rec.autos.simulators

I have been trying a few video cards in order to boost the frame rate in
GP2 but had very little succes.  I tried the Sierra Screaming 3D and the
Stealth II but GP2 would not respond to it (in fact the frame rate
decreases to an unacceptable and unplayable level).  I know that GP2
does not support 3D but I thought it would take advantage of the 4 MB.

I currently have a S3 Trio 64 v+ card (from Trident I think) with 2 MB
of video ram on my Pentium 133 (32 MB of ram).

Would anyone have a card type or brand name to suggest that GP2 would
recognize and that would increase the frame rate?  Would a standard card
with more ram produce a better result.  I welcome any suggestions.
Thanks in advance.

Guy Vincent

The ideal card seems to be the matrox millenium with as much memory as you
can afford!

 An inexpensive and fast 2d card is a Hercules 128 (PCI) vid-card,
with Tseng ET-6000 chipset, and 2mb of ram (about $70.00 or less?).
More ram on the vid-card won't help in GP2. I have this card for GP2,
and it works very well for the price (works well in W95 too).  

...>>>Would anyone have a card type or brand name to suggest that GP2

You don't need more video card, you need more processor.  

Like another user answered, the best money is spent on more processor.
However, I also tried various cards in GP2. The best I found was the
Hercules
Dynamite 128, 2MB, with the ET600 chip. There are other cards out there
using the
ET6000 chip.
It produced the most acceptable frame rate, and was also very good in
win95.

I say "was", because I removed it to use a Rendition based card, mainly for
ICR2 and Nascar2.

My Hercules 128 is for sale if your interested.

Guy Brosseau

gp2 takes a massive amount of proccessor, my 266 wont run it with
everything on, there is a patch however that takes advantage of the Virge
chipset(I think that is the same).

Absoloutly true, GP2 is all about raw CPU-power. Don't pay any attention to the
suggested framerate in GP2 when you have a Rendition. GP2 is testing in VGA-mode
wich is not handled well at all by Rendition boards like the Sierra Screaming
3D.  I guess you are runing in SVGA mode which is handled quite well by the
Sierra Screaming 3D. Just crank it up to 15-20 fps, or what ever your CPU can
handle. Myself I have a Sierra Screaming 3D and a PII-300 and GP2 is runing very
well.

........Koran

Yes, I experienced similar with a Stealth II.  It is quite possible that a lot
of reports of slowness of the chipset are based on such erroneous readings
(though it is slow in DOS VGA).

One thing to beware of with some of the old S3's is that there was some
feature not enabled (linear frame buffering?).  Make sure to use univbe or
Disk Doctor (or s3spdup?) and you may see a 10-20% improvement in framerate in
SVGA.

No, and No.

Agreed.  That is the only answer.

Actually, I have very good frame rates with my 166MMX, 32 MB RAM, and an old
2MB S3 ViRGE video card....
It ran like ***on my old 6x86 150+..so I agree the CPU is the biggest
factor.

I just wanted to mention a couple of things about GP2 performance which I have found to be
true:

1. CPU integer performance is the most important factor in GP2. AFAIK, it does not use any
floating point operations which means AMD and Cyrix CPUs give a superior price/performance
ratio compared with Intel. For instance, I have tried a Cyrix 6x86 P166+ (133MHz) and a
Pentium 166 on my system and the Cyrix is clearly faster (about 20%). Although I have no
personal experience with the AMD, the K6 is supposedly the fastest chip for GP2 according to
some benchmarks I have seen. (I have seen results where the K6-233 apparently scores over
800 in the "GP2 log:on" benchmark! K6 users, could you confirm this?)

2. Video cards do make a difference! A PentiumII 266 with a 4MB S3 virge DX card was not
much faster than the Cyrix 166 w/ Matrox Millennium 2MB. From benchmarks posted on Sim
Racing News some years ago it was shown that the Hercules Dynamite 128 and the Matrox
Millennium (~480 in the "GP2 log:on" test's Video performance) were the fastest cards for
GP2 at the time.

3. Video memory above 2MB makes little or no difference.

Having said that I would not recommend Cyrix or AMD for other race sims as most are very FP
intensive. Also, if you're on a tight budget, get something like a Riva128 if you need good
GP2 performance along with good Windows and Direct3D performance.

Hope this helps!

Tomo.....

Conclusion: video cards, at least half decent ones thru the most heralded
ones,  have very little impact on GP2 framerate.  That is, DON'T WASTE YOUR
TIME/MONEY ON VIDEO CARD "UPGRADES" IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IMPROVED GP2
PERFORMANCE!!!!!.

Absolutely true! Waste your money on a P5-200MMX and 3dfx and
get F1RS.

:-)

Sorry I couldn't resist....

--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

That`s more than enough for me. I`m not a serious simhead (kudos to
those who are) and don`t have 3DFX or any other such overhyped
graphical entity. i`m quite happy. Hell, I was playing the original Gp
until October last year.

Seeyall
---
The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny

Well, you're one lucky bastard... :-)

It's true that 15 fps looks satisfying as long as you didn't taste higher
framerates. Hell, even something like 10-12 fps was sufficient in the Amiga F1GP
days... But once you run with something like 20fps for some time, 15 fps becomes
totally unacceptable. And I reckon the same happens when you have to go down
from 25 to 20....

My advise: stay with 15 as long as you don't upgrade!!!

JoH
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