rec.autos.simulators

On Fri, 26 May 2000 15:39:09 -0500, "Tracey Miller"

That's the option I took after mulling over the V5. Just ordered a P3
800E slot1 cpu instead, which means no slotket adapter needed on my BX
mb and hopefully I should get it running at 900+mhz easily.

--
Nos

thus spoke:

I'm betting she got it from Egghead. They shipped the V5 before they
were supposed to. Then told cistomers that they would not get a valid
warranty from 3DFX. 3DFX have said that not is the case and said it
was a misunderstanding between Egghead and them.
--
Nos

The Geforce GTS2 and V3 3000 PCI work fine together with a switch box as
that is what I am running.

GPL also works fine with the GTS 2 as well. I prefer running GPL with it
actually. I get 27 FPS for the first 2 seconds of a race with 19 AI and then
it maxes out at 36 FPS for the rest of the race. The only game I use the V3
for these days is MGPRS2.

F1 2000 and FSAA at 640x480 looks really good. The frame rate hit is not too
bad and I would say it's around the same as 1024x768 with no FSAA. The
screen does become a tad blurry with FSAA on but it looks more like what a
TV can produce than anything else for those of you that want a comparison.
You get use to it and it is quite hard to go back to non FSAA games. I think
people have to realise that with these first generation FSAA cards that if
you want good FPS then you have got to stick to 640x480 screen resolutions.
It isn't as bad as it sounds as it looks like 1280x960.

Bear in mind I'm also running this on a PC with a PIII 650E OC'ed to 866 so
your mileage may vary.

Darren

"Dave Henrie" wrote

I'm running them in Glide mode. I tried N3 in D3D mode just to
compare, and it was dreadful. Even though the framerate showed 30 fps,
the screen jerked badly.

I haven't tried F12k (don't have it), but yes, the N2K and SCGT are
much better with FSAA vs. without.

I did test NFSPU and DTR just now, and I'm beginning to take a shine
to this card. NFS was especially nice because the***pit is also
AA'd, in the other games the***pit is just a 2D overlay so it isn't
AA'd.

It's just my luck though that the 2 games I most wanted to see
improvement in, Viper and GPL, I instead get a reduction in video
quality. DOH!

I don't know, but I think they said the "issue" cards don't even work.
There are definitely problems with it, but these appear to be driver
related.

I've ran the card for 8 hours straight tonight with no lockups, it
just seems to be GPL that causes the lock ups.

Since installing it though, my PC seems sluggish in Windows - pausing
every once in a while as though there is some type of conflict. I've
reinstalled Windows 98, my next step will be to try a complete format
and re-install.

Sure, yeah, just like the V3 - except that it locks up in GPL and the
V3 didn't.

On Sat, 27 May 2000 00:10:22 -0500, "Tracey A Miller"

Alf from 3DFX said if you have the problem that has caused returns you
wouldn't even be able run the install for the dirvers. So I don't
think that is the cause of your problems. Crappy drivers? Now that
wouldn't surprise me at all.
--
Nos

Why is it you are the only one to ever see or mention this problem 'anomaly' in
games? There is probably something wrong with your system.

Nos,
What BX MB do you have?  I'm wondering if I can go above a P3-600 on
my Asus P3B-F?  I think the 600 is as high as it can go though. :-(  
I hate the idea of buying a new MB and ram. :-(
Thanks,
Andy

No. <G>  The P3B-F can go as high as......well, no limit.  As long as the fastest CPU from
Intel is a coppermine and Asus has a new Bios update for it, you are ready.  Considering
overclocking.  I had a fc-pga 500 on a P3B-F and overclocked to 750 using 150 MHz FSB.
Now, a PIII550E overclocked to 825 on a Soyo 6VCA.  Not sure if your PIII600 is or is not
a coppermine.  If not, I guess you can get it to 650 just by increasing the FSB.  If a
coppermine, 800 is possible just by increasing the FSB to 133 MHz.

Heck if I know, but I doubt it's my system. I just doubt that many
reviewers tried GPL or Viper Racing, and had I skipped these two and
went straight to SCGT, Rally Championship, NFSHS & PU, DTR, etc. my
initial impression would have been completely the opposite.

Every non-Papy or MGI sim I've tried since that original post seems to
benefit greatly from FSAA. NASCAR 2000 is like switching from a
Playstation to a Dreamcast, very noticeable improvement. Having played
F1 2000 on another system, I'm certain it would benefit also from FSAA
just as SCGT does.

The only conclusion I can make is that Papy and MGI do such a good job
making a clean looking graphics engine that further "tweaking" of it
on the fly produces the opposite results.

If you have a non 3Dfx card and play N3, but are unable to use the
anti-aliasing option, you will be impressed by the results of FSAA in
N3. But it isn't *substantially* better than the edge only option on a
V2/V3.

For those that only play GPL and think anything else is a game, the V5
isn't for you. Even without FSAA and the great framerates it gives at
high resolution, it crashes (locks up) every 20 minutes or so.
Hopefully the next set of drivers will fix this.

On everything else but Viper and GPL that I've tried now, FSAA is a
welcome feature. If I played any of these other games often, it would
be hard to go back to non-FSAA.

It would just seem to be my luck that my two favorite games, where I
was hoping to see the biggest improvements from FSAA, are actually
degraded by FSAA - in GPL it causes lockups and in Viper it causes
dynamic changes to trackside objects.

I just notice a post somewhere about someone who needed the "V2-fix" for GPL
to make work properly with the V5500....

See: http://www.sportplanet.com/gpl   for more info.

Perhaps you should try that?

--
All the best,
Ed Solheim
** Proud member of the GPLEA **
(Remove SPAM-GUARD in address to reply)

It will definitely be interesting to see if others share your sentiment...

BTW what are your system specs?

-snip-
-snip-

That was something about a V2 tweak to make the colors appear
correctly. The colors are fine for me in GPL, so I'm not sure what
that would be.

In desperation, I tried running the beta OpenGL rasterizer in GPL, but
that didn't go anywhere.

I finally got up the courage to go back and try GPL in Glide, for the
first time since reloading Win 98 and making some configuration
tweaks.

First I tried it without FSAA, just to see if it would lock up. No
lockups but I was surprised at how bad it looked. I don't remember GPL
looking this "aliased" or jaggy. So I turned on 4X FSAA and I went
almost a full hour without a lockup!

I think the first evening I was looking around at the scenery
expecting perfection and I didn't see it. Normally I really don't
notice the scenery I guess. Going back to no FSAA was shocking though,
I can't believe I played that way for 2 years without going blind! <G>

What seems to have been the hang-up on my system was my SCSI card,
it's bios was loading between the memory ranges which the V5 uses.
Apparently the V5 is using ranges that it isn't reporting to Windows,
so since I don't boot off the SCSI card, I disabled the bios and the
pauses in Windows and lockups in GPL have stopped - so far at least.

I still don't like the effect FSAA has on Viper racing, but in GPL I
don't think I can go back to driving without it. The "movement" I was
seeing on the screen in GPL is there without FSAA, just much worse,
FSAA is correcting it rather than causing it.

On Sat, 27 May 2000 16:01:28 -0500, "Tracey A Miller"

Hi,
can you tell us something about the performance of 4x FSAA? On
www.simhq.com they said only 24 fps in 800x600 (apparently on an empty
track at Watkins Glen, with the GPL demo). With GPL, 24 fps on an
empty track will result in a rather choppy driving experience...
How does 2x FSAA look in comparison?

tia
Daniel

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