rec.autos.simulators

I have a P233MMX, Voodoo1 combo.  With 12AI opponents I get 7-15fps at
start (depends upon track) and 22-23fps once racing and all of the computer
cars have dissapeared on the horizon.

I have been considering a small upgrade and have thought of the following
options:

a) Hercules Thriller 3D, 8MB.  Very hard to find, and ***y expensive!
b) Voodoo2 12MB (any worse with 8MB), cheaper than the rendition and
     I guess more future proof
c) A new Super7 motherboard and an AMD K6-2 300,  About the same
    price.

Any of these combos sound familiar to anyone?  What will help me get
a higher fps with more opponents?

Cheers/Mark

I don't know how much diff it would make.  Also, a Stealth 220 (only 4MB) can
be had for almost nothing I hear.  Again, don't know how much diff 4MB makes.
But I'd be suprised if any of these made more than a small diff compared to
the V1.

Again, I'd be suprised if it was more than 10's of percent increase.  I'd
agree that it has more than one app, so I consider a better route.

My bet is this would be better.  Better yet, my planned route is Celeron 300A
oc'd and an Abit BH6.

I had a K6 233, Gigabyte M/B and Monster3d1, and by turnig some fx off got
the frame rate up to about 28, with just me on the track. With other cars it
dropped to 15-20 (not good) so I went for an upgrade.

I got a Chantech 6btm M/B and a celeron 300 (not the a) - they both cost 90
GB pounds each and I bought a Canopus Pure3d2 for 140 GBP.

With the Celery clocked to 374Mhz I get a minimum of 36 fps.

Voodoo cards are quite processor dependant but if you are strapped for cash
I would think that the best fps boost for the money would probably be an 8Mb
voodoo2 - 12 meg cards don't currently show a huge improvement at all (games
not really written for them), but then the 12Meg is only a few pounds
(dollars) more.

if I were you (and I'm not of course so the choice is yours!!!) I would get
a 12meg voodoo 2 (cheap) and overclock your 233 a little (say 4.5 times to
297Mhz - all the usuall caveats about cooling apply - look at
http://www.racesimcentral.net/ for overclocking info). So for about 90GBP you could
greatly improve you fps....

-Lindsay

I agree with you about the voodoo having a longer half-life.  I am
finding support for the rendition chipset dwindling fast, but for the
price, I hear $10 after rebate the rendition may be the way to go for
now.  I get good frame rates in many other games with this card, and the
image quality is top notch.

FredG

Same over here. <sigh> Still relatively expensive even in the US for
the retail boxed version. I'd love one for the V2200's Rendition 3D,
8MB and AGP, but find it difficult to justify going back to a 64bit
engine for 2D after the 128bit Riva AGP, especially when my Voodoo is
doing a reasonably good job.

My solve for GPL 'perfection' <grins> is to (a) shortly upgrade to at
least a single Voodoo II, (b) plus a K6-2 400 just a few short months
away when initial release segmental pricing eases (Feb) and (c) go
V3300 when it releases, provided it's 2D and 3D performance is 'up
there' AND it supports D3D, the RRedline API and has an Open GL ICD
AND it's pricing is equitible.

Whilst I DO miss the anti-aliasing in GPL with the Voodoo, it's the
best all round solution for me and I can live with it until the V3300
releases. Going up to the Voodoo II will give me a constant 36fps
during the race, AND with specific AMD 3Dnow support for it and Open
GL in current 3.19 Quake II, using the Voodoo II framerates exceed
those of it's Pentium II equivilent for which Quake is heavily
programmed to take advantage of the Pentium II's dual piplining.
That's fairly impressive all things considered. In the growing number
of applications which are including support for the 21 integer
instruction set and SIMD of the AMD CPU, the performance increase is
noticibly significant.

BTW, the performance of GP2 is pretty remarkable on the AMD K6-2 300
and Nvidia Riva 128. I have **everything** on including clouds and
full mirrors. Est. frame rate setting is (auto detected) at the max.
With full traffic it runs average 100-110% with default cars and
tracks. With '98 season cars (Sjons) and '98 tracks (significantly
more detailed) it run average 120-130% occupancy *without* turning the
detail down!

These figures are with max traffic field on, but post-start with about
10 or so cars drawn in front and behind during racing. Solo practise
sees the processor occupancy lower about 20%.

Ooops..Just thought you may be interested. As you can see I'm fairly
impressed with the value for money equation and overall performance of
the AMD. The difference in price between upgrading with it and super
socket 7 mobo to equivilent PII performance is significantly more than
for us he in Australia than it appears it is in the US. (AUD$100-
between VIA MVP3 and Intel BX mobos, and a whopping AUD$200- between
processors *if* you can find a 66Mhz bus PII-300 to buy anywhere!)
I can buy a *NEW* generic 12MB Voodoo II locally with the saving!

I thought about getting that card too, but it's very hard to get here.
Maybe I will buy one of the new (3300?) Rendition boards once they
come out.

From all I've read here, a Voodoo2 won't be much faster than your
Voodoo1 - if at all - on your current system. Seems as if the V2 needs
a lot of CPU power to provide better framerates - and we don't have a
lot of CPU power to spare. ;)

Here's the valuable suggestion I promised: buy a Super7 mobo, but
forget about the K6-2. Instead, plug in your existing 233MMX and
overclock it to 2.5x100MHz. That's what I did, and the framerates went
up noticeably.

Here are my exact system specs:

- FIC VA-503+ mainboard with 1MB L2 cache.
- iP166MMX, overclocked to 250MHz
- 32MB of PC100 SDRAM
- Diamond Monster 1

Taking your above example (12 cars), I get 16fps during the start and
30 - 36 fps when the other cars have disappeared. This is in 640x480
with no textures in mirrors (mirror textures seem to be a bigger
problem for 3DFX cards than for Rendition ones), no "quality" boxes
checked (I don't see too much of a difference in quality anyhow) and
clouds, beveled tires and***pit textures turned off; detail bias is
on 50%, trackside objects on "all".

A few remarks:

My 166MMX was one of the last ones sold. I have reason to believe that
it's identical with the 233s and 266s of the same era. That's why
Intel limited the multiplier to 2.5 to prevent overclocking. But they
didn't take 100MHz FSB boards into account. :) The chip has been
running stable for weeks in this configuration with the standard 2.8v
core voltage. I'm pretty sure your 233 can do 250MHz as well, provided
the 2.5 multiplier is available. Check this first.

When you buy a Super7 mainboard (what could be more fitting to drive
the Lotus :) , make sure you get one with the VIA MVP3 chipset. It
allows you to keep using your old memory. I have PC100 SDRAM, but
apparently the gain in speed is marginal. Look for a lot of L2 cache,
too. It seems as if L2 cache, cache speed and FPU performance are
important for GPL. With a new board and your old Intel processor, you
get all this for little money. Once the 400+ K6-2s are available at
reasonable prices, you can again upgrade comparatively cheaply.

--
Wolfgang Preiss   \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.