Making modern GZDoom and other things run better

Hey guys, My laptop isn't really setup for game play, and so when I run GZDoom levels as well as ridiculously large monster-packed levels (like i just tried the speed of doom level 28) my computer chunks to various degrees depending on what's going on. What sort of hardware do I need to improve my laptop's performance?

Thx,

NT

NaturalTvventy said:

What sort of hardware do I need to improve my laptop's performance?

If you have a laptop then you may be out of luck in the hardware department, as your graphics chip is probably integrated into the system board and can't be upgraded without replacing the entire mobo. However, depending on how much RAM you already have, how much RAM your laptop can accommodate, and whether or not you have empty memory slots, you may consider adding RAM.

To enable GZDooM to run faster you can adjust various setting in the menu, including reducing the video resolution at which you play the game.

I have a pretty old laptop (late-2002 vintage) that uses Win XP, has an ATI chip, and 512 MB RAM. I can play all DooM2 maps in GZDooM without a hiccup. So if you're having problems with a stock DooM2 map, your system specs are probably far behind mine.

What's your specs? It's hard to make recommendations if we do not know what you currently have.

Well lets see I have a Pentium Duel-core CPU T4300 @ 2.10 GHz and 4 GB of RAM. It's a rather new machine. GZDoom running a normal map works fine, but it was chunking on me running Unloved. Sounds like I'm stuck with what I got though.

NT

What graphics card/chip?

The CPU specs look ok.

Try using software mode on regular Zdoom if you haven't already.
My laptop struggles on opengl on some maps, but on software it works flawlessly.

I think this has been already addressed plenty of times in the past, and the problem involved ALWAYS an Intel Integrated graphics.

Simply put, you SHOULD NOT use OpenGL/Direct3D stuff with it, it's only good for Direct2D stuff (videos, football managers and the such), not 3D graphics. Performance wise, it's on par with an S3 Savage from 1998. This includes even GMA 4000 and the "latest" DirectX 10.0 "compatible" Intel stuff.

I dunno why people buy a laptop without looking at the graphics at all, and then pretend that it works well for gaming too. It won't, and the dual or quad cores won't be able to mask having NO HARDWARE GRAPHICS ACCELERATION AT ALL, which is what is happening. You actually get worse performance out of OpenGL stuff than software rendering with this "graphics chip". EIther use software mode only, or change laptop if you plan on running other 3D software too (games, mostly).

Actually, I think this kind of subject (running OpenGL on Intel GMA) should be stickied, since so many times it has been asked again and again.