Gothic 3 tweaks? [Archive] - RPGWatch Forums

Moriendor

October 18th, 2006, 03:06

Hmmm... I wouldn't base my impressions of overall performance on that first fight :) . That fight was stuttering like hell on my machine as well (since the game keeps loading/streaming stuff into RAM even when it's "officially done" :D loading).

The game is elsewise performing much better after that battle (and in other battles, too) with a rather steady 20-25 FPS on average on my AMD XP 3200+ (slower than your CPU), 2048MB RAM (even), GeForce 7800GS (marginally better than your card) at 1280x1024 with all details maxed except anisotropic filtering (which I've set to the lowest, i.e. 2x) and no depth of field.

Regarding your rig and resolution, I'd try to lower AF first and maybe go as far as switch to bilinear filtering and turn off depth of field.
Then edit the g3e.ini and make sure it says "Shader.CurrentShaderVersion=3_0 ".

Important Note: Even if the in-game options slider is set to shader 3.0 this entry might still be "...2_0" (!!!) so make sure to check what the ini says in any case (mine was wrong for example).

Shadows would be a shame to disable. The lighting effects are great when you carry a torch at night and the looong shadows at sunset add a great deal to the atmosphere. Naturally, if performance is too crappy then this should be the next one to go but at 1024x768, you should be doing fine with lowering AF and depth of field only, I hope.

Have fun playing :) .

Arhu

October 18th, 2006, 03:12

Since this is about performance tweaks... I have a P4 2.2GHz, 1GB Ram and a GeForce 6. Should I get Gothic now or wait until I have a whole new rig? I'm planning to upgrade for Vanguard, which is due in Q1 2007...

Moriendor

October 18th, 2006, 03:57

I think it'd be a shame to miss out on the beautiful graphics of Gothic III so I'd recommend to wait. It would also make sense because of the much needed patches. I have put the game on hold for now and am only fooling around the starting area when I'm playing at all for performance tests etc.
It's just not fun to continue due to the imbalanced gameplay (risk vs reward, gold, XP, LP, equipment etc).
Well, and there's also always the chance of your save games getting corrupted which is an issue that is downplayed by JoWood but has happened to a lot of people.

I'm in no rush and will wait until the game is fully playable, enjoyable and more like PB intended it to be because the current state just can't be it unless they have turned into brainless retards since NotR :D .

HiddenX

October 18th, 2006, 05:11

You have an older computer and want to have fun with Gothic III - here we go:

You need:

2 GB ram or more (use dual channel technique if your motherboard supports this)

2 GHz CPU (AMD XP 2400) or better

a good 256 MB grahics-card ati x800 gto or better (at least shader model 1.4)

a good harddisk - raid is better

best tuning tip for all games (if you have the time)

fresh windows xp install + SP2

install the newest grafics driver (ati catalyst 6.9) (nvidia 91.47)

install Gothic 3 + DirectX9.0c + patch

if you have a second harddrive install your windows swapfile there
this article explains all about swapfiles:

http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_01.htm
my tip:

http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_17.htm

defrag the harddisks

Gothic detail settings:
everything on maximum
except for

vegetation-> low
shadows -> off = there are still there, but in low quality
DoF (Depth of Field) -> off at least for ATI x8xx cards otherwise black graphic errors can occur

my personal taste -> bloom off, too -> everything is more "natural" then

***

TFT-Tip:

If you have a high resolution TFT and want to play in the native resolution
with a smaller game screen use the option "centered timings" in the ATI control center. 1280x800 looks very good on a native 1280x1024 TFT for example and fps increase.

***

All I have heard so far about ram

512MB to low - playing is not fun

1,0 GB sufficient - you can live with it

1,5 GB satisfactory - the fun begins

2,0 GB good

Of cause this depends also on how much background processes are running -
deaktivate virus scanner, firewall, starforce, unneccessary starting processes etc.

The problem with not sufficient ram is: your computer begins to swap beween memory and harddrive and then a high end cpu and graphic-card will be thwarted by the hard-drive speed.

Conclusion:
ram is the bottleneck for Gothic 3

***

Don't overclock too much

Although it can be very compelling to overclock cpu-clock, front side bus, ram timings, gpu-clock especially on an older system ... this can result in random crashes in Gothic 3, because Gothic is very demanding in all categories at once.

For ati-cards the ATI-Tool http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ is the best overclocking tool.

***

Deactivate auto-update:

change the gothic 3 link to (right mouse click on the icon / select properties)

english:
C:\program files\Gothic III\Gothic3.exe

german:
C:\programme\Gothic III\Gothic3.exe

***

Deactivate starting logos

Delete all but one entries in C:\program files\Gothic III\INI\logo.ini with a text editor. One entry must stay, because Gothic need to initialize some video settings.

***

What is the "post processing" feature?

you can set post processing to

0: OFF

1: Bloom (german: "Überstrahleffekt") - shader model 2 is needed

2: Bloom and DoF = Depth of field (german: "Tiefenunschärfe")
I think shader model 3 is needed, on my shader model 2 ati card
I had black boxes around torches etc.

Shadows:
I don't miss them - and with shadows off I can set texture details to maximum and set the resolution to 1280x1024 on my older system - this was more important for me.

***

Another ati tip:

aktivate <Enable geometry instancing> in the ati 3d settings

this should help your cpu.

***

Another ati-tip:

Disable the Catalyst AI in the control center, so you can avoid some
strange effects like shining through crystals etc.

Dhruin

October 18th, 2006, 06:12

Thanks for all the input. It's definitely better (and the Shader 3.0 setting didn't stick in the .ini - thanks Mo).

JonNik

October 18th, 2006, 10:37

Hello People.

Best wishes for the new start.

Now on Topic: I've been fooling around with graphic settings myself
waiting for the game to be patched to decency. Does anyone know
which .ini value to use to move the grass popping effect a bit further
away from the camera ? Currently its even worse than Oblivion's....

Also the same for the the texture switch from the high detail terrain one to
the low (these LOD textures are almost DX7 era ! and the smooth constant
transition makes it look wierder rather than helping) ?

I tried severall /culling and /clipping values but I cant seem to find the right one...

Also my "Shader.CurrentShaderVersion" setting is 2_0,3_0 I think
(do not have the ini in front of me) is everyone elses just 2_0 or 3_0 ?

Thanks in advance.

mute

October 18th, 2006, 11:21

I've changed this:

; Vegetation view range
VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=4500.0

It was 3500 from the start. I though the grass was horrendous at start.
I do not know if it do anything or if is purely a placebo effect. Now i don't change it back and forth since the game takes 2-3 min from when i click the start button and have loaded a game.

I also changed this one

PostprocessingAdmin.ActiveEffect=-1

to get rid of bloom effects. Altough, the same reason as above. I *think* its better, but i could aswell as been placebo.

Went back to Oblivion yesterday, thinking, that game was goodlooking, now i have revised that opinion. Gothic 3 is really smashing in high details. :)

Please, understand. I do not know if they do anything. Hm, perhaps i should have done that before talking?

mute

October 18th, 2006, 11:27

JonNik

October 18th, 2006, 11:52

Thanks mute,

I have already tried
; Vegetation view range
VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=5500.0

But I dont think I saw any change... I'll try a higher value this evening...
Also together with the vegetation and terrain textures I think creature
fading should be pushed back a bit too. I dont really like transparrent
wolves ;)

As for seeing the Boars in time ...
Well with the Stun lock I am dead anyway... At least I'll die with a nice view :)

HiddenX

October 19th, 2006, 02:27

the default ge3.ini has a bug:

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Low=32000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Low=30000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Low=10000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Low=18000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Low=1300 0000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Low=25000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Low=500000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=70000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=15000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 6000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=30000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=75000 0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=180 00000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=4000000 0
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

last entry should be "1000000" and not "100000"

You count your memory usage from 500k --> 750k -> but at the highest settin it's 100k and i am certain it's supposed to be 1 mil.

EDIT:
this tweak/correction is important:
the save-game bug occurs less often
stuttering occurs less often

JonNik

October 19th, 2006, 09:53

the default ge3.ini has a bug:
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

last entry should be "1000000" and not "100000"

You count your memory usage from 500k --> 750k -> but at the highest settin it's 100k and i am certain it's supposed to be 1 mil.

Very interesting, Didn't notice that one.

Have you tried it HiddenX ? (will do this afternoon)
And can you shed any light in what values to tweak
to push the grass growing, terrain texture switching
and Actor fading further away from the camera ?

Thanks.

Sem

October 19th, 2006, 10:48

About shader,
don't know if your looking in the ge3.ini or in the useroptions.ini.
In my ge3.ini my shader lever is 2_0 but in the useroptions.ini they are 3_0.

Likewise with vegetations, in ge3.ini they are high, but in my useroptions.ini they are the correct, medium. (Use medium cause its easire to forsee a Boar attack coming).

Maybe that has something to do with the used shader model or you need a restart.
I had shaders on 1.4 (I was too lazy to restart the game to set it too 3.0) and set the grass from low to high, but nothing changed. Then I switched too shaders 3.0 and let the game restart. All of a sudden the grass displayed correctly.

svencha

October 19th, 2006, 14:51

I tried these ini tweaks which seems to increase the view distance, but the ocean gets a white line across it which spoils the effect, so I only used the vegetation range increase.

VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=7500.0
Shader.CurrentShaderVersion=3_0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=60 0.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=600.0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_Medium= 1000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=20000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=1500 00.0
Render.DOFStart=15000.0
Render.DOFEnd=18000.0
Entity.ROI=6200

JonNik

October 19th, 2006, 16:07

Thanks svencha,

I used some of these myself but from looking at the values you set
perhaps my increases were too cautious to see any real difference.
I'll try those.

