UT3: The Agony and the Extacy

20/06/2008 Update: BFG Power and Extreme Driver Modding

My 600w power supply died last weekend and I just replaced it on Friday with an 800w BFG gaming PSU. Nice!

You might be wondering where I've been for the last few driver releases. It turns out that the install went well, modding was okay and the libraries were properly applied to my hardware. I appealed to the Guru3d community but I got nowhere on the forum (maybe I should have started my own thread.) I did notice that people were having problems with certain resolutions which required some further modification to the nv4_disp.inf. These drivers were created for the latest Geforce 9 series cards and only limited resolutions are supported even for these devices. The 177.xx series are far from a finished product, but the mod is actually quite simple:

All you need to do is find lines that begin with HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%, and add your resolutions separated by spaces. In my case, I only needed to add 1360x768 but I included all the resolutions from the 174.74 WHQL .inf set.

HKR,, NV_Modes, %REG_MULTI_SZ%, "{*}S 720x480 720x576=1;720x576=8032;320x200 320x240 400x300 480x360 512x384 640x400=F;SHV 1920x1080x32 1920x1200x32 1920x1440 2048x1536=1F;640x480 800x600 848x480 960x600 1024x768x8,16 1088x612x8,16=1FFF;1600x1024x32 1600x1200x32 1920x1080x8,16 1920x1200x8,16=3F;1280x720x32 1280x768x32 1280x800x32 1280x960x32 1280x1024x32 1360x768x32 1600x900x8,16=3FF;1600x900x32 1600x1024x8,16 1600x1200x8,16=7F;"

Furthermore, I made sure I added all the features of the G7x by importing the entire block under [nv_SoftwareDeviceSettings_G7x]

08/05/2008 Update: nVidia Control Panel Settings

With the release of the Forceware 175.xx series I thought the worst case scenario was upon us Gefore 7 series owners: drooping support for the architecture and sinking performance. In fact, the architecture is basically the same as the Geforce 8 and 9 series, save for fewer transistors, pipelines and SM3/DX 10 support, etc.

My recent driver sweeping (read below) is likely to blame, at least in part. When I install a new beta, I generally check the nVidia Control Panel to ensure that SLI is enabled, global Single Display Mode, global SLI Alternate Frame Rendering and global V-Sync are turned off. Little did I suspect that the program-specific profiles would weigh me down so much.

The Program Settings tab contains application-specific settings: the same ones listed under Global Settings. Most default to "use Global setting", but my last sweep made the SLI mode default to "nVidia Recommended (SLI)." What the hell does that mean? This only adds to the confusion about what SLI really is.

As it turns out, I did run a benchmark with SLI disabled. The CTF-Coret average FPS was about 48, obviously inferior to the usual mid 60's score I am used to on this map. Still, after enabling SLI my performance increased, but not as much as I had hoped for this driver.

I ran a full set of tests in "SLI Recommended (SLI)" mode before going back and making sure something wasn't amiss. Wikipedia states that Single GPU Mode SLI is the use of only one card. So why is this mystery SLI mode, which I can only assume is Single GPU Mode, so much better than SLI completely turned off?

I can only conclude that Single GPU SLI is a multi GPU option. I've read that this setting makes the cards act as one unit, balancing the workload between themselves. Wikipedia would beg to differ, I'm affraid but perhaps I can make a contribution by running another set of tests with SLI disabled completely. And nVidia, your recommended setting for UT3 should be updated. Epic has said since the demo days that Alternate Frame Rendering 2 is the way to go!

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13/04/2008 Update: Irregular Load Times

This update is somewhat related to my beta driver testing crazyness, although I'm not quite sure how. It all started with the Forceware 174.82 beta leak. I had a heck of a time trying to install the thing: publicly available .inf mods were unsuitable. With all the failed installs, I tried to run Driver Sweeper to be sure no bad file bits remained, but afterwards I had no network connection: my router was fine, my other PC's worked but both my ethernet LAN and my wireless connections reported "Limited or No Connectivity."

I know I only selected "nVidia Display" and not chipset, and afterwards even System Restore didn't work to get me back online. I tried in vain to "Repair" the connection and then I used another PC to download my nForce 5 chipset drivers, but this failed as well.

In the end I fixed it by running the following lines at the command prompt:

netsh winsock reset catalog
netsh int ip reset reset.log

Afterwards, the UT3bench tool suffered from unusually long load times, but not every time. Some were so long that the time ran out on the benchmark before the game even started. I threw away a lot of test data, hence my untimely update with 174.82 - sorry. Well now I also had this to debug: my game ran fine when I started it manually, but the bench tool somehow didn't load it the same way. I disabled all my unnecessary programs and the only thing that had a noticable effect was Daemon Tools. I don't need to emulate any disks currently, so that was an easy drop but there was still up to a 40 second disparity between manual launch and bench launch times.

