Re: Quake III

[crispin@iinet.net.au]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 12:18:42AM -0600, Adam Majer wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 12:33:30AM -0500, Oleksandr Moskalenko wrote:
> > * crispin@iinet.net.au (crispin@iinet.net.au) wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 10:25:24PM -0600, Corey Halpin wrote:
> > > >   I'm using the following hardware: Pentium-II, 320M RAM.  Intel 440LX AGP 
> > > > chipset.  Matrox g400.
> > > >   When I run quake 3, it runs for a few minutes, and then locks X such that I 
> > > > can't switch consoles.  The video freezes where it was, and the sound starts 
> > > > looping on itself.  I can ssh in.  If I kill X, it doesn't save the console.
> > > >   Does anyone have an install of Quake III that doesn't do this?
> > > 
> > > Try switching off sound. It doesn't lock anymore, right!
> > > 
> > > Its the sound drivers DMA issues or something.
> > > 
> > > Had this problem for a while, upgraded video cards, everything. Then found out it was sound card. I have an el cheapo by the way.
> > > 
> > > Maybe a high quality sound card would work better
> > > 
> > > Crispin
> >  
> > 
> > Nope, SBLive value barfs in situations like this regularly. For example,
> > on quake2 any "battle" scene slows down to an unusable level with sound
> > becoming raspy and jerky and FPS getting to 2 or 3.  This is a
> > combination of a Celeron-800/Matrox G400 32Mb/SBLive.
> > 
> 
> I have no problem here - Quake III runs very smooth. Athlon 650 (ol' slot A),
> ATI Radeon 64 DDR and SB Live...
> 
> I think the video hardware has a lot more to do with locking the bus and other
> stuff than sound. I found that sound might degrade when X is running overtime.
> That is when frames drop because too much stuff in the area. But I haven't had
> a problem with my video card :)

My lockup sounds exactly the same with looping sound and X frozen, and in my case at least its very much the sound that causes it. Somewhere in the readme with Q3 it talks about how they had to use some extreme DMA sound card thing to get responsive sound. Dunno. But when I switch sound off I can play for hours. With sound on it lasts 5 minutes.

Crispin