Did you have DOF enabled when testing them ?

Edit: Sorry,
Obviously tested with DOF since two are about DOF.

HiddenX

October 20th, 2006, 00:47

Do this for more Detail-Geometry

Change

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=0.01

to

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00

many things look better then.

JonNik

October 20th, 2006, 10:05

I tried these ini tweaks which seems to increase the view distance, but the ocean gets a white line across it which spoils the effect, so I only used the vegetation range increase.
...

You were right ofcourse about the White line. Its the Far Clipping plane.
I couldnt use a value above 12000.0 without introducing some visual
anomaly... But why not push Back DOF and Keep ROI anyway ? These
really make things far less "weird"...
After some tests I am most comfortable with these more modest values
They definetely give a more balanced look (but expect a ~10% performance
hit)

VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=7500.0 //I was initially trying 5500 this is GOOD
Shader.CurrentShaderVersion=3_0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=50 0.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=500.0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_Medium= 1000.0

//Pushes it back just a bit but is enough for most cases
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=12000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=1100 00.0

//Pushes DOF a bit back so the foreground is much clearer and Natural
//and the DOF starts almost in the "grass growing line" further hellping to hide it
Render.DOFStart=5000.0
Render.DOFEnd=12000.0

//Absolute keep the appearing/dissapearing of critters is much more natural.
Entity.ROI=6200

Thanks again.

Do this for more Detail-Geometry

Change

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=0.01

to

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00

many things look better then.

Damn this was about the first thing I noticed but Forgot it completely in my
fiddling yesterday (Heh I think even the comment on the .ini say that 1.0 is the
default... Or did I get that wrong ?)

Thanks HiddenX

Prime Junta

October 20th, 2006, 12:45

I was experimenting with these tweaks, and found a weird glitch: I can't turn post-processing off. Or, rather, I can, and I get a massive frame rate boost -- but I also get some very major glitching with parts of the terrain becoming "transparent" with a different part of the map showing through as if seen from a quite a long way above. (I have a hunch the frame rate boost was simply due to large parts of the geometry not getting rendered at all, because of the glitch.) Any clues?

That said, I'm getting quite satisfactory performance at 1280 x 1024, shader model 3.0, textures Medium, filtering Linear, draw distances turned down a wee bit, everything else to High.

I'm also still getting an intermittent freeze -- first the screen freezes, and after a few seconds the sound starts to loop; the only way to get out of it is a cold boot.

JonNik

October 20th, 2006, 13:02

I was experimenting with these tweaks, and found a weird glitch: I can't turn post-processing off. Or, rather, I can, and I get a massive frame rate boost -- but I also get some very major glitching with parts of the terrain becoming "transparent" with a different part of the map showing through as if seen from a quite a long way above. (I have a hunch the frame rate boost was simply due to large parts of the geometry not getting rendered at all, because of the glitch.) Any clues?
.

Exactly the kind of glitch I was reproducing when fiddling with the Far clipping
plane value. I think a few other values having to do with the replacement
thresholds for the low/high poly terrain meshes have to be tweaked also but
couldnt find a proper balance for higher/lower values...

It does that some times even with the Default ini settings AND with DOF on.
But it is momentary (if you take a step forward the missing part of the terrain
is loaded). Perhaps moving the Clipping plane even closer might solve this in
your case ?

Prime Junta

October 20th, 2006, 13:22

JonNik

October 20th, 2006, 13:50

Hum, I did what you suggested and the problem went away. The weird thing is, I can't reproduce it now when turning the clipping plane settings back to where they were. Now I don't get the glitch at any settings (Low, Medium, High). Nice frame rate, though, so I'm not complaining. Go figure.

I may have made the SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage tweak after trying this, though, so it's conceivable that there's a relation there.

Yeah, there seems to be some inconcistency with the ini settings in general.
i.e I had shaders 3 set in the menu and the ini had 2_0 saved...
I dont think we can be 100% sure which values are actually working and when.
I still get the glitch in preciselly one spot (havent see all that much of the
world though) and have set the absolutely necessary (Hell it Must be a
bug) SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage fix too...

I just wish I could figure out what's causing the freezing. If I could get rid of that, I would be a happy panda.

Do you have an X2 perhaps ? I think I heard there were some issue there.
Other than that and assuming that all your drivers are up to snuff my mind
goest to a mem leak (there were already suspisions placing the root of the
save bug there)

P.S Heh, Friend of mine just reminded me That in several early videos they
demonstrated "Full" HDR it seems that one is a goner too eh ? Oh well I am
pretty pleased as it is now... I would just like the Balancing + AI to be fixed so
I can start playing... Wouldnt mind to get AA working though...

Prime Junta

October 20th, 2006, 14:20

Yup, I have an X2. I did install the latest CPU driver and video optimizer (before them the game froze, like, every 30 seconds.)

I am starting to suspect it's something like a memory leak as well. It seems to happen most commonly just when finishing a battle.

Noticed a new video glitch, though -- when moving the camera up, I get a white flashing screen. I'll play with the clipping settings a bit to see if I can get that to go away...

elkston

October 20th, 2006, 14:32

Noticed a new video glitch, though -- when moving the camera up, I get a white flashing screen. I'll play with the clipping settings a bit to see if I can get that to go away...

No, everybody gets that white flashing from time to time
even with the original settings in the INI. It is a side effect (bug) from
turning off all the post-processing like depth of field.

It doesn't happen often but when it does it is annoying.

JonNik

October 20th, 2006, 14:34

Noticed a new video glitch, though -- when moving the camera up, I get a white flashing screen. I'll play with the clipping settings a bit to see if I can get that to go away...

That one is a known issue I think. Do you have postprocessing completely off
or on Glow only ? try moving it to Glow if you have it off or to Glow and DOF
if just on glow... Also What is your Gfx Card ? HiddenX has that issue Covered
above for ATI cards If I recall correctly (Disable Catalyst AI and do not Force
settings from the Driver ?)... But I think The postprocessing switch will work...

P.S Oups Elkston Beat me to it :)

Prime Junta

October 20th, 2006, 16:00

Thanks, I actually managed to figure that out myself. Good to know it's not just me. Also nice that Glow doesn't appear to affect frame rate noticeably. I've got the game running quite nicely now, other than that freezing thing. (May be coincidence, but I managed to play for nearly an hour straight without freezes, after switching on Glow.)

Melvil

October 20th, 2006, 18:34

Very interesting, Didn't notice that one.

Have you tried it HiddenX ? (will do this afternoon)
And can you shed any light in what values to tweak
to push the grass growing, terrain texture switching
and Actor fading further away from the camera ?

Thanks.

this tweak worked wonders for me, dense areas around Montera don't lag me out anymore after this single tweak

HiddenX

October 20th, 2006, 18:54

@JonNik
I have tried it

@Melvil
the "tweak"

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

is more an error correction - PB simply missed the last "0" in the default ge3.ini

Melvil

October 21st, 2006, 09:01

I'm aware of that :lol:

but I also "tweaked" my image cache and installed a mod ini file for image quality perks

Gorath

October 21st, 2006, 14:28

What mod ini file?

Melvil

October 21st, 2006, 20:03

someone on the Jowood boards posted a fully modified g3.ini file that included all the stuff in this thread plus some other modifications to draw distance, cache size etc. It was just a combination of all the stuff people have been doing independantly. Made my performance a tad worse though, so keep in mind the trade off as always.

Acleacius

October 22nd, 2006, 00:38

Anyone know of a way to turn off Speedtree completly for testing purposes?

Thanks.

Edit

Has anyone tried setting Gothic3.exe to Higher Piority yet?
I know how to do it in the Task Manager for Services but an exe is a little more complicated and I can't remember how to atm.

Also is there a way to turn off Music, not because I don't like it but for testing.

One thing I have tried with a little success is preventing the Lockup/Freezes in dialogue, at least I think atm, is if I do a full 360 to make sure the surrounding area is loaded in to memory before I talk to an NPC so far has worked.
It seems that in dialogue there was/is a problem with Lockup?Freeze when the camera started panning in dialogue.

Edit
Is there anyway to turn off the Dump file in the Save folder as it is 5x larger than Save files @ about 10 meg, plus you get one every crash and they default the Save folder to WinXP Admin folder which cause totally unnecessary fragmentation on your Proccessing Partition if you use Multiplule Partitions.
I do have my Swap file on a different drive but still that is just bad judgment, most people have there Swap file, Admin and Window directories on the same Partitiion which is not good planning or design by ms, well imo. ;)
So add to the list is there a way to change the Save Folder location also. :)

HiddenX

October 22nd, 2006, 10:00

Some new ge2.ini tweaks for 2GB systems
(as always: make a backup for this file, before you change something)

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
;use these cache settings (25% more):

Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=80000000
Cache.SizeMesh=87500000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12500000

; the maximum settings for 2GB Systems (ResourceCache on Medium)
; settings tweaked towards high

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=60000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=80000 0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHi gh=0

EDIT: optimized
Play on Resource Cache and Texture Detail <Medium>

These settings minimize the "smartheap-out of memory error",
the performance should be better than on un-tweaked <medium> settings.

Sem

October 22nd, 2006, 11:15

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

Isn't this going to cause some heavy performance problems on smaller systems? At least the .ini says it will.

