could improve if you isolate it. Usually the least used cpu's are the last ones. With Hyper-Threading you need to assign physical cpus rather than logical ones. USB devices can't bet set individually.
In device manager select your mouse then view devices by connection and the branch goes up to XHCI. This is what you need to select in the affinity tool.