Speed dlls what are they you may ask well the compiled dlls bypass the VM code in Quake 3 and load straight from DLLs to gain a speed boost in Q3. Use them at your own risk the ones below are for point release 1.27g to 1.32 and give a increase in speed see the tables below.
Where do you put speed dlls then unzip them to your Quake3\baseq3 folder.
For more information about speed dlls click here..
Aaron Gordon Speed Dlls files Point Release 1.32
The following tables files and html have been taken from Aaron Gordon site with his kind permission.
These Dll files give quite an FPS boost on AMD Athlon XP Cpu Systems
Site 1
These Dll files give quite an FPS boost on AMD Tbird/Duron DLLs
Site 1
These Dll files give quite an FPS boost on AMD K6 (all versions) DLLs
Site 1
Aaron Gordon has done a fantastic job with his speed dll files on installing them your cfg file is changed and the commands needed to use speed dll files are added. If for some reason they are not the commands below are needed to load and use speed dll files.
Here is a small video of Aaron Gordon computer (Athlon XP 2.5GHz, 218fsb, 3-4-4-10 ram timings, Geforce 3 standard, Nforce2) running a low detail Quake III
'four' timedemo at 735fps (yes, 735fps!) with my tweak DLLs. 5.5 MBs
Site 1
Aaron Gordon Speed Dlls files Point Release 1.27 - 1.31
Currently there are two versions of these AMD optimized Quake 3 Arena (v1.27-1.31) DLLs. An AthlonXP and a Thunderbird version. You can get them at:
AthlonXP version (v1.27-1.31):
Site 1
Thunderbird version (v1.27-1.31):
Site 1
The increase you'll receive really depends on your video card and your settings in Q3 Arena.
Slower video cards (sub-gf3) running high resolutions will see a small increase because
the frame rate would be limited by the fill rate of the video card. Faster cards (gf3 & higher)
should see a pretty nice boost all around.
Generally you will see a raw 30% performance increase. This is like going from an AthlonXP 1500+ to a 2100+ or a Thunderbird 1GHz to 1.3GHz just by installing the DLLs.
These were intended for an official AMD patch however John Carmack wouldn't allow AMD to use the dlls unfortunately.
The systems in the following graphs are as follows:
AMD Thunderbird System:
Unlocked 1GHz Thunderbird (all tests at 133fsb)
Abit KT7a
Geforce2 Ultra @ 290/490
Windows XP
512mb PC150 memory @ 133MHz
AMD AthlonXP system:
AthlonXP 1900+ unlocked (all tests at 133fsb)
Epox 8K5A2 w/ full memory tweaks
Geforce3 @ 250/570
Windows 2000 Pro
512mb PC2400 Corsair XMS
Quake III settings
No sound
Quake 3 v1.30
demo 'four'
set to "normal" quality
Aaron Gordon system (1900+) over clocked to 1817MHz/158fsb gets 283fps without the dlls, 323fps with the dlls.
Here are two graphs of the results I have obtained so far with the DLLs.
The AthlonXP results
The Thunderbird results
Aaron Gordon has done a fantastic job with his speed dll files on installing them your cfg file is changed and the commands needed to use speed dll files are added. If for some reason they are not the commands below are needed to load and use speed dll files.
Whats a demo you may ask a demo is a recording of a Q3 game or part of a game. Why would anybody want to record themselves playing Quake III you may well ask.
1. The clan leader may well record his clan playing a match and send it to a clan their playing soon to scare them ???
2. You wish to join a clan and a demo of you playing will convince everybody your just the player they need.
3. It looks cool and you can impress your mates with how good you are by playing a demo of you playing.
4. Demos are useful when tweaking the graphics on Quake 3 to check if the changes you`ve made to autoexec.cfg files and in game gfx settings have increased your frames per second rate.
Using a demo to test frame rate
First of all you need a demo file you can make your own see frequently asked questions or you can download a small one I made earlier.
To download demos click on button belows.
Please note the file below is for Q3 Arena point release 1.30.
Please note the file below is for Quake 3 Arena point release 1.31.
Please note the file below is for Quake III point release 1.32.
Where do demo files go, assuming when you installed Q3 you did so using the default path My Computer (C:) Program files/Quake 3 Arena/baseq3/ is where they live. Simply download the demo file above and save it to that directory.
Playing the demo is easy from the main Quake 3 Arena menu select demos and the file name dibble.dm_66 should have appeared there. Click on the file name then click on the play button at the bottom right of the screen and watch it play. The demo will stop on its own don`t hit any keys etc wait for it to stop.
Right thats playing the demo out of the way now we wish to get some useful information from it. Bring down the console (press the tilde key) and enter \TimeDemo 1 what this does is returns a value which will be displayed in the console after the demo has stopped playing. How do you view these values just bring down the console after the demo has stopped playing.
The values returned are:-
Number of frames played
Time taken to play demo
Average rate at which the frames are played at.
The whole frame rate thing is a balancing act with Q3 faster frame rate=lower graphics quality, lower frame rate=higher graphics quality.
Speed dll files
Demo`s what you need to know
Number of frames played
