rec.autos.simulators

Hey,
I posted a couple days back that I ordered the guts for my new system.  I
cancelled that order to make doubly sure that I got exactly what I wanted
and ended up making a better purchase.

KT7A-RAID Mobo
1 Ghz Athlon Retail Box
256 Megs PC 133 Kingston RAM
2 20 Gig Ultra ATA/100 Maxtor Drives
Pioneer 16x DVD
Ricoh 12x10x32 CD R/W
ATI Radeon 32 Meg DDR Video

Is anyone running N4 on a comperable system?  How are framerates on the ATI
card?  Also, is anyone having problems with the new Pioneer DVD drives?  Or
are the problems limited to OEM type DVD drives?  I'm not looking foward to
having to do some type of song and dance to install this and play it, but
after reading about some of the problems, I'm concerned that I'll have to.

Thanks,
Russ

I have a SCSI Pioneer DVD drive and there are no problems.  It is a great
device.  As for frame rates, I find that my system (which is a 1.1GHZ KT7A)
is limited by sound.  I can do almost whatever I want to graphics and it
does not increase anything.  The bad news is that I seem to be limited to a
min of 30fps at some tracks and there is nothing I can do to increase it.
30fps is just a little too slow since around this number (and it probably
goes a little below in reality, just not by the fps display counter) I can
start to sense stuttering.  I would have expected a 1.1ghz processor with a
Geforce ULTRA the rates would be better.  After all, you really can't buy a
faster single processor system.

FYI: I have started looking for sound card driver upgrades and am going from
DX8 to DV8a to see if I can effect this.

/TomH

I'm running it on a similar system, with no problems. I used "The
KT7-RAID FAQ" found at: <http://www.icrontic.com/faqs/kt7faq/kt7faq.htm>
to setup and tweak the system. It all went together without a hitch..
And Nascar4 installed and plays fine too. I waited on getting a good Vid
card until N4 came out, so I'd know which card to get..
KT7-RAID
1GHz T-Bird (Retail)
256 Crucial PC133 CAS2
30GB IBM Deskstar ATA/100
Pioneer 105s DVD (OEM) <-- Installed N4 with this drive
Plextor 12/10/32a CDRW
SBLive X-Gamer 5.1 DD
Voodoo3 3000 PCI (Waiting on AGP Herc. Geforce2 GTS PRO 64MB DDR)