wouldn't work with my Voodoo3 3000. Well, my Voodoo was stuck in a P-II
400, with 128MB of RAM. This machine seems to have outlived itself,
knowing a lot of people were whining about how F1 cs 2000 wouldn't run
on their P-III 800 or whatever, while it ran 'decent' on my machine with
12 cars, about everything on Med detail and a couple things on High. GPL
ran great. Anyhow, I give a lot of credit to my buddy that built the
machine for me. It led a good, long life, but...*sniff*... it was time
to upgrade since f1 2001 didn't have a chance on it.
So, I picked R.A.S.'s collective brain about what my new 'puter should
be equipped with. I gotta say "Thanks!" to you guys, cause after
researching things myself, I found your recommendations to be spot-on. I
ended up with this:
Athlon XP-1800+
Epox EP-8KHA+ mainbd
512MB Crucial RAM
Radeon 8500 (retail)
SB Live Audigy X-Gamer
plus a DVD, CDR-W, floppy, modem, Win 98se, Logi cordless keybd & mouse
(optical), 19" monitor, Klipsch 4.1's, and a new Logi Momo wheel
All for a c*nt-hair more than $2G's. Anyhow, I put it together last
night and got the new Radeon drivers and DirectX 8.1 installed by 1:00am
(so at that point I was lookin at 4 1/2 hours of sleep, max). Too tired
to hook up the speakers or my old LWFF (the new wheel didn't arrive yet)
and using my old monitor (ditto), I *had* to see what F1-2001 would do.
First of all, I go into the Radeon's settings and max everything out...
Smoothvision and all. I have no idea what half of that shit does, but it
was maxxed! I install F1 2001 without any problems (took a couple of
minutes), go into the game's display setup and max it out to the limits
of my old monitor (1280x768), and run it. Loads quick, menus laid out
nicely, then I double check to make sure all graphics are on full. They
are, so I click on Quick Race with a full field. It took 10 seconds to
load Sepang. Remember, I'm using the keyboard for control without sound.
I click "Race".
OH...MY... GOD! This is frickin' gorgeous! The lights go on one at a
time and go out. Hakk stalls in front of me. I ram him and come to a
stop as the other cars avoid us and fly past. The framerate is
smmoooooootthhhhhhhhhhh.... silky smooooooooth. Remember how slippery
and smooth it was the 1st time you made it to 3rd base with a girl???
Smoother than that. I didn't have fraps loaded or anything, but there
was not a single stutter to make me think this was running at less than
50 fps. Luckily I was invulnerable, so I push Mika to the side and
continue on with my keyboard, soundless driving. Those first tight
corners at Sepang? I could feeeeel when I was losing grip. The car
whipped thru the left-right complex after the next straight, just like
they did when i watched quallies this year. Had to pause and try the
replay feature. I had it set to 30 secs, so it caught me coming thru the
first tight section all the way to the first back-straight. It was
wild... It looked better than world feed. As touchy as the steering was
with the keyboard, the aids gave me enough help that it just felt right.
I stayed up til 3am playin this thing. Watching the replays. Playing.
Replay. Crash. Replay. I didn't wanna go to bed. Tonight I'll hook up
the Klipsch 4.1s and the LWFF and see what I think of it and let ya
know. If I figger out how to do screenies, I'll do that too. Thanks
again for helping with my computer component choices.
Damn. I still have over 3 hours left here at work.
Tic...... toc.......tic.......toc.......tic......
Warlock!