HiddenX

October 22nd, 2006, 13:15

@Sem
I have tested it with 2GB only - but over at WoG some guys say it works with 1GB, too.

my current Settings (ge3.ini):

Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000 ; old value 100000
Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00 ; ol value 0.01

Gothic-Detail-Settings - Savegame-folder (UserOptions.ini):

[Options.Details]
Performance=Custom
[Options.Custom]
DistanceHigh=3
DistanceLow=3
ResourceCache=3
ObjectDetails=3
ShaderQuality=2_0
TextureQuality=2
TextureFilter=1
VegetationQuality=1
ShadowQuality=0
PostProcessing=0

this settings are working with my older system
AMD XP 2600 / 2GB Ram / ATI x850 PRO AGP / Catalyst 6.9

- > good performance and graphic quality

for ATI-User only:
catalyst A.I. off
Anti-Aliasing - Application managed / off
Anisotropic filtering - Application managed
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing - off
Mipmap Detail Level - performance
geometry instacing - actvated
support DXT Texture formats - on

Acleacius

October 22nd, 2006, 13:41

I can verifiy it was a huge help to my medium system, thanks HiddenX. :)
I was worried about increases to those sizes, but was shocked when it was huge help.
I had even decided to give up graphic quality, trying Shad 1.4 and all graphic settings to low to increase stablity and prevent crashes.
It was quite ugly, worst part is if you set everthing to low it looks worst than G2. :(
Now I have medium quality and its smooth as it has been. ;)

The only thing I can suggest is if you intend to free a city I would highly suggest turning down both the Distance draws one notch for the huge fights with the active AI.

You seem to know alot about ATI, is there a fix for the flicking and garbbled charaters on the Console yet?
I have lost some NPCs and would like to use the goto feature.

One other thing HiddenX your links to your Swapfile Optimizations were very helpful, though I noticed if I read correctly they were orgianlly talking about older Win OSs do they apply equally to XP, at least for the most part?
More specificly I am refering to total Swapfile size, thanks. :)

Apostrophe

October 23rd, 2006, 21:22

I see that there are a lot of tweaks here, but it seems that none of them have stopped these out of memory crashes, at least for me. These crashes occur every 5-20 minutes, which leads to my question:
Which of these tweaks help reduce the number of crashes and in which combination should I use them?
System:
Athlon 2600+
2x 512 MB RAM
Geforce 6600GT with latest forceware

Thanks in advance...

HiddenX

October 23rd, 2006, 23:30

@Aposthrophe

I have 2GB so I can only tell you, what other gamers have said:

Play on resource cache and textures on medium.
Optional for speed you can use these settings:

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

; the maximum settings for 1GB Systems
ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=75000 0

Use Shirons Tool to bypass the "smartheap - out of memory"-bug completely.
This tools is a Gothic Starter and it reserves some memory (choose 100 MB).
When the error occurs, you can change to the desktop, release the 100 MB
and the push the retry button on the smartheap requester. Gothic can finish the save game process.
Then close gothic and start again.

Description (german)
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2507867&#post2507867

short:
Unpack "G3Starter.exe" and "memTool.dll" in your Gothic 3 folder and make desktop link to "G3Starter.exe" then start it.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/32446515/Shiron.zip

PS:
make sure that no unnessary processes are running on your computer - the msconfig.exe - tool can help.

HiddenX

October 24th, 2006, 00:07

Speed up your NTFS-drive:

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2005/02/08/NTFS_Hacks.html

Not verified:

Running in a window should help with memory problems:
ge3.ini:
Fullscreen=false

Gorath

October 24th, 2006, 01:09

According to this thread (http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?t=152727) HDD speed, swap file and vertical sync (set it to: OFF) have massive influence on the game´s performance.

HDD:
- disable indexing (wastes performance)
- disable "faster search" (dto.)
- defrag game partition before you install. Use a 3rd party tool, not Windows-Defrag (result: less need for jumps to other positions and higher transfer speed for larger files)

Swap file:
Create a permanent swap file (this means min size = max size) on (a) another HDD or (b) on a partition which is as empty as possible (-> less time wasted to find open space), defragmented (-> data & free space are sorted in the correct order on the HDD), fast and NOT your windows partition.

I´ll leave the explanations about graphics driver tweaks with CoolBits to somebody else.

Acleacius

October 24th, 2006, 04:00

Thanks Gorath, any chance they mention where to change those HDD settings?
I tried going into Device Manager and then properties for each of the HDs with no luck finding those settings, with only a check for Write Caching.

Prime Junta

October 24th, 2006, 12:55

To switch indexing and fast search off, just right-click on the disk in Explore My Computer and select Properties, the checkboxes are right on the first tab at bottom.

To configure your swap file, go Control Panel -> System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory -> Change. (Doesn't everybody know that? ;-) )

BTW, putting the swap file on a (fast) separate disk is *the* single best thing you can do for your computer's performance for any memory-intensive use, not just games. In fact, IMO the main point of going with a desktop system instead of a nifty little laptop is that you can set it up with at least two reasonably speedy HDD's (and enough RAM; at current prices going with less than 2GB is just silly). Way more stuff is bottlenecked by disk I/O than CPU speed or even graphics power.

HiddenX

October 24th, 2006, 14:10

BTW, putting the swap file on a (fast) separate disk is *the* single best thing you can do for your computer's performance for any memory-intensive use, not just games. In fact, IMO the main point of going with a desktop system instead of a nifty little laptop is that you can set it up with at least two reasonably speedy HDD's (and enough RAM; at current prices going with less than 2GB is just silly). Way more stuff is bottlenecked by disk I/O than CPU speed or even graphics power.

That's right, but keep in mind, to configure the two drives NOT as master and slave, because on one IDE-channel only one drive can work at one time.

Moriendor

October 24th, 2006, 16:49

I´ll leave the explanations about graphics driver tweaks with CoolBits to somebody else.

I believe ATI has an option to turn on/off Vsync via the driver but nVidia does not so you need to do the CoolBits registry "hack" to enable more features in your driver.

- Install the latest official nVidia ForceWare driver (91.47 as of today).
- When asked to reboot, click on 'Later'.
- Go to Start -> Run -> regedit
- Look up HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\nVidia Corporation\Global\NVTWEAK
- Right click on the entry and create a new DWORD value
- Name it "CoolBits" and enter "3" when prompted for the value (for SLI systems, you need to enter 18 to get the most out of ForceWare)
- Reboot and then check your nVidia control panel for some new options like Vsync on/off and more fan control etc

If you don't like playing with your registry, then just download CoolBits 2.0 (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815) from Guru3D (or any other hardware site, of course).

Moriendor

October 24th, 2006, 17:04

That's right, but keep in mind, to configure the two drives NOT as master and slave, because on one IDE-channel only one drive can work at one time.

Hmmm... not sure if I misunderstood but what exactly do you mean by that? The way you say it, it would be impossible to copy data from physical drive C: to physical drive D: if both drives were plugged into the same controller and one drive would be configured as master and the other as slave. That is not true, however. Of course, both drives can be active at the same time. Otherwise how would you install games from a DVD drive that was a slave of the main HD if both drives couldn't be active at the same time?

For example, I got two HDDs on my primary ATA controller and burner + DVD on the secondary ATA controller. Works great and performs very well. The reason I set it up like that is that both HDDs can operate at U/DMA 100 speed while the optical drives can only operate at U/DMA 33.
My drive setup makes sure that my HDDs have never ever got to slow down to U/DMA 33 speed (when the optical drive goes active) since I got optical drives and HDDs strictly separated. It's a setup that I can definitely recommend. I use my 2nd HD mostly for back-up purposes and the copying from one drive to the other is very fast.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a master/slave limitation in the way you described it. That may be true for serial ATA as the name suggests (serial) but due to the single channel per device design, it is, of course, no problem for several SATA devices to be active at the same time.

HiddenX

October 24th, 2006, 17:14

@Moriendor

Moving The Swapfile To A Different Hard Disk
When the swapfile is permanent, tweakers who advocate moving swapfiles around will tell you to move your partition to a second hard disk. Why? As the theory goes, if you put the swapfile on the second hard disk, your system will be able to access both the swapfile on the second hard disk and data on the first hard disk concurrently, thereby improving performance. But does that work?

Well, it depends. Many users and tweakers forget one thing when they move their swapfiles to the second hard disk - only one IDE device can be active at any one time on the same IDE controller. Usually, they will slave the second hard disk to the first hard disk on the primary IDE controller and put the CD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE controller. That's sound practice normally but in their case, that negates the purpose of moving the swapfile off the primary hard disk!

Because both hard disks are on the same IDE controller, they can't be active at the same time. So, there's no way the system can read from both hard disks at the same time. In fact, because the secondary hard disk is often slower and smaller than the primary hard disk, the performance of the swapfile on the second hard disk is worse off now.

source:
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_17.htm (http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_17.htm)

Moriendor

October 24th, 2006, 17:33

@HiddenX: Thanks for the link. Guess we'd have to ask that Adrian dude then from where he's getting the idea that only one drive can be active at a time but I'm too lazy to write him a mail ;) . I think it's complete and utter bullshit though. Might have been true in the 1980s before parallel ATA and synchronous data transfers were invented but ever since the introduction of 2 ATA channels, I'd have serious doubts that any of this is true.
Oh well, the whole swap file debate is IMHO overrated anyway. You will maybe get 0.0038934 FPS more from this "tweak" ;) .

Apostrophe

October 24th, 2006, 17:40

Very many thanks for the help, HiddenX, but unfortunately it didn't do it for me.

Although I'm not really sure I used the MemTool correctly and if it helped...

However, as I ran G3 in the window mode, I saw that during the load time it filled the RAM very quickly. I got to play practically for one dialogue in Cape Dun and then, poof, all RAM in use, sounds starts looping and the only way out is through CTRL+ALT+DEL.

I didn't try the msconfig.exe and the NTFS tweaks cause that's "Messing With Tha System", which I try to avoid at any cost.

