Startling/Interesting discovery

[andrewbuddy12]

I'm not sure if this is an "old" thing, and i'm the latest noob to discover it, or if its a new thing, and just another "one of those things" about AA. However, I was experimenting with AA yesterday, and I decided to compare the FPS of "mud" mode (all settings down, all features off except fullscreen) to "makes your tummy have butterflies because of hte amazingness" mode ;D (all setting to highest, all options on) AND

here is the evidence (note that i had to save the files as JPG so that they would actually upload EG. their huge size in BMP):

Mud:

Amazing:

SO THEN.... what does this mean? howcome my FPS has a difference of like... 1 (for crying out loud) when i set ALL the setting to the max? This is very confusing to me, but has brought great joy to my heart. Now i'm playing all the maps (including interdiction btw) with all settings highest... and its playing just like it was with all settings at lowest. so, what do you all think of this?

Strat

[Sergeant {Rowdy}]

Good question. I'd like to know the answer.

[Phalanx-=Of-God=- (James)]

Actually, AA isn't the most system-intensive game out there. I believe it's even less system-intensive than Halo PC, which doesn't really take that much to run on minimum settings, either. But I digress.

AA runs on the Unreal Engine 2.0, which was released with Unreal Tournament 2004 and patched with various packages up to v2.5. UE2 is actually pretty conservative with processor and graphics card usage, so it runs half-decent on integrated video and spectacularly on even a mid-ranged graphics card. Also keep in mind that the models and textures used in AA are of relatively low detail compared to more modern games, so the framerate will obviously be better for a given screen resolution compared to something like Counter-Strike: Source or FEAR.

Hope that helps.

[andrewbuddy12]

telemakhos said:

Actually, AA isn't the most system-intensive game out there. I believe it's even less system-intensive than Halo PC, which doesn't really take that much to run on minimum settings, either. But I digress.

AA runs on the Unreal Engine 2.0, which was released with Unreal Tournament 2004 and patched with various packages up to v2.5. UE2 is actually pretty conservative with processor and graphics card usage, so it runs half-decent on integrated video and spectacularly on even a mid-ranged graphics card. Also keep in mind that the models and textures used in AA are of relatively low detail compared to more modern games, so the framerate will obviously be better for a given screen resolution compared to something like Counter-Strike: Source or FEAR.

Hope that helps.

um... thats not really the point. the point is that by lowering my setting to mud level i would expect teh FPS to go up by 10-15-20 FPS. However... it doesn't do anythign noticeable. This is very weird behaviour. It makes no difference how conservative UE is in their requirements, waht matters to me is that by making drastic changes to my display settings quality, it does nothing to help my performance.

personally.... I think what is happening is that AA is preloading/rendering all objects in the gameplay as "highest settings" quality. This hogs system resources, even though you can select if you want to see what htey are already generating. This is just a uneducated guess though.

[Phalanx-=Of-God=- (James)]

Eh... well in that case, I'm not noticing much difference between your two screen shots, other than pixel resolution. Perhaps the settings don't actually affect anything?

[andrewbuddy12]

well... i realize the SS's dont exactly "tell the tale"... but you can take my word for it that the image quality is up... and the FPS is the same. and that just doesn't make sense.

[godblessamerica]

andrew how much ram do you have? because I have only 640 mb, and i play on med settings. from lowest to med settings there isn't a huge fps difference, but on the highest settings i can barely play an the fps is HORRIBLE. so ya, try on a big map like snakeplain, but hey if it works for you then awesome.

[andrewbuddy12]

i've got a gig of ram, a 256 RADEON-X850 card, and 2.5GHz of processor speed. thats on the edge of the "recomended" settings... so i wouldn't exactly think that it would really be working as good as it is. but maybe i'm just ignorant.

[Learner-=Of-God=-]

Did you restart between changing settings? That maybe be the key.
**EDIT**
I tried for myself and I got similar results!! I maxed out the settings on my laptop and 60 fps at a stand still! Moving it dropped to around 20 which is about the same as mud settings.

[andrewbuddy12]

moving it? What does that mean? You mean you moved the settings?
(lol.... what a ancient thread. hehe, but I like it. )

You know what I think it is now that Its been about a year since this thread? I think that my graphics card is perfectly capable of rendering the textures and what not. What keeps my FPS low is my low processor speed. I heard once that your graphics card simply renders what info is thrown at it. Well, my graphics card is good enough to process all of the info thrown at it by the processor, but... the processor is not throwing enough information at it quickly enough. When I get latency from my computer, its probably the processors fault instead of my graphics card.

[Learner-=Of-God=-]

What you said makes sense.
When i said moving it I meant when I move around and actually played. I did this on singleplayer. My processor is only 1.7GHz but its dual core so it makes up for that.

[Made-=Of-God=-]

I have a 1.76 GHz processor and an ok video card (64MB) and I notice no difference in FPS when I change the quality settings (aside from maybe 1 or 2 FPS) I think your theory could be right. It probably loads it all or whatever and the quality settings just lets you see it or not.