[BloodRedDragon]

I've been trying to get Quake 3 to work in SMP mode since upgrading to two processors, but the game insists on crashing(usually before it even gets to the menu. I use the latest NVidia detonator drivers for the video card, which is a GF2 GTS(Elsa Gladiac). The game is patched to the latest version. Any ideas?

[BloodRedDragon]

Quake server SMP only? That stinks.

I am running a pair of 1 gig P3's on a MBI motherboard I picked up at CompUSA recently(VIA 694X + 686B chipset). Amazing, I was able to swap it in in place of a Soyo motherboard with a VIA chipset without having to reinstall the operating systems. Nothing is overclocked due to I have cheap ram that doesn't hold well above 135 mhz, but there's 768 megs of it. Eventually, I will splurge for quicker ram, maybe 150 mhz with quicker timing.

As for the rest of the system, I use a Tekram Ultra 160 dual channel scsi controller with a pair of Quantum Atlas 34 gig 10k2's. Thinking of dropping in an old 4.3 gig IBM ultra wide drive for on-the-fly back-up of important files. Other cards include Pinnacle DV500 capture card, Hollywood DVD playback card, Elsa Gladia GeForce 2 GTS(32mb), and a lowly Soundblaster PCI 64. Other drives are a Pioneer DVD, Teak 4x24 CD-R, LS120 ide, and ZIP250 ide.

By the way, since you're big on smp, I also have an old BP-6 with dual 500mhz celerons overclocked to 566mhz.

[Four and Twenty]

Not as a server but just to play the game works fine. Works as a server also. here are the specs

[clutch]

It does work in SP in SMP mode, however it has been known to be buggy. Also, there have been issues where there is no noticible speed improvement or even a slight slow down in FPS. I would imagine that it would work really well if you had a ton of bots in it, as having multiple CPUs might speed things up with the AI. Other than that, it would probably not be too effective.

[Four and Twenty]

it drops a frame for me in the timedemos with r_smp enabled
if i mod the exe to set the proc afinity and push all the system tasks on the other processor i loose 5fps. If i don't fuk with it at all it runs the best.

[BloodRedDragon]

AlecStaar, you have a nice rig, too. That 4 drive striped volume must really kick. Is the new drive 7200 rpm? Eventually, I'd like to get another drive to use for the OS's, then use the 10k2's as a striped volume via NT's built in support for striping.

By the way, Quake 3 smp eventually works when it wants to. I managed to play a game here and there before it froze. Ofcourse, restarting the game several times before it would even let me play wasn't very enjoyable, so I took it out of smp mode. It's not like the game really needs two 1 ghz processors working for it.

ps- I think I'm going to learn alot here.

[Four and Twenty]

Quote:

* Sounds like it needs work on diff. chipsets maybe... who knows?

i know you have via and i have intel
what does bloodreddragon have?

[BloodRedDragon]

[DosFreak]

[Four and Twenty]

well i was gonna start in with the whole via sux rap (via really does suck) but i see that dosfreak has gotten quake3 to work in smp mode on his VP6. so it is not a matter of via not being able to do it

[DosFreak]

Well before for a looonnngg time Quake 3 would lock up at least once or twice when I did my benchmarking. Through this latest round of benchmarks and some others that I have done recently it has not. Mabye it's the combination of the 1.30 update for Quake 3 and the 22.80+ drivers. I'll do some more testing tonight to make sure. Hopefully the next Doom will take better advantage of SMP.

As you can see any advantage that Q3 gives in SMP is gone after 1280X1024. Nowadays 1280X1024 is my MINIMUM resolution for gaming. I game now at 1600X1200. When I get the time I'm going to go through all of my benchmarks again and study the minimum FPS of games in a study on wether I should dish out some more money on another rig just for gaming. (I won't do it. I need one single machine for my users...but heck this study will be interesting and will keep me busy).