I guess I just have to accept the fact that 1 GB of RAM is just not enough for a monster like Gothic.

Prime Junta

October 24th, 2006, 17:54

Moriendor

October 24th, 2006, 18:17

@Moriendor and others -- It's pretty simple, really: the PATA bus only talks to one device at a time. So, if you have two drives configured as master and slave and move stuff between them, the computer first reads a block from M into memory, then stops reading and writes the block to S. And repeats until it's done.

However, if you have them on separate buses, the system can stream the data from the one to the other -- M1 can be reading stuff into memory at the same time as it's being written to M2.

Same thing applies to reading -- suppose the game data is on D1 and the swap file on D2, and the system is swapping: it's reading stuff from D1 and writing it to D2, or reading some stuff from D1 and some from D2. Works great if they're on separate buses, but if they're on the same bus, it has to switch between them. You notice this is stuttering, pausing, and lags. IOW it won't affect FPS, but it will affect the length and frequency of stutters as stuff is streamed between the disk(s) and RAM. Very significantly too.

IOW, it's not that they won't work -- obviously they will -- it's just that they'll work much more slowly than if they're on separate buses.

Don't believe me? Try copying a large volume of data -- say, 10 GB -- from one disk to another, first with the two disks set up as master and slave on the same connector, then with them set up as masters on different connectors. The difference will be dramatic. I know, because I've tried it, on a fairly recent system too.

Of course, this doesn't apply to SATA. You can plug those in any which way you like.

OK, thanks for the detailed explanation. However, unless you're doing something rather extreme very regularly as the 10GB file transfer that you mentioned, I doubt that it really makes much of a real world difference if you keep the HDs separated. Seems pretty theoretical to me like the fact that on an Ethernet LAN only one transfer can be active at any one time but still, as we all know, you can have LAN parties with lots of players using the same net.
The HD "tweak" sounds to me like you would suggest to someone with a home LAN and 2 computers to buy 2 switches, plug each computer into a separate switch and then to connect the switches via a network bridge for improved network performance which would be a case of "slight" overkill maybe ;) .

Acleacius

October 25th, 2006, 05:28

Well Adrian has been putting together the most extensive and factual tweaks since the mid 90's, iir when I the net started growing, at least thats when I first heard of him.
As with Toms Hardware in the early days if you wanted info on overclocking, upto date tech info on hardware, you went to Adrian for BIOS tweaks and such.
If you notice in the article that even the top Harddrive maker's tech gurus commented on this info agreeing and expanding on it, at time it was Western Digital whom ruled and they agreed with him.

It was just put out there to help people, whom almost all are experencing stuttering, and this does help. ;)

Afaik tranfering data over a lan is different than measuring read write speeds, so maybe that is confusing part.

Prime Junta

October 25th, 2006, 09:50

@Moriendor -- Just try it. I guarantee you'll be able to notice the difference e.g. when playing a game with real-time terrain swapping. Again, I've *done* this -- I made this mistake and corrected it on my previous box, and the difference was very noticeable.

As to your LAN parallel, well duh -- there's several orders of magnitude more traffic along the IDE bus than the Ethernet connector, so of course it'd be overkill. But with disks it isn't -- disk I/O is *the* biggest bottleneck in any system, and therefore anything you can do to reduce it will make a noticeable difference.

Again, in order of priority/cost:

(1) Get enough RAM. Less than 2GB nowadays is silly, if you're doing anything memory-intensive.
(2) Get two HDD's, put them on different controllers, and put the system and programs on one and the swap file and data files on another (but make a separate partition for the swap file).

IMO anyone who doesn't do (1) and (2) is being a bit silly, unless all they do is Web, office, and email; it doesn't cost much and makes a major difference to real-life performance. If you want to go the extra mile or two:

(3) Replace the system disk and swap partition with WD Raptors and keep your data on a big, slower volume.
(4) Replace the system disk with a striped RAID pair.
(5) Replace the data disk/swap partition with another striped RAID pair.

The advantages of CPU upgrades are way more "theoretical" than this, and usually cost a lot more. Not to mention overclocking or GPU tweaking, which add instability into the mix.

JonNik

October 25th, 2006, 10:23

(3) Replace the system disk and swap partition with WD Raptors and keep your data on a big, slower volume.
(4) Replace the system disk with a striped RAID pair.
(5) Replace the data disk/swap partition with another striped RAID pair.
....

Well this discussion is somewhat close to what I have been arguing with
myself ever since I bought a couple of WD Raptors(74 GB) and set them in
raid 0 for my system/Data. I was thinking of buying a 36 GB Raptor (especially
lately when storage has become a concern). and moving the swapfile there.

I do have some concerns though especially since the Raptor costs ~100 euros
that I am not all that happy to "throw away" in my current financial state:

#1 the Raid performs ~50% better than the single Raptor I think when reads
are considered (writes may be even worst than the single Disk in some cases
though generally gain ~5-10% if I recall correctly some of my early research).
Having this in mind would not the fact that the single raptor is that slower than
the Raid mostly negate the gain of moving the swapfile to it. (No, getting a
second raptor is not an option :) ).

#2 36 GB for 100 euros are a LOT of money when I could get a slower 250 GB
for my storage needs (Looking ahead that is 36 GB are enough for now) at less
and keeping the swapfile where it is...

Also @ Prime junta: wouldnt keeping the second drive single partition and
choosing a static pagefile (and also using some utility to optimize said pagefile)
be faster than having 2 partitions..? If the pagefile is not dynamic (hence not
fragmented) I dont see what the problem would be in writing DATA in the same
partition (occasional defrag would only help ofcourse).

Anyway any thoughts from people that have gone through this sort of setup
would be greatly appreciated :)

kalniel

October 25th, 2006, 12:09

I'm very surprised no-one's mentioned telling XP not to use as the swap file so much. This is one of the biggest performance increasers in general if you've got more than a gb of RAM.

Might be wise to set a system restore point before trying.

In regedit:

1) Export the current registry to a safe place. If it goes wrong you can restore from this file.

2) navigate to HKEY_LOCALMACHINE->SYSTEM->CurrentControlSet->Control->Session Manager->Memory Management

3) DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive yeilds faster performance.

4) LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory and improves system performance a lot.

5) Exit regedit (no need to save).

Note that windows will still use the pagefile when required, it's not actually disabling it, but this stops windows from assuming it will need to use it so much.

HiddenX

October 25th, 2006, 14:13

@kalniel

3) is okay

4) I would advice against doing that. Enabling largesystem cache means it will chew system memmory before it writes it to the drive (up to the physical ram limit). In a file server this is fine because the file server isn't really doing anything other then serving files. So in that application the ram requirememnts are low and having fewer disk writes will increase performance.

However on a home machine where you often have multiple applications running and especially if you are playing games (Gothic 3 has his own caches) or any other application that loves RAM all you are doing it wasting ram. You don't have constant disk access like on a file server so you are loosing ram and gaining a minor advantage in less disk writes.

txa1265

October 25th, 2006, 15:18

Some interesting stuff here ... I'm trying to see how to work all of this on my laptop ;)

Acleacius

October 25th, 2006, 15:29

JonNik

October 25th, 2006, 15:54

I personally wouldn't use Raptors since the 16 meg IDE drives are only about 5% slower but offer 250 gig or more (?) drives even cheaper, iir.
So for cheaper price your getting 95% speed and at least 3 times the space.

A 7200 rpm IDE drive is 0nly 5% slower than the 10000 rpm SATA raptor ?
Do you have any particular Brand/model in mind ?
Any link to a relevant benchmark ?

Thanks in advance.

txa1265

October 25th, 2006, 16:04

A 7200 rpm IDE drive is 0nly 5% slower than the 10000 rpm SATA raptor ?
Do you have any particular Brand/model in mind ?
Any link to a relevant benchmark ?

I can't quote anything, but I know that the real-world SATA is far less than the benchmarking results based on the actual usage. However, I know you can see differences 5400RPM vs 7200RPM on the same bus, so I can only imagine that it would be noticeable (for loading, etc) when adding the SATA advantage.

JonNik

October 25th, 2006, 16:16

I can't quote anything, but I know that the real-world SATA is far less than the benchmarking results based on the actual usage. However, I know you can see differences 5400RPM vs 7200RPM on the same bus, so I can only imagine that it would be noticeable (for loading, etc) when adding the SATA advantage.

This is generally true of synthetic benchmarks, I must admit, though there are some good Tools out there. Also actually using any benchmark becomes
sometimes obsolete if you dont carefully consider the specific performance
profile of the machine/applications you are going to install the hardware you
are interested in. They do give you an idea though especially for HD about
seek times read/writes burst performance etc...

It just stikes me as odd that despite the added advantage of the 2x buffer
(16mb) the 7200->10000 rpm and generally good characteristics would not
amount to a greater difference in perf for the Raptor.

Keep in mind that despite my profession I actually research HW only prior
to actually buying so I might be a bit behind things (been a year+ since I
installed my Raptor Raid).

Prime Junta

October 25th, 2006, 16:38

@JonNik -- Your setups make a lot of sense. Indeed you don't need another partition for the swapfile if you keep it static; the only advantage is that it won't get in the way as you defrag your data partition.

I've no idea how much better or worse they would perform relative to the one I suggested. The difference won't probably be huge either way. More ways than one to skin a cat, as they say; the crux of the matter is still keeping your system/programs and your swap file on separate physical volumes on different channels.

Re Raptors and RAID: the thing with Raptors is that they have dramatically lower seek times than jus' 'bout any other IDE/SATA hard disk, even though the transfer rates are about the same. This means that any application that involves zipping around the disk, e.g. reading a large number of small files, will benefit greatly from them. This includes stuff like booting up the system or loading complex applications with lots of .dll's and other resources. OTOH it'll make very little difference when you need to shunt around large chunks of data... such as reading or writing the swapfile, streaming video, audio, or other media.

