Unreal Tournament 3 Performance

First off, tech-wise, u3 engine is awesome from my point of view.

Second off, for it's performance, it's pretty highly CPU demanding, like CS S).
I'm on TL-60 (2ghz) with Ati hd2600 and graphics are great, even without OC:ing, I could run it on max without major stuttering or slowdowns.

But to the point, shall we: Is there any CPU focused tweaks, as my VCard passes recommendations with flying colors, but my CPU doesn't? So i get fps drops in cpu demanding situations.
Wouldn't like to OC my CPU.

And don't point me to tweakguides, as what i've seen, it's pretty GPU oriented tweak guide.

 

So no one specializes in tweaking here? Quite a surprise

 

Overclocking your CPU won't really help with your framerates, unless you are running a very CPU-intensive game like Supreme Commander, or if you have a massively powerful graphics card that requires a good CPU (like the nvidia 8800 series).

From my experience, UT3 is not very CPU intensive. It would help a lot if you could post your system specs though.

 

As i said: AMD's Dualcore Turion (TL-60) running at 2ghz and Ati's HD2600. 2gb of RAM to top it off.

 

AI and physics calculations make up a good portion of the CPU's calculations in a game. If you game is stuttering when you play with a lot of bots, then it's your CPU. But if it's stuttering even without bots, it's probably something else.

Let me guess. You went to systemrequirementslabs.com and you had your system diagnosed for the game? Personally, I don't always trust minimum requirements as time and time again I've played many games like Test Drive Unlimited which states that my video card "isn't good enough" for this game but have played them with more than "low settings" with over 30 FPS. If your UT3 plays great on your laptop, great! But if it really does crap up in real world performance, I'll understand why you asked for help.

 

Yougamers.com did a review of UT3 and they have a recommended set of requirements based on their testing of the game on different levels of hardware.

Like SymphonyX said there's no point stressing over overclocking if the game generally runs fine. If it does stutter occasionally despite the lack of action onscreen then try lowering some of the graphical settings first to see if it helps. Otherwise check to see if power saving settings are forcing the CPU to run at less than 100% of its full potential.

 

UT3 is designed to take advantage of multi-CPU systems and it does; I benchmarked UT3 on a Dell XPS before and it had nearly 100% CPU usage while playing in the more demanding situations. Most of time time it was over 50%. I honestly don't think there is a lot you can do. You could set the UT3 process' priority to High but that can be dangerous. Basically that would make Windows allocate more CPU time to the game.

 

It's really a minor annoyance, it's awesomely playable otherwise.
I run UT on maxed with some tweaked inis and i can get as high as 50's on fps. Below 20 is quite rare, and happens on cpu demanding situations on outdoor maps, where i can see afar et cetera.
Just wanted to know if anyone knows any tweaks specifically for cpu to vanish this small problem.

Thanks for replies!

 

Just my opinion, but a fast-paced game like UT3 needs at least 30 fps to get you by and not die because of a second`s lag.You need to always stay sharp,so lower all settings until you can stay above 30 fps. The graphics isn`t all that great so that you need to max it out.

 

I agree to that. My fps is usually around the 30's-40's, but it _can_ drop to 20's and below on some situations.

 

So you view that as a problem? That's why you want to overclock? Specifically what are these situations? I mean... I get over 30 to 40 FPS most of the time when I play Hellgate London. But when countless monsters come rushing in or when numerous fancy spellcasting takes place with many monsters on screen, it dips down to the 20s. It's common... If it stutters for in a place where it shouldn't, it's a different problem. You probably have some processes running out of call. It might be that svchost virus, some useless applications like Microsoft Office Groove, and other things running in the background which eat up CPU processing power.

 

did you even look at the UT3 Configuration File? you can change so much more things to make it perform better its not even funny.

 

Symph: I reckon that I said i don't wanna overclock.
Trying to avoid those propelheads' "oc lol" replies.

Do I see that as a problem? Well, a minor, yeah, not a gamekiller though.
If there would be a command (which i believe there is) to tweak settings which pool around cpu settings, such making the game more smooth, fading even the minor problem out, wouldn't you ask if someone knows it?