rec.autos.simulators

i have a 486/80, 1mb VLB card, and 12mb RAM

i run indycar 2 under vga mode, and get full graphics smoothly only if
there are no opponents...

i have money to spend, but want to know what upgrade will help me get a
smooth (30+frames) racing in vga, full graphics, all cars.. (i dont care
about svga now, i prefer all graphics)

1) upgrade to a 5x86-133
2) upgrade to a 2mb vlb
3) upgrade to 16mb RAM

which of these will help me get the most for my money?
Cpu, Video speed, or Memory?

or maybe upgrade to a higher cache ram?

Wait untill the new 3d cards come out before you upgrade your current video card.

Only if you want to be able to have longer replay files

--
Eric T. Busch

Emory University

I'm running indycar2 with a amd 5x86-133 (overclocked to 150) and run it in
svga with only the road/grass textures of. This gives me about 20 fps when
racing with other cars. I have a diamond stealth 2mb dram, but I think a 1mb
or 2mb doesn't make a big difference, especially not in normal VGA.

In standard VGA ICR2 runs ABSOLUTELY completely smooth with full detail and 31
cars (no need to overclock to 150).

Hope this helps.

Gertjan Westeneng

Definitely, processor power will be the best investment as far as
performance increase is concerned.  Go for the 133 (or even a 166 if
you can afford it!).

As for RAM, the 12 Mb you have should be sufficient.  HOWEVER, if the
SIMM modules you are using presently are only 30 pin, and you upgrade
to a Pentium motherboard/CPU, be aware that you will probable need 72
pin SIMMs.  According to info from Papyrus, NASCAR/ICR2 really only
need about 7 Mb of RAM to run properly; anything above and beyond that
only allows you to have longer replays.

A decent video card with 2Mb would also help (but is probably not as
important as the CPU);  you can probably pick up a decent card for a
couple of hundred bucks (there are probably others in this newsgroup
who are more knowledgable on this subject than I am).  Personally, I
have a Matrox Millenium with 2Mb and I am quite satisfied with it.

Hope this helps,

Bobcat

Until last week I had a 486/80 too, with 16 megs of RAM.

I upgraded to a P-120 with 256k external cache.
The video card I got is a VideoStar 400 (64-bit, 1 meg, and cheap!).

On the 486 GP1 ran at 25fps full detail with an occupancy of about 25%.
Now it runs at an occupance of about 10%.

For reference, Duke Nukem 3D runs at 27fps in 640x480 mode!
(ie. pisses on a console).

Try using the UNIVBE video card driver, available on the net everywhere,
as it really makes one hell of a difference to DOS games (doubled the
frame rate of DN3D for example).

--
MarkN

I went with the 5x86/133 and it was amazing.   You don't need a Pentium
to get smooth animation from games.   They want pure clock speed.
My video card: an el-cheapo 1MB Trident card that (by accident) was
VESA compatible....  
BTW, Nascar and Indycar II say they run in 8MB, if you have any extra
memory, it will lengthen the amount of replay....  that's all.

Go for the clock speed above all.
(imho)
Mike

they say it clocks faster than the 486-dx4/120.. SHOULD be good

============
Who says you need to buy a PCI M/board for the AMD chip?
Mike

How's the SVGA performance?