On the other hand, RAIDing the stuff will almost double your transfer rate, but won't do anything to seek times; this will make a lot of difference for some things and no difference at all for others -- in fact, it'll speed up everything that the faster HDD didn't speed up, but won't make any difference to the stuff that the faster HDD did affect.

So, if you want the best of both worlds, RAID a pair of Raptors -- you'll get the fast seek times *and* the fast transfer rates. OTOH if you can only afford to do one, then it really is your call.

However, there's one further point: how much room do you really need for your system and apps? A 36.5 GB Raptor costs about as much as a 250 GB Samsung. However, if you only need 70 GB for your system and apps (i.e., if you uninstall your disk hogging games once you're through with them), a RAID pair of Raptors won't cost you any more than a RAID pair of Samsungs. With the Samsungs, you're getting capacity you're not actually using, while not getting the faster seek times that would benefit you.

FWIW, I've built three very similar systems (same mobo, same X2 processor) for three different people, the only differences being in the disk setup. System 1 uses a pair of Samsungs, one for data and swap, one for the system, System 2 uses a Raptor and a Samsung, and System 3 uses a RAID pair of Raptors and a (mirrored) RAID pair of Samsungs. There's a very noticeable performance difference between the three; in particular, the RAIDed Raptor system boots up so much faster than the others it's not even funny. (Incidentally, my own system is System 2, only I added a second Raptor I came across for the swap file; my next upgrade will be RAIDing the Raptors once I can be bothered to do it.)

JonNik

October 25th, 2006, 16:52

@ Prime Junta:

It seems you have spent a lot of time and thought in this matter.
You just gave me another little nudge towards buying that Raptor :) thanks.

I think for now my main Raptor Raid (its 2 X 74 GB) is mostly Ok. I Do need
occasionaly a little more space when I get lazy for large periods and things
keep piling up in my data partition on the Raid untill I backup in DVD but 36
GB will probably do for now...

Cheers

Moriendor

October 26th, 2006, 01:00

Just to add a thought... note that if you consider performance and space requirements that HDs (and -yes- even the superfast Raptors :) ) lose performance towards the end of the drive. As a rule of thumb, you could say that significant performance drops begin at about a 50% full HD so if you really must squeeze the absolutely max possible performance out of your drive(s), you should buy approximately 2x the capacity that you will actually use.
For example, look at the HD Tachs here (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1746&page=5) and here (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1926851,00.asp) . As you can see from the benchmark in the 1st link, the 74GB Raptor went from a max of about 70MB/s at the beginning of the drive to just a little over 50MB/s towards the end of the drive. And on the 2nd linked page (open the first pic on the page), we can see that the 150GB Raptor goes from 90GB/s at the beginning of the HD to a little over 50MB/s towards the end.

So, if max possible performance is of any concern, then one should definitely try to find a good compromise between drive capacity, the actually needed storage space, and price. Buying a small 36.7GB Raptor and using up the entire (or much more than 50%) drive capacity would negate or reverse a significant chunk of the performance gains that the Raptor has compared to a much cheaper (and larger at the same price) 7.2K RPM drive, possibly to the point where it just doesn't make sense to shell out that much more cash for a Raptor.

Prime Junta

October 26th, 2006, 02:32

@Moriendor -- you're still thinking exclusively of transfer rate, which is only half the story. Seek times are at least equally important.

Again, all I can say is... try it out for yourself. I have built systems with 36.5 GB and 74 GB Raptors and with vanilla 72KRPM HDD's (Samsungs and Seagates mostly). There is a noticeable performance gain with Raptors, but yes, it is not as big as the leap you get from putting just any two drives in (on separate controllers) nor as big as RAIDing any two drives. And yes, in many cases it makes more sense to buy a bunch of identical drives, if only for flexibility and future repurposing.

Acleacius

October 26th, 2006, 10:02

Here is the first article I remember, appoliges Ihaven't had time to catch up to the read several of the last post.

This is from Anand Tech afaki one of the most trusted sites on the net, here is a quote from a review from one of the first released 16meg buffer drives you can check for more recent haven't the time, atm;
"With the MaXLine III, Maxtor has given users a good in-between point for those who want the capacity of a 7200RPM drive, but with the performance of Western Digital's 10,000RPM Raptor"

Here is the articla.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2094&p=1

It should contain any stats you seek.

JonNik

October 26th, 2006, 12:51

@Acleacius: Thanks for the Link. I unfortunately dont have a very good record
with Maxtors (the only two HD's that crashed on me were Maxtors). Nothing
to say for the Company most likely (most probably bad luck) but I got a bit
burned there.

@Moriendor: That is true but what Prime Junta says is also true. In the End it
boils down on type of usage. I want a bit of space to Move my ever Growing
Collection of mp3's , screens and documents (and free some space in my data
partition plus move them outside of the more failure prone Raid) and 36 GB will
be just the thing for now. Performance wise I only care about the Pagefile.sys
from that Disk and either way that is going to be on the "front" since it will be
static and the first thing to go in after the Disc Format (unless I got my facts
confused....).

All in all I am still skeptical that with the single raptor/or other disk I'll see
a performance increase if only because the Pagefile.sys is now on the Raptor
Raid. I think That I'll follow the path of getting a 36 GB Raptor now and a
second One in the future as Prime Junta suggested. I think that one should
show a perf increase (for the single I'll know by tonight :) ) but I can do
without for now .

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Acleacius

October 26th, 2006, 18:46

Well WD has them too that was 1 or 2 years ago and they were just the first out with a review.
As I said it was the first artical I recall, it was inteneded to show its more cost effective to get a 16 meg buffer IDE 250gig than getting 75gig Raptor.
Iir Raptors are WD as well, if you want WD review of 16 meg buffer you can look one up. ;)

HiddenX

October 27th, 2006, 12:36

A good Windows XP Tweak-Guide:

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm

darklord

October 27th, 2006, 12:59

My wires aren't long enough for this, most IDE wires I've seen have two plugs reasonably close together so they can do either two Hard drives or two CD Roms etc. How on earth do you manage to get your 1st hard drive/burner on one, then a second hard drive/dvd on the other. They just don't stretch!

I can only assume you have special extra long wires?

Daniel.

HiddenX

October 29th, 2006, 15:12

Another ge3.ini Tweak

change:
FpS.Average=30.0
FpS.Min=10.0
FpS.Max=120

to

FpS.Average=30.0
FpS.Min=20.0
FpS.Max=60

Gorath

October 30th, 2006, 14:16

Some people at WoG report about massively improved loading times with disabled VSync.
Rather unlikely but worth a try.

ToddMcF2002

October 30th, 2006, 18:10

Just a note on the RAPTORS, the 36 GB versions are much less efficient than the 74 GB versions. Search around on reviews.

I've got 2 74GB in RAID 0 and with regular defragging you can achieve near SATA scores in Sandra. As far as loading games into memory - I can tell you this: when I play coop NWN games while hosting the session I'm at the vendor's stall buying weapons long before anyone else arrives.

HiddenX

October 30th, 2006, 21:19

A good free harddrive-defrag tool:

ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/hdtool11.zip

Better than Windows xp defrag, but it takes a while.

EDIT newer Version:
http://www.wintotal.de/softw/index.php?id=3452

HiddenX

October 30th, 2006, 22:39

These tweaks are necessary for people with older rigs.

Savegame-help:
http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3612&postcount=16

It's a workaround - a fix can only come from PB.

JemyM

October 31st, 2006, 00:02

I have noted that most of my crashes happens in the area Vengard+Faring+Gotha. Faring is impossible to save / quickload into without a crash. Crashes in other places have happened but they are rare.

I have also noted that Memory Cache to low doesnt really help me, and only makes the game lag more.

HiddenX

October 31st, 2006, 01:06

@JemyM
How much memory is free / allocated when you start Gothic and load a game for the first time ? - the g3starter reports it.

I have these stats

1286/2047 ->63% (physical ram)

322/4096 -> 8% (swap file)

I can play 3-4 hours until the smartheap - out of memory error occurs - saving the game ca. every 10 minutes.

If your memory fill-rate is much higher - you should look for unnecessary background processes and deactivate them and/or tweak the Gothic cache settings.

If everything goes wrong - maybe you have tweaked too much - start with the original ge3.ini and set in the detail setting resource cache and texture quality to medium.

JemyM

October 31st, 2006, 01:29

@JemyM
How much memory is free / allocated when you start Gothic and load a game for the first time ? - the g3starter reports it.

If your memory fill-rate is much higher - you should look for unnecessary background processes and deactivate them and/or tweak the Gothic cache settings.

If everything goes wrong - maybe you have tweaked too much - start with the original ge3.ini and set in the detail setting resource cache and texture quality to medium.

1579/2047 (77%)
1846/3939 (47%)

I do not see anything in Task Manager sucking up more memory than Gothic itself, which sucks up 1.2gb physical and 1.4 virtual at the moment. Also... Texture Quality Medium really looks like crap. :(

HiddenX

October 31st, 2006, 01:55

JemyM

October 31st, 2006, 02:11

-edit- nevermind

JemyM

October 31st, 2006, 02:19

Something goes very wrong on your computer - windows applications can adress 2 GB only. So Gothic can only be responsible for consuming 2GB at maximum. (physical+swap memory) - A normal Windows XP SP2 sucks up ca. 300 MB.
The question is:
Which process is the memory thief on your system ?
Control it with the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) register <processes>
Control your services with the tool msconfig.

