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Pike

Severe lags after 15 mins of playing

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Okay, first of all my basic system specs:
Notebook; AMD Mobile 2,6GHz ; ATI 9600 (64MB)-newest Omega Drivers (Based on Cat 4.7) ; 512MBDDRRAM
While i know the Ati with only 64 mb could be a problem I tried 'high' graphics settings with a resolution of 1024x748- and, what should I say: It runs well for me- most of the time I'm playing at around 20 to 40 fps.
After some 15 to 20 mins of playing, however, when I open a door the framerate suddenly drops to 1 or 2 fps and stays there.
I have to exit the game and after restarting (not rebooting the PC!) everything is fine again for a time.
I would tone down the settings a bit, but -as I said: The game runs -and looks!- perfectly fine the first 15 minutes.
Isn't there a possibility tohave the game kick some memory free from time to time while playing it?
Any help would be appreciated- thanks in advance!

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have you tried the newest catalyst drivers? from what i read elsewhere, the omega drivers tend to conflict with doom3. get the latest cat drivers and you should be set.

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Until now, the Omega drivers ran perfectly with every game (Far Cry, etc...), I upgraded from 4.3 Omega drivers to 4.7 when Doom 3 crashed after some minutes of gameplay, and now my only problem is the one explained above..

I would try normal ATI Catalyst drivers, but is there a safe method to run a mobility radeon 9600 with these 'normal' drivers?

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well, im not an ATI guy, but after doing a bit of research, it seems that there is no way to run the cat drivers on a notebook.

is there anyway to reduce your cards core speed using the omega dirvers? ive seen several instances where underclocking actually fixed the problem. if not, then i would say, wait for a patch. it sounds almost like a memory leak, which you wouldnt be able to do anything about anyway.

maybe some ATI people can lend some of their knowledge...

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I already thought of memory leaks, but I think the drop in framerates appears much too suddenly and is much too significant (from 30 fps to 1 just after walking through a door).
I just came to a point in the game, where you can switch between security cams on a monitor- and the areas I visited before were OK, only when showing the camera positions I hadn't been before, the fps dropped to 1 fps again.

Underclocking the Radeon didn't help either, but thanks nonetheless for your help so far!

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While I'm not using a notebook, I've got a similar thing happening. I can run the game fine, but after about 10-15 minutes, something will happen and the game locks up... the screen freezes, but the sound will continue normally for about 5-10 seconds. I can't exit the game and have to restart my computer. Re-start Doom, and it works fine... for another 10 minutes.

I'm running a:
P4 2.4 gig
512 megs PC3200 RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (I've got the 4.7 drivers, I think?)
Win/98SE

I've got 'high' detail on, with a 1024x768 resolution. Anti-aliasing off. Great framerates, and only rare stuttering.

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Make sure the drivers really are 4.7- everything under that version caused my doom 3 to crash after a few minutes, too!
Who knows- maybe my problem is related to the rather old 4.7 drivers,too- could you try to install 4.8 or 4.9 beta drivers since you don't have a notebook and report what happens? I would do it myself- but with a mobility radeon you have to be glad there are Omega -or other 3rd party- drivers- if I would use my system manufacturer's drivers, I think Doom 3 wouldn't run at all!

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Hortinerd:

get the 4.8 or 4.9 drivers and you should be ok. also, windows 2k/XP wouldnt hurt. there can be issues running the game on 98.

Pike:

have you tried using lower settings? just curious if that changes anything.

sounds like it could also cache problem, if your framerate drops when you go to new areas. how long have you let it go after your framerate drops?

im still thinking that this problem isnt so much with your system as it is with the game. hopfully a patch comes in the near future.

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Okay, I tested almost every tweak I found in quite a lot forums (such as changing doomconfig.cfg values, unpacking pak000 and changing the shader settings, letting WinXP manage my cache, seting it manually, turning fast write off/on, setting AGP speed to 8x/4x, underclocking the radeon), but nothing seems to solve my problem.
The game runs a few fps faster now, but I never complained about that.
I also think it must be a cache problem, it's just strange nobody else experiences these lags.
Oh, i almost forgot: I waited quite a while after the framerate dropped and played on -quite a pain though, having firefights with 2fps!- but nothing changed, the framerate only gets 'normal' again after restarting the game.

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wow, thats nuts.

im just about out of ideas here, other than wait for a patch. do all your other games still run good? have you run a virus check? spyware prehaps?

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