rec.autos.simulators

Howdy!

I am very disappointed. I have put together what I thought was a
killer system. I have a Gigabyte HX motherboard, a Cyrix P166+, an
Integraph Intense 3D video card, a Quantum Bigfoot drive, 32Mg or EDO
ram. I try running Nascar 2 and I am getting lousy performance. The
game seems to stagger or stutter at 3 or 4 different points around the
track. Same deal in Win or Dos. Both versions of Nascar show the same
problem. I tried yanking the Cyrix and dropping a P-133 in, same
results. I am looking for some insight, any suggestions would be
appreciated. Much thanx.

Nascar 2 is nowhere near the speed or graphics of Quake or many other
games I have. I've e-mailed Nascar who've basically shrugged their
shoulders.

I'm personally disappointed with N2 and the way it was coded. It runs
slower then Nascar 1 on my system.

Richard

Are the sutters related to specific locations on the track, or are
they just periodic stutters? Periodic stutters, without connection to
specific "scenes" in the 3D world are most likely related to Win-95
going rummaging around your hard drive or network, checking to be sure
you don't run out of disk space, or trying to get an IP address via
DHCP, or something like that. Disable all of those annoying little
things, and give the game as close to 100% of the CPU as you can...

If the stutters are related to specific scenes, then you've probably
got to turn off some detail... One thing to try here is to run a 16MB
smartdrv to fool the game into using the 4-bit car textures, which are
faster. (This will probably become a command line option in the first
patch release as it is such a big win (speed-wise)...)

---Jim Sokoloff, Papyrus

I'm using a ASUST2P4 MoBo with a I166MMX overclocked
to 225 at 75X3.  Frame rate still sucks at the smaller tracks.
My system yields a 470 on WinBench97 and that approaches a
PPro so configuration is not the problem.  Around the corners
with everything turned on and in alot of traffic slows the game
and can make driving tight a problem.  KH

Hi Jim; thanx for the prompt reply. I have a really dumb question.
What do you mean by running in DMA mode? I didn't see any instructions
with the card (I realize you don't work for Intergraph) about forcing
it into DMA mode, nor on the motherboard? Can you be a little more
specific about what you mean?

Regarding the stuttering, at Talledega, it happens exiting the pits
initially (all cars in the pits) and coming up to the Tri-Oval.
Someone suggested turning the crowd off. Heck, it happens with our
without the track textures and sky texture (clouds). I thought
track/grass textures were the most processor intensive operations. I
didn't see much difference changing these. But I will try crowd.

Most sincerely from the desk of BT Nagle

"I reckon so..." - Clint

According to Jim Sokoloff of Papy, the Cyrix doesn't have an instruction
(Pentium does) that aids the controls calibration process when DMA is in
use. Something to do with timing...don't want to quote from memory at the
risk of misinforming you. I hear that this produces some choppyness when
with rendma on a Cyrix.

Good luck,

just a followup for all of you nice enough to answer back. I ran the
Renddma batch file and everything seemed fine! I saw a radical
difference in performance (good, that is). Seems to have solved the
problem. Thanx for the tips.

"I reckon so..." - Clint