I only have one single task sucking up more than 20mb ram and that's explorer.exe. I have five that sucks up +10mb. only 4 programs take up +10mb virtual memory.

I do not run any chat messengers or peer2peer programs on my gaming computer. My tasktray do not have more than setting-applications for my hardware (g15 keyboard, mx510 mouse etc) and an antivirus program.

HiddenX

October 31st, 2006, 02:48

@JemyM

for the use of msconfig look at

How to perform a clean boot procedure to prevent background programs from interfering with a game or a program that you currently use:

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B331796&x=15&y=12

ToddMcF2002

October 31st, 2006, 03:18

You should be able to get the system down to ~140MB. Mine's about that. MSConfig all the way!

Acleacius

October 31st, 2006, 03:31

You maybe have a Sound Blaster and shut off CTHelper?

Personlly I perfer Autoruns, since it gives more info like the Directory path and such which makes it a little easier to understand. :)

AutoRuns
Copyright (C) 2000-2004 Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Acleacius

October 31st, 2006, 12:24

DId what the link said, you mean the MS link?
Well I didn't read it but Sound Blasters has a driver called CTHelper which needs to be running (to the best of my knowledge).

You can do a Google search for CTHelper.exe and any file you are looking to shut off, if you see a search result for say; www.neuber.com they are reliable but make sure to read several and not one, because not everyone knows there many are asking and just cross check at another site if your not sure. :)

Not sure what all you turned off but if you followed a list, I suggest you follow it backwards till your stuff starts working again. :)

HiddenX

October 31st, 2006, 14:11

Good practice in msconfig:

a) google for each name of the non-microsoft services
b) read the service descriptions from other users carefully
c) choose yourself, if you disable the service or not

JemyM

October 31st, 2006, 15:44

Killing everything in msconfig seems a bit dangerous. I kept stuff I know I must have like my defrag scheduling program and graphics/soundcard drivers.

lostnumber

October 31st, 2006, 20:18

I hope that I am not asking this for a second time, but I coudn't find the info I wanted in the search I ran. Will G3 ever include an option to include AA?

HiddenX

October 31st, 2006, 22:00

lostnumber

October 31st, 2006, 22:18

Does this mean that since I have a 6800 GT I cannot, and will never be able to, enable AA in G3? I don't mean to be harsh but the game looks like arse without it. Then again if I did turn it on there is a good chance that performance will take a critical hit. Thanks Mr.X

HiddenX

October 31st, 2006, 22:26

This article

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gamereviews/341/

says:

Nvidia cards are not able to combine AA with HDR

HiddenX

November 1st, 2006, 00:55

Nice tuning tool (beta) for editing the Gothic 3 - ge3.ini file

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2601038&#post2601038

Thanks Black Hole !

PS:

This tool is german - the best site for english/german phrase translation:

http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/

or with english menus:
http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/dings.cgi?lang=en&service=&opterrors=0&optpro=0&query=&comment=

HiddenX

November 1st, 2006, 09:41

ATI Catalyst 6.10 ist out:

https://support.ati.com

JonNik

November 1st, 2006, 10:33

@lostnumber

gossip - I can't proof it, because I have only a x850 pro

a) you need an ati x1900xt or better
b) load the "Chuck" driver (Catalyst 6.9b) from ATI and install it
c) rename Gothic3.exe to Oblivion.exe
d) maybe you can activate AA

I find this highly unlikely. This is an application specific patch utilizing
ATI's capability to apply AA to fp16 rendered scenes... Some people
managed to pull that one on an fp16(see openEXR HDR implementation)
shooter but there is no fp16 HDR in G3 to my knowledge. Just a simple Bloom.

This article

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gamereviews/341/

says:

Nvidia cards are not able to combine AA with HDR

True (they use the same part of the hardware that does fp16 to do AA).
But once again this holds true for fp16 HDR only. Source's HDR works fine
with Nvidia cards. And so (I think) should G3's scheme. On the other hand it
all boils down to the implementation in the game engine. I recall thief III's
simple PS 1.4 bloom didnt work with AA either...

ATI Catalyst 6.10 ist out:

https://support.ati.com

Yeah I've been having some hope that these might do it for G3+AA...
Didn't someone from PB mentioned that this was an issue NVIDIA and
ATI.AMD had to fix in their drivers ? the 6.10 betas didnt do it though...
This one has the chuck patch integrated in the official release for the first
time btw.

Acleacius

November 1st, 2006, 10:34

Execellent news, hope it help with G3. :)

kalniel

November 1st, 2006, 19:04

Source HDR is integer based (PS2.0) rather than FP. I'll test tonight what happens with gothics HDR and forcing AA.

kalniel

November 1st, 2006, 22:56

Ok, I can confirm real AA does not work with NVidia cards and G3, however, Quincux AA does actually work, so it's a little better than no AA. One potential downside is it looks a bit blurry with Quincux AA, however I think it fits quite nicely with the depth of field post-processing effect :p

Oh and FYI, I find Gothic 3 takes up around 780mb of RAM.

HiddenX

November 1st, 2006, 23:29

No white flicker with ati x850 pro (catalyst 6.9 or catalyst 6.10)

lostnumber

November 2nd, 2006, 22:25

Perhaps I am missing something here but I never even noticed an option in the details menu to enable FSAA. IMHO bloom and DOF ruin the game’s visual experience. Everyone has a divine glowing look to their face and buildings just a few hundred feet away are blurry. I would really like to turn off bloom and DOF but I get the white flicker problem. My game is full of blurred, jagged-edged, shiny objects. With all this in mind you have to love the fact that the game was "optimized" for Nvidia GPUs. I really hope that this isn't way it’s meant to be played. Get it??? Ok I'll stop.

Arexen

November 3rd, 2006, 00:27

I have an Nvidia card, and I have no "white flicker" with post-processing disabled.

HiddenX

November 3rd, 2006, 18:30

The latest ge2.ini tweaks for 2GB systems
(as always: make a backup for this file, before you change something
don't copy the spaces in the numbers - there are inserted by the rpgwatch engine)

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
;use these cache settings (25% more):

Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=80000000
Cache.SizeMesh=87500000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12500000

; the maximum settings for 2GB Systems (ResourceCache on Medium)
; settings tweaked towards high

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=60000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=80000 0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHi gh=0

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00 ; old value 0.01

change:
FpS.Average=30.0
FpS.Min=10.0
FpS.Max=120

to

FpS.Average=20.0
FpS.Min=15.0
FpS.Max=40

EDIT: optimized
Play on Resource Cache and Texture Detail <Medium>

These settings minimize the "smartheap-out of memory error",
the performance should be better than on un-tweaked <medium> settings.

____
PS:
ignore the Spaces in the numbers - there are inserted by this forum engine.

HiddenX

November 3rd, 2006, 23:05

@Wheres_the_Guru
This error is new to me.

The save fix program can only started once (*) - after you use it it's the best tactic to start Gothic 3 again - the filled up memory will be relased.

(*) The tool have to start Gothic 3 to live in the same adress space.

The hotkey should do the same as clicking on the button "Speicher wieder freigeben" - this feature never worked for me.

Arexen

November 4th, 2006, 07:29

I rarely get an error message, usually the game pauses forever as if it's trying to load, but the HDD access light doesnt come on, so for some reason the computer just refuses to load anything anymore. The only way to get out of it is to reset the machine.

Sem

November 4th, 2006, 16:07

Can somebody explain to me what the "Where is the guru"-bug is. I've never had it (haven't had a single crash yet, guess I'm very lucky). It the error message seriously saying "where is the guru"?

Arexen

November 4th, 2006, 20:47

lol I had no idea "Where's the Guru?" was an actual error. What an appropriate name.

txa1265

November 4th, 2006, 21:20

That really is hilarious ... except the part where the game is crashing on you

HiddenX

November 4th, 2006, 22:42

This Guru is legendary ...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/Guru_meditation.gif

the best computer ever: Amiga

Alistair

November 5th, 2006, 12:07

I've just realised why my world has 'holes' in the landscape in places. I've increased the high detail clipping plane, but left the Render.PrefetchGridCellSize as it was, so I'm actually looking beyond the edge of the detailed landscape... into a region where no terrain has been loaded at all.

Increasing the GridCellSize does get rid of the problem... but at the expense of memory problems. Some tweaking has got me at 18000 for the view plane and 12000 for the grid cell size.

Bigpapa

November 5th, 2006, 16:03

This Guru is legendary ...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/Guru_meditation.gif

the best computer ever: Amiga

Agreed 100% ;) Btw, thank you from your great tweaks, it really did it very much better with my system (which i have recently updated)
Core2Duo e6300 oc'd to 2,8 ghz
Asus P5B mobo
2 gb ram
XFX 7900 gs
+ other bla bla stuff

Worked fine with the previous system too
P4 prescott 2.8 ghz (800fsb model)
MSI 865PE Neo2
Asus Ati x850xt
2gb ram
and bla bla's

You are the man HiddenX :) Now the game is much more enjoyable. Didn't do fps tweaks though, maybe i should? Running it at highest now, and it runs smoothly.

