>I have a pentium 120 stb trio 64V card and am getting crummy frame
>rates (< 20 with most stuff turned off). I'm running through win95 but
>have read that shouldn't effect frame rates that much. Dont know how to
>load drivers and set up to run in DOS. I just feel lucky to have it run
>at all. Is it possible that the way win95 makes memory settings effects
>the frame rates(win 95 sets all the memory(conventional, EMS,XMS)to
>auto). Just seem a 120 pentium machine would perform better. Also, will
>the 3d cards run N2 through win95?
I have a (roughly) equivalent card in my second machine at work (a
P-90) and I get quite a decent frame rate. Mine runs slightly better
in DOS, but I often run a quick test or game in a Win95 DOS box. Make
sure you have all of the Win95 "I'm going to go rummage around on the
network and/or hard drive" type things turned off. The "auto" settings
don't affect anything. If you have a local computer-savvy friend, try
to get the DOS drivers installed and try running the game in DOS. That
will at least assure you that Win95 isn't crippling the game, it's
only slowing it down slightly.
But the real question is: "Are you using UniVBE?" If not, that's a big
part of your problem right there. (Run UVCONFIG in your N2 directory
to configure it.) That should pick up your frame rate very nicely.
(Depending on your pickiness, you can probably get by with a P-120 and
your video card, providing you use UniVBE.)
Other things that you can't quite so easily change ($$$): Add a
Rendition-based card. Test (and perhaps improve) your memory
subsystem. Except in the case of badly misconfigured machines, this is
a marginal improvement, often at a fairly stout cost. The Rendition
card on the other hand is under $200, and REALLY HELPS things.
---Jim Sokoloff, Papyrus