Eventually I started looking at the log files and the only obvious thing different on my desktop shortcut was the -onethread switch which I added to avoid multicore stability issues. The bench tool effectively starts a match unassisted with all the parameters and switches you select in the GUI. My typical demos look like this:

"C:\Program Files\Unreal Tournament 3\Binaries\UT3.exe" CTF-Coret?numplay=12?timelimit=5?automatedperftesting=1 -resy=1360 -resy=768 -seconds=60 -unattended -novsync -fixedseed -CaptureFPSChartInfo=1 -nomoviestartup

I added the -onethread switch to a new shortcut and all is right in the world again. This way actually, I don't have to set the details to high or choose the map from the select box every time. I made two more shortcuts (Omnicron and Suspense) to make my benching a little easier!

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UT3 Crashed? Fixes Below!

I had many issues with the game even though I thought my system was perfectly healthy. I looked to Epic Games Forums for help and once I was stable, I started trying to help others debug their issues. 250+ posts later, I've compiled a list of these for easy reference. This page contains troubleshooting tips, links to useful tools and files and a full listing of the configuration file structure below.

I think Epic did an excellent job restoring all that was good in the original UT, while taking the graphics and physics to the edge with the Unreal Engine 3. Unfortunately, it was not all smooth sailing out of the box. I have compiled a list of fixes if you're having trouble with crash issues ("ut3.exe has encountered an error"), BSOD's, application hang, audio hitches, mouse lag, etc.

Which .ini is Which?

In previous iterations of UT, and I mean all of them since UT '99, the default install directory was at the root of the C:\ drive and the whole configuration was defined within. This is no longer the case but the files you find in the config dir under Program Files are not the once you need edit. Not only that, but these files are also renamed so searching for their namesakes is futile.

Once you've launched UT3 and created a profile, a new set of directories will be created in My Documents and you'll find the real in file here:
My documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Config

UTEngine.ini Tweaks

Here is the section that will probably cure the majority
of crash issues.
For simplicity, set them as follows:

[Engine.ISVHacks]
UseMinimalNVIDIADriverShaderOptimization=True
bInitializeShadersOnDemand=True
DisableATITextureFilterOptimizationChecks=True
PumpWindowMessagesWhenRenderThreadStalled=True

[SystemSettings]
OnlyStreamInTextures=True

nTune

nTune has been reported to cause problems for UT3. Uninstalling seems to resolve these issues.

AVG Anti Virus

AVG anti virus has been reported to cause problems for UT3. I had this program on my gaming PC and switched to Avast anti virus.

UT3 Official Patch

Read my list of Unreal Tournament 3 Patch mirrors here.

nVidia Forceware for UT3 (169.28)

nVidia released a new set of drivers for those experiencing issues with Unreal Tournament 3. The drivers are available for Windows XP 32-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit.

Download from Gamer's Hell

Radeon Omega Drivers

I don't have an ATI card good enough to test UT3, but Omegadrive has released a new version of his popular modified driver. These drivers are based on ATI's latest catalyst drivers and they include a customized version of ATI Tray Tools. These drivers offer excellent performance versus great image quality and are known by their great reputation. These are "optimized" drivers for the ATI Radeon family, based on Catalyst 7.12 Official.

Run Driver Sweeper and install these: it may just fix your problems.

Omega Drivers @ Guru3d

OpenAL Hardware Audio

Disable OpenAL support in the Audio settings menu. I've tried toying with the number of channels in the .ini with no luck. Even when crashes are occurring during noisy explosions or the cinematic audio briefing before a campagin mission, I found that the root cause is video related.

Failing this, simply removing 'Host OpenAL Driver' from the add/remove programs list has reported success.

Mouse Lag

Here's yet another unique issue I found on my generally reliable rig: mouse lag in single player matches. I found in the Unreal Wiki that this was related to Logitech's SetPoint software, although their suggestion of uninstalling the program was not necessary in my case (I use the Logitech Cordless MX Duo). On the Gaming tab of the SetPoint interface change the mouse acceration and speed setting from "SetPoint Implementation" to "OS Implementation". That way, you can keep your button assignments intact. Sweet, no?

Fresh Start Video Card Drivers

Guru3d is the place to go for the latest video card drivers and the Driver Sweeper tool that cleans remnants of old driver files and registry values from your computer. I can't stress enough how important this step is: I think the fresh start is responsible for my flawless operation of the game today at the highest detail settings!

Crash/Hang at Profile Login

I read that some have traced this to the Windows Firewall. When you load, a dialogue box pops up asking whether to allow/deny U3 access to the Internet. This happens in the background, so you may need to alt-tab out of UT3 or open the Task Manager, but this has worked for some.

RAM Voltage

People have reported that increasing RAM voltage in the BIOS has cured some crash issues. An example would be from 1.9v to 2.1v, but I caution against extreme overvolting. Even undervolting has proven to work for a few people.

Further Tweaks

Once you have the game working, you'll want to squeeze every last but of performance out of you graphics card to enjoy this spectacle in all its glory. Read about my benchmarking project here.