HiddenX

November 5th, 2006, 16:25

Never change a running system :-)

Bigpapa

November 5th, 2006, 17:33

HiddenX

November 5th, 2006, 19:41

Well, my nephew wanted to have a better one, so i decided to buy myself a new system so i could give my old one to him ;) He had an old P3 800 mhz with some old graphics card. Conclusion : one guy with less money to spend in this month and one very happy :D

I think two guys are happy, now :)

______________________________________

BTW - a new version of the Gothic 3 Tuning Utility is out (click on download):
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2601038&#post2601038

Mirror:
http://www.gothic-tuning-utility.ch.vu/

HiddenX

November 6th, 2006, 17:07

Depth of Field (DoF) without (or less) Bloom:

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2638693&#post2638693

The file IP_DOF.fx (in Gothic III\Data\Materials\Effects\ImageProcessing) can be changed:

change

// add bloom
cOut.rgb += tex2D( BloomImage, input.TexCoord0 ) * ( 1.0f - cOut.rgb );
return cOut;

to (no Bloom)

// add bloom
// cOut.rgb += tex2D( BloomImage, input.TexCoord0 ) * ( 1.0f - cOut.rgb );
return cOut;

or (smaller Bloom effect)

Code:
// add bloom
cOut.rgb += tex2D( BloomImage, input.TexCoord0 ) * ( 1.0f - cOut.rgb ) * 0.66;
return cOut;

Thanks Mud,
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/signaturepics/sigpic48006_4.gif

Corwin

November 7th, 2006, 04:01

Love that new sig pic!! :biggrin:

Black Hood

November 8th, 2006, 17:11

A thousand thanks for all the tweak info, Hidden X et al. I've been playing on a 1 gig system and only your suggestions helped me to make it playable. I just added another gig yesterday and changed my settings to your suggested ones for a 2 gig system and it's running beautifully now!

Thaurin

November 8th, 2006, 19:15

Time to collect all of these tweaks and present them in an organized fashion on the Gothic 3 wiki (http://rpgwatch.com/wikka)! Here's a direct link to the .ini tweaks page (http://www.rpgwatch.com/wikka/IniFiles).

lostnumber

November 8th, 2006, 19:45

HiddenX

November 8th, 2006, 19:57

@Thaurin

nice work !

kalniel

November 8th, 2006, 20:28

So if I understand this correctly only ATI users can enable FSAA? Do ATI users have the option to enable FSAA in the details menu? I never even saw the option listed in the manual or the game menu. Usually if I can't use something in a game the option is grayed out. If Nvidia cards can't implement FSAA in G3 you really have to wonder what all that collaboration with Nvidia and crew as worth. I'm pretty sure that no one would have made the conscious decision to have G3 look like a blurry, jagged-edged, and far too shinny, piece of garbage on Nvidia card. Forgive my insistence please, I just want to make sure before I get upset.
It's a hardware limitation for NVidia cards prior to the 8000 series (which can run FSAA+HDR). To try AA with an ATI card, force AA from the control panel (CCC or whatever it's called) rather than from the game itself.

Personally I still think this 'blurry, jagged-edged, far too shiny piece of garbage' looks great on my 6800GT.

lostnumber

November 8th, 2006, 21:13

I have the same card... perhaps garbage was a little too harsh though. Does this mean that if I turned bloom and DOF off I should be able to force FSAA by using the control panel?

I'll give it a shot, but only after the next patch is released. While we are at it, has anyone here who runs an Nvidia card had success in with forcing FSAA?

HiddenX

November 8th, 2006, 23:54

Lower the cache-settings to the original settings may help -
but the performance will again decrease a bit.

and something else:

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=60000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=80000 0

The new Medium settings are NOT the original High settings, take a close look - in summary the original high settings use 40 MB (!) more:

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=180 00000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=4000000 0
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

don't forget this line:

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHi gh=0

*******

;original cache settings:
Cache.SizeImage=128000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=40000000
Cache.SizeMesh=70000000
Cache.SizeSound=80000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=40000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=40000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=10000000

;original medium resource settings:
ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=70000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=15000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 6000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=30000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=75000 0

good tool for editing these settings:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2601038&#post2601038

PS:
always make a backup of your ge3.ini before you change something, so you can always return to your previous settings.

Thaurin

November 9th, 2006, 00:52

@Thaurin

nice work !

Yeah, but now it becomes harder and harder to include every tweak in a readable form, because of different setups and questions of what actually the best tweak settings are. But I guess that's up to the wiki community. :)

HiddenX

November 9th, 2006, 01:20

I hope one of these tips helps:

1) Set the Anti-Aliasing option of your ATI-driver to <application managed>
Catalyst A.I. <disabled>
Anisotropic Filtering <application managed>
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing <disabled>
Enable Geometry Instancing
Enable DXT Texture Formats

2) disable not all starting logos - at least one have to be started (see logo.ini)

3) Make a new empty directory named _compiledImage inside your Gothic 3 "Data" folder, and a new empty directory named _Intern inside this one.
For instance:
C:\program files\Gothic III\Data\_compiledImage\_Intern

HiddenX

November 9th, 2006, 02:30

The empty folders are needed for Gothic 3 to to some internals, if something goes wrong.

Your ATI-settings are correct - same like mine - I have an x850 PRO.

I have never seen this new error - maybe a problem with the sound driver ?

If everything fails - deinstall and reinstall Gothic3 (same patch level)

Maybe some settings in your inis/Gothic files are screwed up by the crashes.

These hard crashes can occur, when your graphics-card / mainbord / cpu / memory is overheating -> maybe you have overclocked something ?

HiddenX

November 9th, 2006, 03:06

With some hacking you can get rid of the smartheap - out of memory completely and increase the performance of Gothic 3:

http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5382&postcount=15

Some pictures:

http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2649852&#post2649852

NicoDE, OC-Burner, I and some others have worked this out.

Do this at your own risk !

If you get graphic problems - lower the userva-value to 2700,2600 ... 2100 'til it works.

Background:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/Expand_Memory_of_32-bit_App_-_Microsoft_4GT-_6204.pdf

Arexen

November 9th, 2006, 03:42

@Viking_Berserker

I have had this problem before. However, both times a quick restart did the trick and fixed the game world.

HiddenX

November 9th, 2006, 09:47

you could mail your ge3.ini and your user.ini to
hiddenx@hotmail.com
I can take a look this night.

and yes I play with postprocessing completely off (without bloom, and without DoF and Pixel Shader 2.0, Resolution 1280x1024)- and I have no white flickering.

The wired sounds you are hearing are broken ambiente sounds (you can hear them correctly while quicksaving)

This has nothing to do with your hardware - it is the 3. worst Gothic 3 bug (after smartheap and where's the guru)

Gabriel

November 10th, 2006, 08:35

Viking I had the same problem going on with my graphics annoying white flickers pretty regularly. What I found though was that I has accidentally made an error when copying over HiddenX's Suggested .ini settings. I had also tried running the game in high detail. Once I fixed the .ini and bumped things down to medium I've yet to see one flicker at all. If you send Hidden your .ini I'm sure he'll be able to find the problem and get it fixed for you.

Faby

November 11th, 2006, 11:48

@HiddenX : can you upload your ini file, or send it to this email adress? (ivanovici_fabian@yahoo.com)
I have a config similar to yours ( Nvidia geforce 6800, 2gb ram, 3.0 ghz CPU ), and I want to overwrite your ini with my old one, to eliminate my bad-tweaks. thanks in advance.

HiddenX

November 11th, 2006, 13:34

@Faby
Done

Turn off Bloom (Without white flickering):

useroptions.ini

TextureFilter=1
PostProcessing=0

(Postprocessing off and anisiotropic filtering on the first level)

ge3.ini:

PostprocessingAdmin.ActiveEffect=-1

I have set bloom effects to -1 = off

Faby

November 11th, 2006, 15:44

@Faby
Done

Thank you very much ;)

hwfanatic

November 11th, 2006, 22:17

The white flicker thingy is still there...

HiddenX

November 12th, 2006, 00:47

@hwfanatic

unpack this script from NicoDE in your Gothic 3 folder and double-click it:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2651861&#post2651861

Alternative:

add the folders

\Data\_compiledImage\_Intern

in the Gothic 3 folder by hand.

hwfanatic

November 12th, 2006, 01:40

And that empty directory will, in addition to settings, remove the white flicker?

HiddenX

November 12th, 2006, 09:28

@hwfanatic - I hope so -

+ set your graphic driver settings to <application managed>.
(Anti Aliasing, Ansiotropic Filtering ...)

in the new directory Gothic 3 can generate new .ximg files.

HiddenX

November 12th, 2006, 20:55

One more defragmentation tool (Diskeeper Lite)
http://www.soft-ware.net/system/hardware/festplatte/aufraeumen/p03089.asp?PHPSESSID=75a1c36accef425a8ea31cf68d869 694

BlackHole's Tuning Tool is not BETA anymore - get version 1.0 here:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2674878&#post2674878

Faby

November 12th, 2006, 22:57

BlackHole's Tuning Tool is not BETA anymore - get version 1.0 here:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum...8&#post2674878
Okay, does anyone know what the settings in the right mean?
(and why is vegetationquality set on high,when I set vegetation off?)

HiddenX

November 13th, 2006, 00:12

[options.video] in useroptions.ini

Auflösung = Resolution.Width / Resolution.Height /Resolution.RefreshRate
Seitenverhältnis = Aspect Ratio
Sichtweite Hoch = DistanceHigh
Sichtweite Niedrig = DistanceLow
Resource Cache = ResourceCache
Objektdetails = ObjectDetails
Shaderqualität = ShaderQuality
Texturqualität = TextureQuality
Texturfilter = TextureFilter
Vegetationsdichte = VegetationQuality
Schattenqualität = ShadowQuality
Post-Processing = PostProcessing

settings in ge3.ini

Vegetation = Render.EnableVegetationRendering
Vegetationsqualität = VegetationAdmin.Quality
Sichtweite Vegetation = VegetationAdmin.ViewRange
Baumschatten = Shader.EnableTreeShadows
Statische Schatten = Shader.EnableStaticShadows
Detaillierte Schatten = Shader.EnableDetailShadows
Sichtweite Physik = AnimationBlending.PhysicControllerDistance
Max. Ragdoll-Effekte = Animation.MaxRagDolls
Sichtweite NPCS's, Tiere etc. = Entity.ROI
Geringe Horizont-Polygonanzahl = Render.EnableLowpolyRendering
Objektqualität = Render.MeshLoDQuality
Animationsqualität = Render.AnimationLoDQuality
Bildqualität = Render.ImageLoDQuality

Cormac

November 13th, 2006, 00:48

In the NA demo, there is no useroptions.ini file in the ini directory. Could it have been renamed ?

