Quake Wars - Pauses/Skipping (3-5 Sec)

Hi,

I recently installed quake wars on my laptop (specs in my sig) and configured the settings to medium quality and high resolution 1280x800. The problem is I get high framerates (25-30) but the game pauses randomly for 3 - 5 sec (offline mode) which makes it unplayable!! I tried lowering the setting to the lowest but no use, I always get the pauses!! So what I tried next is I defragmented the HDD, and cleaned the registery, but no use!! I also updated the DirectX to the latest and I am using the latest official dell drivers. I dunno what might be causing the problem??! any help??

 

What? I didnt know a X1400 can get 25fps in Quake Wars. Isnt a 8400gs faster?

 

yh the 8400 gs is like 50% faster if overclocked.

 

Try lowering the settings.

 

i already tried the lowest settings but no use!!

 

Is your hard drive activity light blinking when those pauses happen? We'd like to know what kind of background processes you have running (antivirus, etc).

 

I'm just installed the Quake War Demo and I'm trying to tweak things to make it playable. I know there's a ATI hotfix for Catalyst 7.9 the is supposed to improve performance. What drivers is everyone using and what frame rates are you achieving?

 

the hard drive rarely blinks... I really cant figure out what is the problem!! and i am using dell official drivers. Is there a Catalyst 7.9 for vista?

Processes attached

Now dont tell me it vista battery saver, or the power plan in vista because it isn't, I closed the program, and set the power plan to high performence but still not use.

 

Sounds like we're in the same boat. Let me know if you find a solution.

 

Have you updated your BIOS?

 

Are you still using the Dell drivers? I would recommend upgrading to 7.9, if you haven't already.

 

latest BIOS and drivers from dell

Is there a catalyst 7.9 for vista? if yes can u provide me with a link?

 

ok I upgraded to ATI Catalyst 7.9 through using the mobility modder. The drivers works perfectly but still didnt fix the problem, however it reduces the pauses. For anyone who does not know how to update through mobility modder, follow the steps below:

1. Download ATI Catalyst 7.9 Desktop Drivers

2. Download DH Mobility Modder

3. Make sure u have MSXML 4.0 Installed

4. Run (Extract) Drivers, then when setup starts click cancel (all u need is the extracted files)

5. Run Mobility Modder and browse the extracted folder (default: C:\ATI\SUPPORT\(driver file name)), then click modify (make sure u disable UAC)

6. Go to the driver folder in C:\ATI\SUPPORT\(driver file name) and click Setup.exe to install drivers.

7. Once installed u will notice darker, low colored screen, to fix this go to ATI Catalyst Control Panel in advance mode then in Graphic Settings at the left click on Color, Scroll down and choose Microsoft MCE black and white levels instead of PC Standard black and white levels. Now you should have the true colors of the screen back to normal.

- Now I dont know if the vista score jumped from 3.7 to 3.9 because of the overclocking or the new drivers?? check it out urself. btw I dont overclock in quake wars so its not the problem.

EDIT: Also I think this might be our problem

MegaTextures

One of the interesting new features of ET:QW is the use of MegTexture technology which helps to both improve image quality and game world variety, and also reduces in-game stuttering, especially on graphics cards with lower amounts of Video RAM. Textures are the images which cover the surfaces of all objects in a 3D game world. Traditionally most games with large outdoor areas, such as Oblivion or Unreal Tournament 2004, have tiled textures which are lots of repeating tiles of a particular texture image joined together to form larger surface areas. Not only can this tiling look repetitive and obvious, it also often means that as your Video RAM is filled up with textures you will start to get pauses, hitches and stuttering as they're constantly swapped into and out of the VRAM. Both Oblivion and UT2004 had quite prominent stuttering and pausing issues when they first came out because of this.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on the other hand has one large (mega) texture which contains all the details needed for the game world - MegaTexturing is used for terrains only in ET:QW - and the relevant pieces of the game world are streamed from this megatexture in full detail rather than being a patchwork of tiles. The megatexture files (.mega) are held under your \Program Files\id Software\Enemy Territory - QUAKE Wars\base\megatextures directory, and as you can see they're quite large, and there is one for every level.

The end result is that MegaTexturing is one of the major reasons why large outdoor areas in ET:QW run relatively smoothly, along with the fact that it's based on a very solid game engine first used in Doom 3 over 3 years ago, and constantly updated and refined since then.

- TweakGuides.com

 

I just installed the Catalyst 7.9 hotfix drivers (using the above method) and things run much smoother after I've overclocked my x1400. I'm running a consistant 25-30 fps at 1024x768 at all settings on low. I'm going to continue to tweak things to see if I can get them running better.

 

hi ther,

i have a differet problem. I cant launch ETQW its writing to me
ERROR: The current video card / driver combination does not support the necessary features: GL_ARB_occlusion_query

have anyone any idia how to fix it?

thx

 

Make sure your Anti-virus software is disabled before loading the game. I've experienced this with my 6800 Ultra as well as the X1800 in my laptop. Turn off the anti-virus and all is fine.

 

mbushnaq00 - I don't think Megatexture is your problem. Megatextures are no different than the old quake map builds except the texture is one gigantic image as opposed to smaller tiles. You'd expect to see this impact the map load time, not the smoothness of playability once the level loads. I think that your issue sounds more like a processor or HD bottleneck.

Triplet - typically errors like this crop up if the vid card can't handle the game, but yours should do fine, so I'm not sure what's going on there...

Posting questions directly to the official tech support forum might help.

pete - aka XXX_ScumBag

 

thx both of u but it seems to be in drivers i ll try to figured out but i dont know how to downgrade it to 7.9 or later:-(
so i thing that uninstal it and after that find somewhere on net. if u ll know where to find it pls tel me

thx u very much i ll inform u

triplet