Also I'm itching for some more speed. Those Athlon MP 1900's are just waiting for me...... Then I will have 2 Duallie rigs! MUAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH!

[Four and Twenty]

if you want an amd duallie
i'll save for xeon

[DosFreak]

Load up the console at the main menu and type in

R_SMP 1


It's not that I "want" an AMD duallie. It's that there's nothing else out there. I want to wait for the 2nd gen mobo's for the Athlon MP's (DMA/133,USB 2.0,problems fixed) Also 8x AGP would be nice but on that note so would Serial ATA. Obviously I can't wait too long. But I've had this Dual 1ghz for about 6+ months and it's starting to get a little long in the tooth. All my games play fine. In fact I recently finished AVP 2 and I played it through at 1600X1200 with all options and it played great but I am bored and unfortunately this mobo/processor has reached it's overclocking limit. 155mhz FSB/ 1166mhz processor. (The processer/FSB can go higher but the memory cannot and things start acting flaky after 155)
Also those low memory benchmark scores although they don't mean much in RL are starting to make a difference nowadays. I can probably get away with this machine for another month or 2 but hey! It's December! Me need Christmas presents!

[DosFreak]

My FSB is set to 133 and then the option below where you can up the mhz by increments is to to 22mhz. Voltage is 1.85 and CPU temp hangs around 40C.

Also be aware that at that FSB even if your memory is CAS2 and rated for PC150 and even tho they should be able to go much higher it depends on the memory/mobo chipset. With this VP6/Corsair PC150 CAS2 I HAVE to set my CAS to 3 otherwise MemTestx86 goes NUTS! All other memory options are set to the max.

[DosFreak]

Just ordered 3 of those 80GB Maxtor DMA/133's and a new Pioneer DVD drive. Oughta keep me happy for a week....2 if I stretch it.

[BloodRedDragon]

Well, it looks like we both got lucky tonight, Alec. I, too, got Quake3 running in SMP mode in Windows 2000. But I didn't change the video drivers(currently Detonator version 23.10). Instead, I installed Via AGP driver version 4.10, which I hadn't done before(just used whatever Win2000 installed during set-up). Not only did this fix the smp mode problems, but it gave a dramatic frame rate improvement. DirectX version 8.1 is also installed, but this has been in place the whole time I've been trying to get Q3 SMP working.

Before I give frame rates, I should mention all the graphics settings in Q3 are maxed. The map is FOUR.DM_66. My GeForce 2 GTS is overclocked to 215 mhz core/375 mhz memory, and Anisotropic Filtering is turned on.

Prior to the Via AGP driver install, the frame rates at 1024x768 were 60 fps, and 13 fps with 2x FSAA(unplayable).

With the Via AGP driver, here are my results with no FSAA:

r_smp/0/1

640X480/101/103
800x600/95/79
1024x768/75/55

With 2x FSAA:

r_smp/0/1

640x480/70/57
800x600/46/32
1024x768/26/21 (playable, though it tires the eyes)

I need a GeForce 3.

Karl

[BloodRedDragon]

Yes, it did slow down with smp enabled, although it seemed to favor lower resolutions. This seems to be in keeping with what DosFreak posted, although my weaker GF2 apparently brings smp's stronger showings at much lower resolutions. Only deviation is on 2x FSAA where at 640x480 smp drops about 20%, 800x600 up to 30% drop, then back to a 20% drop at 1024x768. I will do some more testing at more resolutions, maybe include 4x FSAA to see what it does.

Karl

[BloodRedDragon]

SMP does appear to need more work. However, it seems to scale well with faster video cards, considering the difference between my GF2 and DosFreak's GF3.

I use the timedemo command to do the demo test, then check on the command console when it's done. "Timedemo 1" turns it on, and "timedemo 0" turns it off. Don't know about the showfps, but I imagine something could be found at Quakeworld.com. Haven't seen any benchmarks for patch 1.30, either.

Karl