rec.autos.simulators

My system is a little different from most I've seen
discussed here.  It is a 2.5 year old Dell with a 100MHz
bus, but I have switched out the old P3 550 for a
Celeron 1200 MHz from powerleap.com, and just installed
a Visiontek Ge3 Ti200 64MB from Best Buy.  Also
I added some RAM for a total of 256MB.  The 3DMark2001SE
benchmark was 5100 or so, and some of the benchmark
games showed >100 fps.

My baseline N2002 Demo graphics settings are everything
on/high except: 50% draw ahead, mirrors medium, no anistropic,
no steering wheel.  20 cars ahead, 4 behind.  Atlanta,
19 opponents, start from rear.  Resolution 1024x*x16.
Killed most everything on the machine using EndItAll -
typically 90% free.

At first I had Nvidia 21.83 drivers and was using D3D basic
renderer (not TnL/Hal - tried that later - should have
tried it first).

Initial fps = 22 or so, dropped into ***s at green flag,
goes into 30s or 40s when no opponents in sight.  Not much
better than my old TNT2 32MB card.

Took out reflections - got an additional 5 fps.

Took out pit crews and skid marks - got maybe 2 fps.

Tried playing with medium world, and some trackside
objects - got maybe 2 fps.

Added anistropic - no way, got into low ***s or worse.

If I put together all the reductions, I could flirt with
the 30s as my lower bound, but surely my rig should be
able to stay in 30s or higher, with lots of details.

I tried forcing antialiasing to 2x instead of "let the
game decide" in the Nvidia menus, and this reduced fps by 2.

I turned off "fog emulation" in the Nvidia menus and this
had no effect.

So - time to try different drivers.  I tried 23.11, 23.12,
and 27.42, with all being the same, or slower in the case
of 27.42.  So I went back to 21.83.

Finally - changed renderer to D3D TnL HAL - and this is what
made the big difference.  With the baseline settings above, I
started out at 37fps and never went into the 20s.  I was
then able to increase resolution to 1600x*x32 (the highest
available) and only sometimes get into the 20s.  I set it back
to 1600x*x16, and then increased drawahead to 100%, and
still get into the 20s only occasionally.  During a typical
race, the fps would stay in the mid 30s.  I saw highs in
the 50s or 60s.  Definitely playable, even with lots of
eye candy!  

I should probably try the 27.42 drivers with the TnL renderer.
And, I'm just hoping I get the same fps with the full game.
Also I will give OpenGL a try then.  Please let me know
if there's anything else I could try (barring a new system).

Thanks!

Doug Appleyard
e-mail address above for spam, use:
dougappleyard at yahoo dot com

Doug Appleyard
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dougappleyard at yahoo dot com

I get a minimum of 35fps in XP (at start all bunched up), otherwise
40-70
21.83 driver
GF3 Ti200
1280x960x32 OpenGL
All graphic options on except Anisotropic
16 - sounds
29 AI cars on track
15 cars drawn ahead, 4 behind
80% view ahead.
All high detail except medium mirror.

| > Yeah if you got windows xp dump it!
|
| I get a minimum of 35fps in XP (at start all bunched up), otherwise
| 40-70
| 21.83 driver
| GF3 Ti200
| 1280x960x32 OpenGL
| All graphic options on except Anisotropic
| 16 - sounds
| 29 AI cars on track
| 15 cars drawn ahead, 4 behind
| 80% view ahead.
| All high detail except medium mirror.
|
|

| > Yeah if you got windows xp dump it! I got 17 fps with crappy xp, went
| back
| > to windows me and get 35 fps min with going through trioval at
| daytona, XP
| > gave me 17fps min, 30 max, Me gives me 35 min 52 max, AA off
| Reflections off
| > lightmap off shadows offf, 25 cars ahead 4 behind medium car, world at
| high,
| > 8 sounds. 23.11 driver for windows me. 1600X1200 at 16 bit color on a
| p3 1.0
| > gig
| >
| >
|
|
|

XP only cost me about 20 FPS in 2002 from N4 on the exact same computer. I
attribute a lions share of that to lack of texture compression in OpenGL
which is apparently being addressed by Papy. When that happens I bet I get
my 80-90FPS back from N4 (also under Win XP Pro) although 60 FPS under Win
XP with 2002 is ok thus far to me. I run every option at High Detail, 80%
draw ahead, 20 cars ahead 5 behind, no wheel drawn, no anisotropic filtering

1.2Ghz AMD, 512 SDRAM, GF3, 23.11 drivers, Win XP Pro.

As much as I dislike M$, XP Pro is the high end OS us home users have wanted
since seeing NT4.0 in use in the office environment. Perfect? No, not
really. Better than the Win95/98/ME that it replaced for home use, you
betcha. Of course you probably have never gotten things like OS2 or Linux to
run on a home machine either, after tweaking those, XP is a breeze. If folks
would realize that XP is simply NT 5.1 (which it is) and approach it from an
NT mindset instead of these Win-over-DOS things we've had since Windows 3.0
(2.0 for me), they'd likely learn to appreciate its strengths and work
around its limitations. Things you have to do even with ME and 98SE. If
you've never heard the terms Windows 3.1 or Windows 3.11 (aka ? do you know,
Windows for WorkGroups) then please don't pan on Win XP, you don't have
enough time 'in' to really understand the whole OS hiearchy.

Short answer, I'll take Win XP Pro over anything currently out there,
including MacOS X. The only thing I have ever used more stable for graphical
use was an Irix-based SGI machine.

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