HiddenX

November 13th, 2006, 00:51

the useroptions.ini is in the Gothic 3 savegame-folder under <My Documents>

Cormac

November 13th, 2006, 02:13

Didnt even know it saved there (I keep my games in a different partition). Thanks, HiddenX.

HiddenX

November 13th, 2006, 22:04

I made a request for an english version - and here it is:
BlackHole's Gothic 3 Tuning Tool:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2674878&#post2674878

Thanks - BlackHole

Gorath

November 14th, 2006, 18:20

We´ll mirror the tool on RPGWatch.

hwfanatic

November 14th, 2006, 19:54

I can confirm that the method to disable Bloom without white flickering works. Read more: 1, 2.

HiddenX

November 16th, 2006, 21:22

Catalyst 6.11 is out - good performance with Gothic 3.

Arexen

November 18th, 2006, 20:02

I made a request for an english version - and here it is:
BlackHole's Gothic 3 Tuning Tool:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2674878&#post2674878

Thanks - BlackHole

The english links were not working for me :(

HiddenX

November 18th, 2006, 20:07

BlackHole is working on a "unified" version 1.1 - in which the language can be selected.
I keep you informed.

HiddenX

November 19th, 2006, 06:28

Blackhole's Gothic 3 Tuning Tool 1.12 (german & english) is released:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?p=2674878&#post2674878

Antonius

November 29th, 2006, 18:00

Hey,

I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to configure G3 for my system... here are my stats:

Athlon XP 1800+ (1.6ghz)
1.2gb SDRAM (Not DDR)
30gb HDD (Master, Primary IDE)
160gb HDD (Slave, Primary IDE) [Both ATA 133 7200RPM]
*G3 is currently installed on the slave
Radeon x1600Pro 512mb AGP Video Card

It runs pretty sadly, especially in the first fight scene.
Thanks.

HiddenX

November 29th, 2006, 19:25

Welcome Antonius !

Your processor is not fast enough for Gothic 3 (*) -
I would recommend Athlon 2400+ or faster.

Everything else is fine.

(*) your good graphics card is limited by this slow processor, too.

Antonius

November 29th, 2006, 23:51

That is pretty much what I thought...

I have my eyes on an ASROK socket 775 motherboard that supports both PCI-X and AGP 8X, so I may just splurge and get a Core2 Duo and a new board... would I be okay then you think? Then I would have:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache
2gb DDR2 RAM 4200
Plus the rest of my current rig.

HiddenX

November 30th, 2006, 11:47

The above system is ideal for Gothic 3.

But keep in mind that the tweaks/tips in this thread will help to improve the performance of Gothic 3 even on high end machines.

December 2nd, 2006, 17:31

Could I suggest this thread get a sticky?

HiddenX

December 5th, 2006, 20:15

increase this entry of ge3.ini from 400 to 800:

Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=800

Gorath

December 6th, 2006, 01:03

Could I suggest this thread get a sticky?

The thread will get more and more chaotic. You guys should really sort all the small pieces of info into the wiki.

Black Hood

December 6th, 2006, 23:25

increase this entry of ge3.ini from 400 to 800:

Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=800

HiddenX, is this a tweak for everyone to use regardless of other ini settings? Thanks

HiddenX

December 7th, 2006, 10:59

txa1265

December 7th, 2006, 11:39

yep - but every system is different - before you try any ge3.ini tweak, make a backup of this file or comment the old line out like this:

;Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=400
Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=800

Very important suggestion ... it costs *nothing* to do that, so always, ALWAYS do it - that way, just in case ...

JDR13

December 24th, 2006, 06:25

increase this entry of ge3.ini from 400 to 800:

Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=800

What excactly does that do?

SatansPuppetMaster

January 1st, 2007, 03:36

I have played around with alot of these tweaks, thanks all.

Ever Since the new update though my graphics have gona all wonky. When my game did load fine, it ran alot better. Now it wont load fine at all, even from new or saved.

AMD +3300 1.5gig Radeon x1600

HiddenX

January 1st, 2007, 13:30

Welcome SatansPuppetMaster,

I hope one of these tips helps:

1) Set the Anti-Aliasing option of your ATI-driver to <application managed>
Catalyst A.I. <disabled>
Anisotropic Filtering <application managed>
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing <disabled>
Enable Geometry Instancing
Enable DXT Texture Formats

2) Make a new empty directory named _compiledImage inside your Gothic 3 "Data" folder, and a new empty directory named _Intern inside this one.
For instance:
C:\program files\Gothic III\Data\_compiledImage\_Intern

3) Disable DoF (Depth of Field)

tk_bla

January 1st, 2007, 22:25

Thanks alot HiddenX!!!
i tried for houres to solve this problem and what u offered helped me =]
but i used only part 1 of your post
and i did this thing with the directory and its not filled... there is nothing in it after i play for like.. 2 hours.
Sould I do anything else for this to work?
b.t.w
I have
Radeon 1950Pro with the latest driver
1 gb memory
and an Intel e6400
i don't know what tweaks to use.. but i run the game on the highest details.
Thank you!

Acleacius

January 6th, 2007, 14:54

Just wanted to say I am having good luck with ATI 612 drivers,

Also is there a way to turn off shadows completly, specificly torch and light spell shadows.
I have turned off shadows in the ini but can't seem to get the shadows off during selflighting.

Thanks. :)

gothic 3 tweak collector

January 12th, 2007, 00:26

GOTHIC 3-HOW TO MAKE GOTHIC 3 LOOK AND PERFORM BETTER GUIDE

Visual Tweaks:
To increase grass draw distance:

- VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=3500.0

Raise this value to 6500.0 to double the distance grass is rendered. You can increase it even further or lower it a bit to improve performance.

To increase NPC and creature draw distance:

- Entity.ROI=4000.0

Raise this value to 8000.0 to double the distance NPCs and creatures are rendered.

To increase item and object draw distance (on high details):

- ObjectDetails.fScreenObjectDistanceCulling_High=0. 008
- ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=30 0.0
- ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=300.0

Change the first value to 0.016
Change the second value to 600.0
Change the second value to 5000.0

To move the blur effect further away:

- Render.DOFStart=1000.0
- Render.DOFEnd=8000.0

Raise the first value to 4000.0
Raise the second value to 12000.0

To increase the distance the ground textures switch from high to low resolution:

- DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=10000.0
- DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Medium=8000.0
- DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Low=6000.0

Raise the first value to 12000.0
Raise the second value to 10000.0
Raise the third value to 8000.0

These can be further further increased if you want. Just make sure that the difference between the three is equal to one another (2000.0 in this case)or you may get graphical glitches.

Untested values:

- DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=1000 00.0
- DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_Medium=45 000.0
- DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_Low=20000 .0

Performance Tweaks:
Less stuttering/lag:

- Cache.SizeImage=128000000

Double this value to 256000000

This is supposed to work for people with 2GB of ram but it may be worth testing even if you have less than 2GB. It seems to make the game stutter/lag a little less when loadind new zones. It might not have an impact on everyone though.

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

If you use high settings it is highly reccomended that you change the above value by adding a 0 in the end, because this may be the reason of many crashes while saving and/or after extended play time.
The correct value would be this:

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

For some with lower end cards such as myself, found these to help with performance:

(Default 0 change to -1)
PostprocessingAdmin.ActiveEffect=-1

(Defaults are UltraHigh)
Render.MeshLoDQuality=Normal
Render.AnimationLoDQuality=Normal
Render.ImageLoDQuality=Normal
Render.DisableMeshLoDQualityFragmentString=lowpoly

(Default on mine was 2)
LightingType=1 (can try 0 as well, not a major FPS gain here, but little)

Hopefully this helps someone else as well.

3500+
6800 Ultra
1Gb DDR400 RAM

GE3.INI tweaks

Changed:
Cache.SizeSound=80000000
To:
Cache.SizeSound=40000000

Changed:
Shader.EnableTreeShadows=true
To:
Shader.EnableTreeShadows=false

Changed:
Shader.EnableStaticShadows=true
To:
Shader.EnableStaticShadows=false

Changed:
Shader.EnableDetailShadows=true
To:
Shader.EnableDetailShadows=false

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000
TO:
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

using 9.1.3.1 driver atm
just rejigged my config and my stuttering is almost gone but my average fps seems to have decreased. Much more fun though!

I think the cache settings are the most important, especially if you only have 1GB like me
my final cache settings in the ge3.ini:

Cache.SizeImage=128000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=40000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=40000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=40000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=40000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=10000000

Cache.SizeImage=256000000
gave less movement stutter.

Thanks to anohter 1Gb guy I'm using

Cache.SizeImage=128000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=57000000
Cache.SizeMesh=18000000
Cache.SizeSound=21000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=16000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=30000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=10000000

Do this for more Detail-Geometry

Change

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=0.01

To

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00

It is IgnoreUserOptions=true for the options in the ini to take effect.

In the actual game options under details-custom, set the object detail to high. I'm pretty sure that will fix your problem. Alternatively you can change IgnoreUserOptions=true to IgnoreUserOptions=false in your ini, and then, and only then, will you be able to override the settings you make in your game with the settings