Windows Doom 3 performance boost For everyone!

Here's a quick guide on how to get a significant performance increase in Doom 3: found on www.megagames.com - full info here

 

I've seen this floating around on a lot of forums. Before everyone starts unpacking the pk4 files though, here's a little food for thought:

This has apparently given some performance increase to some people, other folks claim there was no impact. I would wager that the people who say they had no impact had faster cpu's and/or more ram. But, regardless, it may be something that is worth trying.

I would caution, however, against unpacking the files and then deleting the pk4 files. Not only will you need the pk4 files to play multiplayer, but what happens when there is a patch to Doom 3? I'll bet you monopoly money the install program for the patch will look for a particular pk4, run a checksum on it to make sure it is valid and then make changes to that pk4 file. If you don't have it, you don't get the update.

Now...say you keep the pk4's in order to be prepared for this. Imagine when the patch comes out: delete all of the unpacked files, move the pk4's back to the ..\doom3\base folder, run the update, re-unpack the pk4 files, and move the updated pk4's. That just seems like a lot of work to me. Now if you unpack them and get the performance boost, then I say go for it. For me, my performance is fine.

craigey1, didn't want to take away from your post. I just wanted to point out a possible downside to make everyone aware.

 

No Probs.

I've tried it and I can definately says that it makes a big increase in performance. Before I was getting the occasional stutter (especially before video sequences), but now its as smooth as a baby's bottom. It is a pain though having to unpack the pk4 files, but definately worth it.

The article does say to make sure you backup the files before deleting them. I've just put them in a new folder. I'll then just paste them back if / when I need. Good point about the patches, though. I didn't think about that.

 

can't you just rename the pak files? give them a .old extension or something. It would save moving them around. When it comes to patches or MP or whatever, is it possible to leave ALL the files in the folder? I mean the pak's and the unpacked ones all in there.

 

Does this have a reduction on hard disk USAGE? I don't mind some extra HD space being used if it means less compression and uncompression is being done.

Disk drives get fragmented so easily nowadays.

Actually nevermind, I just tried this. When they mean "a little extra space" try about 10gigs plus!

 

Good point. I'm sure that would work. I presume the game looks for the pak files and if it can't find them then looks for the actual textures etc. So renaming the extnsions should work.

 

Actually, PK4s (all PKs from previous engines actually) are parsed in alphanumeric order, so first is pak0, pak1, pak2, pak3, then pak4 or whatever. Patches just usually add one with a higher number. So the first patch will probably be like pak5, then the next is pak6. They just update the files in those archives and the old code and whatnot is overwritten because the newer stuff is loaded lastly. The best thing about this method is you never corrupt the old archives, and it's easy to remove the patch if you don't like it or are doing modding or debugging. It's downside is, however, that patching large files like maps requires larger patches. But with broadband and the fact that newer games user better techniques for mapping and rendering (no lightmaps, woohoo!) means much smaller file sizes.

But, anyways, unpacking your PK4s shouldn't do jack ****. It'll help loading times, but since everything in the level is preloaded at the LOADING time, well, it won't do ****. I'd like to see someone test this with a timedemo (I may do it later today). I'm willing to bet it's nothing but a placebo.

 

For me, this is a load of C***, this has done nothing to help my game, and I think has actually made my loading slower, rather than faster as the person above says it should.

For anyone where this tweak has worked, good on them.

But I've used this tweak guide here, and it definatly worked for me, I am getting an extra 20% increase in speed on a NVidia graphics card although this is for ATI cards.

I was planning to get an ATI Radeon 9800, but I'll wait until autumn cos the new 512MB cards are coming out, thats why theres a 'ultra quality' mode in Doom 3, for these new cards. Mite get them depending on costs, I'm sure the costs of the 256MB ones will go down.

 

I had heard that any unpacked game files are loaded in preference of the .pk4 archives...
(as long as the folder structure is the same as in the archive)
- I havent checked this out myself yet, but that would potentially give you the best of both worlds...

I'll have a go tonight and put an unpacked mod into the /base folder... See if it works!
MrB

 

ultra mod looks nice
sorry had to say it
im sure that unzipping or whatever the pk4 files will help people with slower systems, but if youve got a slower hdd itll just slow it down due to the larger amounts of data being tranfered, and waste disk space.(someone feel free to correct me if im wrong)
Ill give it a try though, always looking for better framerates so its worth a shot.

 

Well, for me that trick didn't work, and as i said, it seems to have slowed my loading down, and I am nearly out of space, so I mite revert back to the compressed files.

Instaed of tweaking I have ordered the Ati X800 Pro graphics card, I'm still waiting for it....

 

the best tweak I found was by going to ur Doom 3 files usually in Program Files. going to base and finding the file DoomConfig (u need to open it in Notepad). Then by going down the list you find seta image_cacheMegs "256" - the 256 bit is what u need to change. It is usually at 32 so you can put it up to 256 or 512, and frame rates are brilliant after that. I however ain't got a clue what it does and whether it is affecing anything else. It's best effect comes on the fx 5200 at 800 v 600