Terrible UT2004 performance, pretty good machine

This is not my sig machine I'm referring to, but my laptop.

ASUS Z71V barebones
Pentium M 1.7Ghz
1GB DDR2-667 (2x512)
15.4" 1680x1050 LCD
Geforce Go 6600 128MB
80GB 5400RPM Samsung HDD (defragged almost religiously)
Win XP Pro 32bit

UT2004 runs terribly. It runs ok for a second, then slows down to rediculously low framerates, then speeds back up, then slows down again. CPU temps are high (60C or thereabout) but so far as I can tell that's not abnormal for a Pentium M, and it doesn't seem to be thermally throttling or anything like that. It even does this at times in the menus.

Yes I jacked up the settings, but it's an older game, this was /great/ hardware for the time it came out (recommends 256MB RAM, a 1.2Ghz CPU, and a 64MB GPU, so I am /way/ past required spec on this) so that shouldn't be an issue. Dropping down to 640x480 doesn't even get rid of the problem entirely, though it's not as bad.

What's even more strange, I had a friend install it on a similar machine (1.8Ghz Pentium M, Mobility Radeon 9800 Pro (maybe 9700 Pro, not sure) 128MB, 15.4" LCD, 1GB DDR2-667, 60GB 7200RPM HDD) and he had the exact same problem.

Both machines have reasonably up to date graphics drivers (within the last couple of months at least) and fairly fresh Windows installs. The game was patched to current in both cases. I even installed ForceWare 162.11 betas today, to no effect.

Any ideas what's going on here? I remember it running just fine on this laptop in to past -- I just dug it out on a whim -- and the test on ATI hardware suggests it isn't a driver or hardware issue. I'm stumped.

Make sure you got the latest chipset drivers installed along with dx9c.

Everything, and I mean everything, is up to date on both machines. They don't even /have/ chipset drivers.

Under the Settings, then Game tab. Uncheck 'speech recognition and 'preload all player skins'. Under the 'Audio' tab, uncheck the settings of 'Text to speech'.

Not sure if this is going to help, but I would give it a shot to see.

You don't have 'software rendering' selected as the video mode right? D3D or OpenGL do well.

movax said:

You don't have 'software rendering' selected as the video mode right? D3D or OpenGL do well.

Click to expand...

No. I've been through all the usual tweaks, I'm familiar with all the options in game and I've gone so far as to go through the ini files checking for things that might help. I've tried both D3D and OpenGL modes. Both give the same issues.

Make sure your bios settings are set right in the bios since some settings like cpu throttle can limit your cpu speed when the cpu is hot. Test your system in Sandrasoft or 3Dmark and see if any games run good in opengl or direct3d.

Everything else works just fine. It's only UT2004, and I've reinstalled now and am getting the exact same behavior.

Just to make sure I left Rightmark CPU Clock Utility monitoring and logging my CPU speed and ran the game for 15 minutes. It did not throttle at all but the game continues to go slow, then normal speed, then slow, etc. even in the menus. The fact that it did the exact same thing on another machine leads me to believe it's some kind of bug, not an issue with my particular setup. I was mostly trying to see if anyone else had run in to this. Also, just to make sure it's clear, this is on my laptop, not the machine in my sig.

Are you testing with the power adaptor for the laptop plugged in and not plugged in? Also, does the processor clock itself up or down depending on the demand?

Jstamsek said:

Are you testing with the power adaptor for the laptop plugged in and not plugged in? Also, does the processor clock itself up or down depending on the demand?

Click to expand...

I'm using it with the power adapter plugged in. My GPU underclocks when the machine is running on battery power (though I can force it back to normal clocks) and yes, on battery it will switch CPU clocks based on demand, but with the adapter plugged in it runs 1.7Ghz constantly. It isn't thermally throttling, either, as I stated in my post above. I've had the exact same problem in a friend's laptop as well with an ATI GPU and a slightly faster CPU, so I don't believe it's hardware or driver related.

what you could do is try software render, it will be very slow, but if you notice the problem while its under software, it'smost likely not the graphics card.

Some UT problems are related to sound settings (at least for me for a while ). Try setting the sound to just 3D Audio (in the settings section, under Audio). Make sure the 'Use System sound driver' is checked as well. You can force low sound quality from that section too, to see if that changes anything.

Any unusual disk access while the game is running?

I had the same problem years ago with UT03. Turned out AA was causing it.

Even if this doesn't fix it, I'd still recommend dropping the settings to bare minimum and trying to track down a precise cause.

BTW, if the last poster is right and it is a sound issue, the most reliable fix for these in my experience is dropping sound acceleration to "Standard" or "Basic" in the sound control panel / dxdiag.