I tested Quake framerates before and after installing 9.1. I'm running Quake 3a version 1.17 on a powermac G4 400, 256MB RAM, Radeon. 150MB RAM is allocated to Q3A. All drivers are the latest versions for OS 9.0.4 and of course for OS 9.1. I tested framerates using demo001.dm3.

OS...............Avg. FPS
9.0.4...........44.5
9.1...............45.3

All settings are maxed except for texture detail, the slider is one notch below max.

Keep it comin', Apple!


[This message has been edited by Phaedrus (edited 01-11-2001).]

[gorefan68]

eh...... ever try doing multiple time demos? They usually vary by +- 1 fps, so I don't think anything got faster at all...

Sorry to dissapoint.

Ca$h

Yes, I did do multiple demos. I repeated the demo three times for each OS. And guess what? The FPS was exactly the same each of the three times. That's why I didn't give a standard deviation--because the SD was zero!

What does this mean? It means that on my G4, OS 9.1 added a little under a frame per second to Quake 3A performance. No, it isn't mindblowing, but any improvement is good news. That's why I posted it here...to share it with others in the hope that someone else would add some framerate tests for comparison. So, Ca$h, if you're ever feeling constructive perhaps you can contribute your own observations on the effect 9.1 has on Quake 3A framerates.

[gorefan68]

Weird. I use 8.6, and my timedemos are never exactly the same. Are you sure you aren't looking at the same part of the console or something?

Ca$h

Am I looking at the "same part of the consol"? What, you think I scroll up and look at the old framerates, thinking those are the new ones? Yes sir, you are correct, I am a dumbass! I was committed to a mental hospital at the age of 9 because of sever mental retardation. The doctors concluded that my brain was lagging behind my body in development by about 4 years. I had the mind of a 5 year old trapped in a 9 year old's body! They tried everything; ritalin, methamphetamines, coke, acid, benzidrine, insulin, growth hormone, adoptive fetal brain tissue transplants...none of it stimulated brain growth. The transplanted tissue merely putrified within my skull, resulting in a particularly vile case of halitosis. By the age of 13 I was functioning with the brain of a 7 year old...I had almost given up hope until a respected neurosurgeon took my case. He transplanted the cortex of a car accident victim into my head (35% of my cranial volume was cerebrospinal fluid due to my tiny brain size). With two coretxes my IQ skyrocketed (two brains are better than one!) . See, I had an IQ of about 45 at the time of the transplant, and the accident victim had an IQ of 118. So 118 + 45 = 163! I'm a damn genius now! It would take a person with an IQ of 163 to match my intelligence (and of course you cant even find a person with an IQ of 163!).

hehe, couldn't resist the dig on Jobs there...

Back to the issue of framerates:
In UT I get variability when measuring framerates, but with the Quake 3A, v1.27, demo001.dm3, I've never obvserved variability. That's using the /timedemo 1 consol command.

I tried it again and got the same results, and I also tried tweaking other settings to see if there was any variability. Finally, I got some framerates that were 0.1 different. So I'm convinced that the difference I measured between 9.1 and 9.0.4 is significant.