Increasing Game Performance

[synd7]

After recently discovering that the ETQW demo runs on my computer (not well though ) i was wondering if anyone has any special tweaks to their system to squeeze out any more 3d performance in games?

Right now i'm thinking about installing fluxbox or something similar and logging into that for gaming.

Any other tips?

[cogadh]

It would really help to know something about your hardware (processor, RAM, video card), otherwise, we are just spitballing ideas.

As for shooting the first spitball, you can try running the game in it's own X session without your window manager running. All of the resources that normally go to the window manager would be freed up for use by the game. You could automate the process some by creating a launch script that you could use to start the game. Here is an example of one that I use for running Windows games through Wine in their own X session, it could easily be modified to work with most games:

#!/bin/sh
#uncomment if launching from console session
#sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
#KDE use this instead
#sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

# Launches a new X session on display 3. If you don't have an Nvidia card
# take out the "& nvidia-settings --load-config-only" part
X :3 -ac & nvidia-settings --load-config-only

# Goto game dir (modify as needed)
cd "$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Game/Directory/"

# Forces the system to have a break for 2 seconds, X doesn't launch instantly 
sleep 2

# Launches game (modify as needed)
DISPLAY=:3 WINEDEBUG=-all wine "C:/Program Files/Game/Directory/game.exe"

[synd7]

I remember seeing a script like that before somewhere, i'll give it a go in a minute. I'm not sure whether it will work, the problem of the fglrx drivers not restarting X never got solved for me, even with the new 8.42 drivers

As for system specs:
2GHz pentium 4
512M RAM
ATI Radeon 9800

[mbradlcu]

that's a great suggestion using a dedicated X session,, I also found either building a kernel with low latency settings or using the packaged lowlatency kernel made a huge difference.. you may also be able to squeeze a few more fps over clocking your vid card. If you're using an nvidia care here's the line that need to be added so that the overclock option will be available using the 'nvidia-settings' program.

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
# Driver "vesa"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce 7800 GS"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
Option "Coolbits" "1"

it's the Coolbits option that does it.
if you need help building a low latency kernel I have a little faq, it's actually very easy.

[synd7]

Does anyone know where i might find where i might find a prepackaged low latency kernel? I would build one but i really cant be bothered at the moment, i might have a go after my exams are finished.

As i expected, the new session script didnt work for me, first i didnt have permissions to work with X, then after using sudo (perhaps not a great idea) i got a black screen.

[Sockerdrickan]

I don't need a low latency kernel to get full fps on ultra so I doubt it helps.

[mbradlcu]

well here's the qnd:

apt-get install kernel-package libncurses5-dev fakeroot wget bzip2
cd /usr/src
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.22.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf linux-2.6.22.tar.bz2
ln -s linux-2.6.22 linux
cd /usr/src/linux
cp /boot/config-`uname -r` ./.config 
make menuconfig
make-kpkg clean
fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-{some_custom_name_here} kernel_image kernel_headers
cd /usr/src/
dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.22-custom_2.6.18.1-custom-10.00.Custom_i386.deb
dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.22-custom_2.6.18.1-custom-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

as for a working dedicated X session this one works for me,, yea it need to be run as root,, but,,:

#!/bin/sh
old_user=$USER
old_user=$1
echo "your_passwd" | sudo -S  /etc/init.d/gdm stop
sudo  X :1 -ac -br &
export DISPLAY="localhost:1"
xterm -bg black -fg green
sleep 1
su - $old_user 'xterm -bg black -fg green'
sleep 1
kill `cat /tmp/.X1-lock`

[mbradlcu]

I don't need a low latency kernel to get full fps on ultra so I doubt it helps.

no offense,, but have you benched the difference? if it doesn't make a difference that's great! but on my system the benchmarks I ran using doom3/etqw had an appreciable improvement. note I don't have a multi core cpu so I may be opening up the cpu bottle neck.. seriously it was ~%14 fps increase!
thanks!

[Luksion Knight]

hey what kind of programming language is that? i was wanting to modify it so i could input a command (i dont know if theyre called strings/function headers in all languages) and have it launch a function which launches a particular game.

[cogadh]

That's just a shell script, kind of like a batch file in DOS or Windows. Pretty much any command that you could run in a terminal could be included in a shell script. There is a decent shell script beginner's how-to here:
http://www.freeos.com/guides/lsst/