rec.autos.simulators

My system is a Dell 4550 P4 2.53GHZ at 533MHZ FSB with 256MB ram at
400MHZ, 120GB 7200 RPM Harddrive.  

In 3dconfig, at 800x600 16bit the best I can get is 41 Million
triangles.  In game, frame rates are about 35-40 with everything
turned all the way up.  I really can't even turn on AA or aniso
without a performance hit.  

Questions:  am I right to assume this card was a great deal or should
I return it?

Would I get better results with F1C?

Thanks! Eric
Please remove ***  in email adress to avoid spam

Performance is also due in no small part to the drivers and OS you're using,
and you didn't share that info. Won't do too much to complain about
performance if your drivers are 6 months out of date. I have a 5600 Ultra
and it smokes everything I run with it, though I don't run the F1 type sims
outside of GPL. Using XP and 45.23 drivers on a 2800+ AMD with a gig of DDR
on a mobo that supports AGP 8X (A7N8X Deluxe) that I built. I gave up on the
mail order boxes when Zeos got bought out by Micron... :-) (prolly 9 years
ago maybe?)

I have this in my 2nd pc and it shows 47.3m triangles to your 41m.....

When i start the EA Racing titles all graphic settings are auto set to High
or Full and i see over 40 fps all the time.

The card you have isnt top notch but i would have expected a little more.

AD

   Double check your FSAA and Ansio settings...the Nvidia cards bog down
easily if you run those options.  Extra ram is good but don't exceed 512mb
if you use win98.  
  You can use utilities like Riva TUner to overclock the memory and that
should increase the fps...still a triangle score in the 40's are about what
the GF4's hit when they came out and the 5xxx line isn't much faster...just
has a few new features.  But for $100 you got a pretty good deal.  To see
real speed increases you'd probably have to spend closer to $300 or more.
And if you have an older motherboard with slow RAM then those items too
would hold back your test scores.  
  The thing about 3dconfig is the cpu does not help or hurt the score, so
you get a good look at your video card.  Probably just messing around with
your D3d settings in the video properties and retesting 3dconfig several
times will raise the triangle score.   You can keep going back without
finalizing the config setup.  Try different screen sizes, most video cards
have a few native resolutions that seem to eek out slighter better
peformance.  And 16bit is usually faster than 32bit..
   F1c is more demanding than the 2k2 sim.   Not a-lot but it definately
makes the video system work.
dave henrie

I'm running WinME which should be subjected to the same restrictions with 1
GB of RAM and it works like a charm. All you need to do is limited the
amount of RAM WinME's vcache can grab to 512 MB. I think it's really vcache
that poses that memsize limitation, and that can be easily cured in
system.ini by setting maxfilecache to something less than 512MB.

I've set mine to 409600 because I don't think 512 MB is really necessary
anyway.

Achim

...
...

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 21:07:08 GMT, "SimRacer"

   Not a myth...win98 will run with more than 512mb, but it will not run as
quickly.  So rather than try to explain vcache to general users, it is
easier to just say...whoa...don't drop in more than 512mb.  Especially
since, up until recently, ram was pretty pricey.
dave henrie

Well, if you feel that the card is truly your bottleneck, then that may be
the best bet. Just don't freak out if you get a nicer card and it still
doesn't perform up to snuff. Getting vid cards to scoot properly takes some
level of tweaking and it sounds like you want one you can drop and in work.
Good luck.

AD

Very often very fast graphics cards have poor results in lower
resolutions, usually not much better then a card that should
be at least 50% slower.

Compare your old card with the new one in 1280x1024/32bit, there
should be a bigger difference.

Also, you _MUST_ add another 256 megs of RAM.

--
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
ICQ: 138579247

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 16:49:07 -0400, Eric Brewer