Doom 3 Tweaking Guide

avansant

Okay, here are a few quick tips to make sure you are running doom at the best quality with the best framerate your rig can handle.

First, Radeon users... Special Catalyst 4.9 Drivers have been released ESPECIALLY for use with Doom 3.
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html

Second, everyone... Go to Doom3/base/DoomConfig.cfg
scroll down until you get to the following fields:
seta image_useCache
seta image_cacheMegs
seta image_cacheMinK

Now, change image_cacheMegs to 1/4 of your physical memory.
If you want you can also change image_useCache to "1".. but by doing so you should also change image_cacheMink to "20480".

Before I was running at 1024x768 medium quality and still getting tiny bits of chop when i went through certain doors etc. Now I run on high quality at 1024 (havent tried a higher res yet but will) with awesome framerates and no stuttering ever. If anyone else wants to post any other tweaking tips or ask questions / make suggetions feel free.

Brief Explanation of what you changed in DoomConfig.cfg:
Doom3 uses a tech. called Texture Thrashing, basically what this means is if your vid. card can't store all the textures it needs, it will use some of your system memory to store them. By raising cachemegs you are leaving more room for Doom to work with. Changing usecache to 1 obviously uses the cache, and cacheMink, I have no idea what it does, but if it isn't as high as what I mentioned earlier you need to change usecache back to "0" or your game will crash.

drowd

hmmm, very interesting. have dna or omega release tweaked ati drivers of these beta 4.9's yet?

avansant

I am not sure, I haven't used omega drivers since Pandora tomrrow because they wouldnt display realtime shadows (i love realtime shadows). Chances are though they have, they are usually right on top of ATI.

drowd

here is another thread to another forum where they talk a little bit more about this. thought i would link it here

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetdoom/topic.asp?fid=5733&tid=1438663

EDIT:// and here is one more informative article from anandtech that talks about some hardware stuff

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149

avansant

yea, thats my source. That and another forum post on planetdoom. I figured I would consolidate it on one post at icrontic.

NeoFX

Anyone else tried this and can they confirm that it does improve peformance without losing some sort of quality? I'm playing just fine w/ the "door pause" every once in awhile @ 1024x768 w/ High details just fine and boy am I lovin' it!!!

But If I could possibly play in 1280x1024 at High details w/ this tweak that would be great.

Zuntar

avansant wrote:

Okay, here are a few quick tips to make sure you are running doom at the best quality with the best framerate your rig can handle.

First, Radeon users... Special Catalyst 4.9 Drivers have been released ESPECIALLY for use with Doom 3.
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html

Second, everyone... Go to Doom3/base/DoomConfig.cfg
scroll down until you get to the following fields:
seta image_useCache
seta image_cacheMegs
seta image_cacheMinK

Now, change image_cacheMegs to 1/4 of your physical memory.
If you want you can also change image_useCache to "1".. but by doing so you should also change image_cacheMink to "20480".

Before I was running at 1024x768 medium quality and still getting tiny bits of chop when i went through certain doors etc. Now I run on high quality at 1024 (havent tried a higher res yet but will) with awesome framerates and no stuttering ever. If anyone else wants to post any other tweaking tips or ask questions / make suggetions feel free.

Brief Explanation of what you changed in DoomConfig.cfg:
Doom3 uses a tech. called Texture Thrashing, basically what this means is if your vid. card can't store all the textures it needs, it will use some of your system memory to store them. By raising cachemegs you are leaving more room for Doom to work with. Changing usecache to 1 obviously uses the cache, and cacheMink, I have no idea what it does, but if it isn't as high as what I mentioned earlier you need to change usecache back to "0" or your game will crash.

What are your system specs?

NeoFX

I didn't try it before the tweak but I tried the tweak and raised my res. to 1280x1024 @ High details and it was playable the whole time I was following the little sentry spider thing throug the tunnels fighting off imps in the dark so It may or may not have done anything for me... I'm really happy that 25ish FPS is playable in this game... other games it would not be.

jwersan

So I have to download the beta drivers for my ATI card, but how should I config the card??

Do I leave it at the defaults for the hardware (Balanced between speed & resolution) or do I crank it to one of the extremes???

I will also be doing the tweeks mentioned before, is there anything else??? :loco:

avansant

Zuntar wrote:

What are your system specs?

AMD 2700+ XP
1024mb of DDR pc2100
Radeon 9800 Pro 128 mb
Asus A7n8x-e
7200rpm 80gig IDE
SATA 80gig
On-board Video & Onboard Networking via nForce Chipset

avansant

jwersan wrote:

So I have to download the beta drivers for my ATI card, but how should I config the card??

Do I leave it at the defaults for the hardware (Balanced between speed & resolution) or do I crank it to one of the extremes???

I will also be doing the tweeks mentioned before, is there anything else??? :loco:

I would just leave the card at default settings, though I guess if you want a performance boost you could crank up performance.

Secondly, I don't think there are any other tweaks but I will submit them here if i come across them.

drowd

i just found this, those of you that would like it, enjoy

http://ducttape.glenmurphy.com/

drowd

i just read on the planet doom forums, that you can extract all the the 5 pk4 files in the base directory with winrar and it will get a huge performance boost cuz you dont need to decompress stuff.

here are the instructions:

1. Make a copy of ALL the files in C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base. This is some big filage, but if you want to revert to MP without reinstalling you need to do it.

2. Unrar the following .pk4 files (just pretend they are .rar's and open them with winrar) into the C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base folder (each one should unrar a single folder such as textures or models):

pak000.pk4
pak001.pk4
pak002.pk4
pak003.pk4
pak004.pk4 (This one has many files, put them all in \Base and over right any that apply.

3. Now delete the files above (pak000-004) or move them to another folder for storage so you can revert to multiplayer.

When you want to revert to multiplayer, restore everything you had before and get rid of the new stuff. I'm not sure if the folder "maps" is the same or not, so make sure you back that up.

When in normal mode, you should have "maps" "savegames" "config.spec" "doomConfig.cfg" "doomkey" "game00.pk4" and "gamex86.dll", nothing else.

Cyclonite

Have you tried this? I mean, my load times aren't THAT tremendous, but I assume that would kind of be all it helps. Except maybe entering a new large room or something it might stop any stutter that occurs.