OpenGL2 card? Don't update it to 3.3

[Darkcrafter]

Got an old ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO graphics card here and one day I just googled for it and found out that the latest 2012 driver allows to update default GL2.0 version to GL3.3 and shading language to 3 (or 4 nevermind). I assumed in the beginning of it how awesome it was, but it turned out the opposite! All the GL3 features now really work, but it has got massive slow down to it! I can't even call it a slideshow! Guess what? The software renderer became slow as hell either. This driver update affects the same way gzdoom and skulltag. All the rest games like Battlefield 2, CS Source and others are totally ok with that. CS Source automatically changed my graphics settings to higher.

So if you're still willing to have GL3 and GL4 effects then it's better to go and get a second hand gl3 or 4 card. Otherwise stay with GL2 and use older GZDoom versions.

[TDRR]

Please don't do this, it's rather stupid and almost never works correctly.

The reason Battlefield 2 and Counter Strike are okay with it is that they don't use OpenGL at all. If you want to have GL3 effects you need to use the MesaGL software renderer found around in the internet, it's quite slow, but you can manage 50fps on relatively potent dual-core computers.

[wildweasel]

Please don't do this, it's rather stupid and almost never works correctly.

The reason Battlefield 2 and Counter Strike are okay with it is that they don't use OpenGL at all. If you want to have GL3 effects you need to use the MesaGL software renderer found around in the internet, it's quite slow, but you can manage 50fps on relatively potent dual-core computers.

So you're suggesting to solve slowdown with something that comes with more slowdown.

[Graf Zahl]

Mesa is not a solution. Even on my rather good system it's too slow.

The only thing that's going to help with such old hardware is buying new one. Even a second hand entry level card will do magic in such a system, unless, of course it's a laptop where the graphics hardware cannot be changed.

[TDRR]

Mesa is not a solution. Even on my rather good system it's too slow.

The only thing that's going to help with such old hardware is buying new one. Even a second hand entry level card will do magic in such a system, unless, of course it's a laptop where the graphics hardware cannot be changed.

That's weird, it ran pretty okay (20fps at worst on non-iwad maps) on my 3GHz Dual-Core PC (I needed to use it because GL kept crashing randomly) but that was when GL3 features weren't around so maybe that had something to do with it. Unfortunately that PC died, which really sucks because it ran many mods very well and this laptop can't even run Argent without dropping into the twenties.

Perhaps you can use this alternative and set the resolution to 640x480 or below, which should be a lot faster than Mesa. (Do note that recent versions of Mesa3D software renderer include this, and i assume you guys were using the old Mesa llvmpipe)

EDIT: Apparently this doesn't work anymore in recent versions of GZDoom, because it just uses my IGPU. I did get lower FPS but i really doubt it's Mesa because i'm getting 40fps on a system that struggles with Half-Life 2

[drfrag]

Mesa3D For Windows sometimes works sometimes it doesn't i think mostly depends on your graphics card. On nvidia it works but then you most likely don't need it.
This works well for the vintage build and software mode (all cards) using -the glversion 2 switch.
And also is playable for the 1.9.x GL renderer in ZDoom32 at low resolutions. Recent versions are faster due to being compiled with LLVM 6. OpenSWR is pretty much the same, probably even worse.

[Darkcrafter]

I did update my opengl version to 3.3 accidentaly, I never knew it might result in this I tried to do many things to revert the things to the previous state but it seems like it's impossible.

By the way, GZDoom version 2.1.9 works best in this case now. It already has an opengl renderer that allows to stack many 3d floors on top of each other while preserving good performance, it lacks any portal support though, so I had to use silent line teleporters to optimize maps for older hardware.

[Darkcrafter]

You may call me crazy here (b**dy Russians). I once converted my map into md3 model. It had the same performance that its sector based counterpart had. I think it's because the renderer renders all the polygons that aren't visible in a current viewpoint (frustrum?)

[Graf Zahl]

What you did can help, but only on modern hardware. On older cards the limiting factor is the graphics hardware's rasterizer and if that's the case no CPU-side optimization will help you make things faster.

[Darkcrafter]

That's right, btw. I just found out I lied on the version that works the best here, it's actually 1.9.0

[Darkcrafter]

I have good news. Let's get to it from the begining of the story. Well I tried to flash the card's BIOS to the old 2007 version found on the web and it didn't help, the card still has 3.3 support to it. I found out that GZDoom has a key "-glversion 3" that allows it to run under gl version 3.0 I suppose? I just copied my user *.ini file with settings from GZDoom version 3.7 to GZDoom version 3.1 and it works like there was no driver update. But for now it even has working pallette shader, that's exactly what it didn't do before, unfortunately my lovely software sector light mode doesn't work anymore. But that's it. GZDoom 3.1 with "-glversion 3" parameter works. Alles gut.