rec.autos.simulators

Gigabyte Ga 7VRXP
AMD 1800+XP
GeForce 4 Ti4200
oh and Windows XP

Has anyone out there in sim land tried running gpl on a system like this?
I understand that i will need some patches, but as there is constatnly
discussion here about GPL not running with particulare components i thought
it was best to ask before i spend up big.

Thanks a lot, and expect some further posts from me in about a month, after
i continue to crash at the Ring or something along those lines.

A couple of patches you'll want are the fast CPU patch, version 1.2 patch,
and either the OpenGL or D3D patch.

all these are available from www.papy.com

GPL will definitely work with all those bits. Some people have had a few
problems with win xp, but I personally haven't had a problem

The parts most people have had problems with is the soundcard (particularly
the SoundBlaster live). What soundcard are you looking at?

David Corless

My own setup is VERY similar, mind you...Asus A7V333 (which is chip-wise
quite similar to the VRXP; KT333, Promise RAID, but adds a much better
CMedia onboard sound (it's the first onboard I've ever actually USED!), and
integral Firewire (albeit only one port)), AthlonXP 2000+, MSI GF4 Ti4200...

Milhouse

Jone.

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

The most important are:
    Disable unnecessary services to free system resources
    System Settings for a Game Machine

Brian

I've got a Gigabyte 7VRX.  It's a no frills board that's fast, stable and
compatible.  It's got everything you could ever possibly want to tweak in
the BIOS.  It's also dramatically cheaper than the ASUS for identical
performance.  RAID is more of a hassle than it's worth.  The performance
improvement is miniscule for 99% of tasks plus you get the extra noise and
heat of a second HD.  Firewire?  Again, not useful unless you're the
video-editing type.  A CMedia  sound card? I'm guessing it'll be just a
matter of time before you find a compatibility issue with a game.  In short,
ASUS = mainboard equivalent of bloatware.

You never dealt with a Revision 1.0 or 1.1 then.  I had to RMA my board the
first time because the friggin' thing wouldn't work well at all with my GF3,
and I'm far from the only one with that problem.  Mine at least worked well
enough in Windows; some guys could hardly get theirs to boot with a GF2MX.

And so does the Asus. Point?

Identical performace? Hardly...because Gigabyte ***ed up the power
distribution so badly on the VRX/VRXP boards, they didn't leave in any
buffer at all for any tweaking after they finally gave the AGP slot enough
juice with PCB 2.0.  And it's not really "dramatically" cheaper, unless your
time is free.

Noise of a second HD isn't a big deal at all.  First, my case fans easily
drown out all three of my D740X's (one 40GB boot, two 60GB RAID) and second,
anything that comes in less noisy than the Quantum Bigfoot that I had for a
month until it popped qualifies as quiet.  Though, after having one of the
60GB drives fail, I'm not going to set the pair up as a RAID again (my
advanced RMA replacements just came in today) but I'm still going to run the
drives; I need the space.

Which I am.

Wrong; I've been using a cheapo CMedia PCI card for years and haven't had a
problem; the onboard is actually better than the implementation on that card
so I'm using it.

And in short, Gigabyte = betaware shit.  It's the only motherboard I've had
to RMA, ever.  The three Asus boards I've built systems off of (Asus P2B,
Asus A7A266, Asus A7V333) have been the most trouble-free and consistently
stable of any system I've built (and this is going up against the 7VRXP, at
least four ECS K7S5As, an Abit BH6, an FIC VA-503+, a few older noname
Socket5 boards, an ECS K7VZA, and a Soyo K7VTA-B).

Milhouse

To be fair, you're right - the rev 1.0 didn't like GF4 MXs (Many other
boards didn't either).  As for your GF3, well that's the first case of a GF3
not working that I've heard of.  I'm not saying that Gigabyte are the
ultimate, just that ASUS is so overrated.  They're a bunch of bumbling
Taiwanese just like the rest of them.  Anyone who owned the notorious ASUS
A7V rev 1.0 will attest to that.

So it should for a 50% higher price.

Again, the A7V was an expensive mistake for those who bought one.

Say no more, I can almost hear your 'vacuum cleaner' from here...get a
proper PC ; )

In which case you shouldn't be recommending your preferred hardware to a
*** newbie.

Again the original A7V springs to mind.  I have never seen so many DOA (dead
on arrivals) in my life.

Seeing as money is no object for you, maybe ASUS is the go (for you)  In my
years of building PCs, I've found that they are no more reliable than the
other brands - they just add a few gimmicks and then charge more.  The same
with their VGA cards - they always have a gimmick like TV-in etc and then
they don't give any real driver support for them.

On the subject of a dual XP system, i dont think there will be any need as
i wont be using anything other than a printer.

Oh, what kind of framerrates could I expect with this system and as many
car updates as i could find? Will i be able to run GPL at full detail
levels?

Thanks again for all your kind help

Well ive added that address to my favourites, lets hope i remember to look
a there when i buy the new pc.

Thanks

I suppose every company has had it's share of shit...but that's my
first/only Gigabyte board and I got burned badly.  Warcraft3 was the worst
game for the problems; 3 minutes max before a solid lockup.  I've heard many
others on www.amdmb.com who had similar problems with even slower cards.
It's not so much the chipset of the card as it is the fact that they just
weren't getting enough power.  GF4Ti's, power-hungry as they are, were
absolutely hopeless.  Asus is just the only company I've never had a single
problem with that I've tried.

50% higher is pushing it...at NewEgg.com, the 7VRXP is roughly $105 and the
A7V333 is roughly $130 (last I checked, which was a little while ago)

Yeah, as were a lot of Abit boards with bad caps...I suppose I just now
realized that every company has their lemon boards ;)

Maybe so...but the A7V333 is also available without a large amount of the
on-board AFAIK.  And I'd be personally more tempted to recommend an Asus to
someone relatively new at building computers than most other boards just
because I've had them work so consistently right out of the box.

Oh, don't worry, money -is- an object for me. I'm a college student.  ;)
But I'll spend it when I deem it to be worthwhile; and after futzing around
with what IMO qualify as lower-end boards (like the Gigabyte and the ECS
K7S5A) I realized that dropping another $20 or so was worth it to not deal
with it.  As far as overall quality, I'd take my old Abit BH6 over either of
those two.  Abits and Asuses have always been good to me, but I've sworn off
Abit since they seem to be both priced even worse than Asus (which I admit
is high-priced) and they had such a LONG rash of bad caps on boards (back
when I still hung out in the Abit newsgroup before I sold off my BH6).

I'm also going to be paying much, much more attention to end-users and
ignoring Tom's Hardware more.  I should've learned the first time around
when he raved about the K7S5A...nothing really bad about it, but there's
nothing good about it either aside from being cheap as hell.

As always, your mileage may vary.  (I know mine does depending on how many
full-throttle runs I do.  Tiny primaries and massive secondaries do that. ;)

Milhouse

Suffice it to say: YES :)

Running GPL full-out is not a problem on a system like that. :)  Load up all
of the mods, the 3d-wheels and helmets, any other texture improvements you
can think of...detail slider full right, all options on max, 1024x768 or
1280x1024 depending on your monitor, maybe AA if you run a lower res...yeah,
fairly solid 36FPS. Hehe. :)

Oh, make sure you get the CPU patch too.  While it's kinda cool seeing what
GPL would look like if it ran 70fps, the game's timing thinks its only
running 4.

Milhouse