OpenGL runs slow

I've been playing GZDoom and jDoom alongside ZDoom on my new 'ultra-portable', has a 1.4Ghz Intel core, 2gbs RAM and Win7. But with OpenGL enabled, I notice everything is quite laggy, I do know that my graphics chip has OpenGL acceleration.

I can play UT2004 and Half-Life 2 at highest settings, *not much of a modern gamer* if I can do that, then why is OpenGL consuming so much CPU/

It's probably the graphics card in the laptop that makes the performance shitty. It's not Intel IGP, is it?

Mr. Chris said:

It's probably the graphics card in the laptop that makes the performance shitty. It's not Intel IGP, is it?

I doubt that's the problem if he can play HL2...

I've seen and had machines that can run HL2 like a charm and can't handle GZDoom with a modern, detailed level. GZDoom's openGL renderer still leaves much to be desired, but it's better than nothing. I couldn't tell you about jdoom though, haven't touched the stuff in years.

I don't remember the specifics, but didn't GZDoom have problems on some gfx cards with their newer drivers? Going back to old enough drivers might help, but I don't think older drivers would work on a card too new.

Quake4 runs fine on mine. Gzdoom insta-reboots randomly. Even with all latest drivers. My solution was to not use gzdoom.

Nvidia and ATI drivers that come with Windows/Windows Update don't have OpenGL support in them (although the Intel ones do, funny enough). I'd go to the video vendor's web site and manually install the latest drivers.

Aldaraia said:

I can play UT2004 and Half-Life 2 at highest settings

Are those OpenGL apps; or Direct3D? Typically OpenGL support in drivers is an afterthought, as they concentrate on Direct3D. And driver can have a huge influence on framerate: e.g., some time ago, an nVidia update optimized OpenGL support and nearly doubled framerate in OpenGL apps.

On a Windows NT kernel (and its evolutions: XP, Vista, 7...), getting stuff like blue screens of death or instant reboot are not possible in user-space applications; only kernel-space code might trigger such failures. Which would point to buggy OpenGL support.

Finally, the latest drivers are not always the best. You should avoid those, for example. And recently ATI drivers have broken support for older OpenGL versions when they added support for OpenGL 3.2.

Catoptromancy said:

Quake4 runs fine on mine. Gzdoom insta-reboots randomly. Even with all latest drivers. My solution was to not use gzdoom.

If you get insta-reboots you are probably overtaxing your graphics card or the power supply. Doom ports are much more likely to do that than more modern games if you use uncapped frame rate because the GFX card is pushed to 100%. Modern games work quite differently.

Have you tried enabling VSync or even capping the FPS to 35? If that cures the rebooting problem it's clearly on your hardware.

To tell the whole truth, UT2004 and HL2 are both DirectX games, with HL2 having just DX7-class requirements. It's quite possible that a dual core CPU may be able to compensate for the lack of proper hardware acceleration, but in an uncapped framerate OpenGL title....nope.

Unless you post more details about your system (first and foremost, type of GFX adapter and driver version or at least exact model of computer) we can't help you any further, but since you mentioned it's an ultra-portable, chances are that you have a "semi accelerated" new generation Intel IGP. These have "acceleration" on par with an S3 Savage from 1997, and very uneven performance.

Just curious, try running 3DMark03 and 3DMark01 SE (yes, 03 and 01 SE. Don't bother with anything newer) on it. A real nVidia 8600M on a T8300 laptop gets about 8000-8500 3DMarks on 03, and 20000+ on 01.

Interesting link:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-X3100.2176.0.html

There you can also see the comparative performance of other low-end GFX adapters used in netbooks/ultraportables like nVidia Go and Ati X1200, which also suck as much ass if not more. In any case, the performance is comparable with a Geforce MX440/Geforce 3 mounted on a Celeron, for 3DMark01 (and that's with an enormous disparity in CPU power).

Thanks for the replies. To get GZDoom to even work, I had to download Intel's driver for my GMA x4500HD chip.

I did use Doomsday 1.86 with DirectX (direct3d?) mode and it runs faster, but my guy had HORRIBLE "acceleration" in the game, compared to ZDoom. Getting around was very clumsy. The beta that's out won't even work due to some weird errors.

I have an integrated Radeon HD4200 in my laptop and GZDoom gets choppy every now and then. Not surprising that your machine is choking up. The only games I've tested on mine are L4D 1 and 2 which both run at a playable framerate (20+) on lower settings.

But I've read the GMAs are garbage if I remember correctly when I was looking for a cheap hometheater pc. And by garbage, I mean, if you want to play blu-rays and such.

Aldaraia said:

GMA x4500HD chip.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. It never fails: whenever I see a "my shit is running slow" thread, it almost always involves laptops/netbooks and an Intel integrated graphics adapter.

It was pretty bad in the older days (GMA 9x0/5 series), and it's just marginally better with the x3x00 or x4x00 series. The older ones had just a 2D pixel pipeline (so no 3D acceleration at all, just driver support) and the "new" ones have maybe 1-2 texel processors, which just confirms that they're on par with an S3/TNT card from before Y2K.

Ha. Ha ha. BWAAAAAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!!!

In practice, it's like playing with a glorified "OpenGL compatible" software renderer and nothing more, and all benchmarks to date confirm that. Yeah, so you can get Radeon 7000-like performance with a 7 year old game on a Quad Core. Meh.

Get over it people, these are NOT meant to play games, they are just meant to give you decent 2D, Video/DVD/Blu Ray and office performance with the possibility of running 3D games without getting a "3D acceleration missing" error.

as your "ultra-portable" uses an intel chipset for graphics, it's going to suck. It really can vary depending on what you are rendering.