Zdoom on low end hardware

[Hydl]

This topic will concern on what type of older hardware Zdoom is capable of running on. I would have figured as old as Doom is, it wouldn't have any trouble running on a computer with low end hardware, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I have a netbook, and I am fully aware that netbooks are NOT gaming machines, but nevertheless one would think zDoom would still be able to run on it.

The specs of this netbook are an Intel GMA 500, an Intel Atom Z520 1.33 GHZ and 2 GB of RAM. When I first launched zdoom, the framerate was abysmal, 1 frame every 1 or 2 seconds, and this was playing on the first level of Doom 2, Entryway. I thought theres no way it can be this slow, something is amiss here. So I tried out a few other games to see how they would fare. I'm able to run Quake 1 at reasonable framerates, around 30. I even loaded up the largest, complex maps for Quake available, and it was able to run them without any trouble. The framerate would drop below 20 on occassion, but even then it was still playable.

Further still, I installed some other late 90's games which all play well on this netbook. So what seems to be the problem with Zdoom? After fiddling with the options a bit, it seems that Zdoom hits playable framerates at 320x240 resolution, but when setting it at 400x300 or anything higher, it slows completely to a crawl. Now mind you, the other games I tested including Quake were played at higher resolutions, 640x480, 800x600, each played fine as I said. This is all running on a clean install of Windows 7 Home Basic.

So what are my options here? I get the feeling Zdoom should be getting much higher framerates at higher resolutions. Are there any settings I could tweak? Maybe try an older version? Or is this a case of Zdoom being Zdoom, and I should just accept that it will only run under 320x240 on this netbook?

[wildweasel]

Strange that you're having problems - I'm able to run it on not only my Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (similar specs to yours but with only 1 GB RAM and a slightly faster CPU), but also on my HP Pavilion n5170 (a 12-year-old office laptop with a 600 MHz P3 and 256 MB RAM). The netbook is able to run most WADs at the framerate cap of 35 FPS at 1024x600, and the laptop can handle that at 320x240 unless it's a really crowded level.

I honestly wonder if there's something wrong with the way it's set up, somehow. Is ZDoom running the hardware 2D mode, or is directdraw forced?

[jpalomo]

This seems to me like an issue with the Intel graphics. Before I upgraded my current computer, it ran (G)ZDoom worse than the 9 year old machine I was using before it. I was using an Intel integrated graphics card. The only thing I can suggest is to try to change some of the video adapter settings in the USER.ini

[phi108]

I would guess you'd want "vid_forceddraw 1", maybe "vid_displaybits 8" too as that sped up my fps in DDraw mode (these options require a ZDoom restart) , and switch Vsync on or off to see what that does.

[Hydl]

Thank you for the quick replies, and thank you phi108, your suggestion to switch vid_forceddraw from false to true gave an incredible fps boost in zdoom on all resolutions, a smooth 60fps on all doom 1 and 2 maps, thats one hell of an improvement. I knew that zdoom was capable and optimized to run on low end hardware, it just needed a little tweak.

Thanks again.

[DaMan]

Updating drivers would probably fix it. GMA500 is under laptop graphics.