rec.autos.simulators

by **Marc Johnst** » Thu, 11 Jan 1996 04:00:00

>Subject: Re: 486/120 vs P5/75 or 100 -- Which to get??

>Date: Sun, 07 Jan 1996 11:57:19 -0700

>> >I got an AMD 486DX4/120 and it is about 10% faster than a Pentium 75.
>> >Need for Speed,Nascar Racing and Indycar Racing are great with it !

>> Thanks Gord and/or Jane:
>> What detail do you run? Generally I'll use car detail, off track objects
>> without detail, skid marks and smoke/dust, but leave everything else off.

>> And thanks for pointing out that it's not an Intel-produced chip. I
>> _hate_ it when I jump to conclusions like that... :)

>> =p=I run Need for Speed in 640X480 with just the horizon turned off and
>everthing else on high. Nascar and Indycar with all graphics on but not
>in 640X480 I think you need a Pentium 133 to run those in hi-res mode.
>Gord Hunt

I got a DX4/120 AMD, and it is fast!! I've got 8mb. ram, and a 1 mb.
Diamond Stealth vid card. I can run Nascar in 640x480 with everything on but
road texture, and it runs fine. I'd get a PCI bus though, mine's VLB. IT
scores 260 on Norton's sysinfo, a friends Pentium 60, PCI, scores 190.

jive

by **Mike Donnell** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

I find the folks at Papyrus to be as user friendly as you can get. Until
Papyrus goes into making a F1 sim, I really don't consider them to have
much of a rivalry. Granted you make good points that the age of the demo
is unknown as well as it having limited relationship to how it will
actually run.

Mike

by **Jeff ha** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

says...
Paul,

If you are going to make the jump, I would recomend getting a Supermicro
P55CMS motherboard with 256k pipeline burst mode cache and 16mb of 60ns
EDO ram. TO run it, get the most CPU (pentium ) that you can afford and
then overclock it a bit. The beauty of the supermicro board is that it
will take ANY pentium chip and is very flexible and fast. It has the
Triton chipset on it. I paid $670 for the board (no cpu) and 2 8mb simms.
I took my pentium 90 cpu and overclocked it to run at 100mhz. My old Intel
Plato MB gave a 3d bench of 83.1 (pci bus Diamond stealth 64 with 2 mb
vram). Standard stuff for that configuration. With the new MB, video card
and the cpu pushed to 100, my 3d bench is 100. a 25% increase. Nascar is
now playable (I mean fast frame rates). Indycar 2 is smooth as glass with
everything (except grass ). If you are going to upgrade, I would go for
noting less than a pentium and I strongly reccomend the Supermicro,
american made. Many of the flight sim guys swear by it, and now so do I.
Let me know and I can give you a source that gave me those prices. They
were quite aggressive compared to what I saw from others.

Jeff

by **Jeff ha** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

says...
NO, There are too many of us idiots out there who buy new hardware every
year to keep up. The other factor is people demand something "new" all
the time. As soon as version 1 comes out, people are asking when version 2
is going to be released. Rediculous IMHO. This of course puts pressure on
the design teams to push product out the door and not really refine things
(generalizing here). Papyrus did take a nice approach with Indycar 2 that
took advantage of the new hardware where applicable rather writing
everything to the lowest common denominator.

Face it, Geoff Crammond is probably the most independant sim developer out
there and after a couple of years he can't cram ( no pun) all the good
stuff into a 486 level machine. We want everything and don't want to pay
for it. Don't work that way.......

Jeff

by **Demick Boyde** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

^^^^^^^^^^^

What do you mean FOUR years - In about 9 months it will be like a 486DX33 is
today. In four years it will be what a 286-16MHz is today!

by **Steve Pritchar** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

I think the problem here is that everybody seems to be assuming that the
performance of a demo is representative of the real thing. I'm in no
particular position to comment whether the final game will be too slow or
not, but my point is that speculation based on a demo isn't necessarily
revealing.

The factors affecting the construction of a demo are normally different
to that of the sim itself, and so corners are cut, and things bodged just
to get it to the show on time. It may have still had debug code, and
non-optimsed routines floating around in it - in many cases the demos are
built around versions of the code that are very much out of date.

The same could be said of Nascar/IndyCar2 - neither of which will run at
reasonable frame rates with all the details turned on (I run a P120).

Lets just hope that GP2 will run okay on the kit we have.

Cheers,

Steve.

by **Steve Bowe** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

>> >I'm going to be upgrading my system from the current 486/66 and was
>> >planning to get the p5/75 or 100, but the man at the computer store told
>> >me that for graphics applications, such at ICR2 and NASCAR racing, I'd be
>> >better off with the 486/120 instead.

True, the 4/120 would be better TODAY, but if you buy a Pentium
motherboard that supports faster processors, then in a year or two, pop a
faster CPU in there, and it's a new system again. A DX4/120 system is
already maxxed out. In four years, it will be like DX33s are today.

by **Bruno Schleic** » Fri, 12 Jan 1996 04:00:00

> >I have extracted part of his response from a message dealing with >
>Pentium upgrades and include it in this message to you, as it is the > >
>first occurance of someone outside of microprose quoting on frame > >
>rates. It is is true, that in is current form, WC2 needs a P90 to run >
>18.2 FPS, with 140-150% for VGA ONLY,
> >Well, all I can say is that I will NEVER play a racesim in VGA again >
> >on my 17 inch monitor. The graphics looks horrible ! The dots ar just
> >to big. If this is all true, no harm done: I still can play the >
>EXCELLENT ICR2 until GP3
> >will be released in 2005............
> >Cheers,
> >Harald

Excuse me guys, but this looks a little bit like you are trying to put
down a product before it has even come out in its packaged form.
That you are fans of ICR makes your comments even more suspect.
Let's wait until WC2 comes out, and then the first people to buy it and
play it can tell us what the frame rates, occupancy and resolution are
like.

Bruno Schleich

by **Jeff Salzma** » Sat, 13 Jan 1996 04:00:00

>>> >I'm going to be upgrading my system from the current 486/66 and was
>>> >planning to get the p5/75 or 100, but the man at the computer store told
>>> >me that for graphics applications, such at ICR2 and NASCAR racing, I'd be
>>> >better off with the 486/120 instead.

>True, the 4/120 would be better TODAY, but if you buy a Pentium
>motherboard that supports faster processors, then in a year or two, pop a
>faster CPU in there, and it's a new system again. A DX4/120 system is
>already maxxed out. In four years, it will be like DX33s are today.

In 2 years, the Pentium motherboard will be just as obsolete.

by **RickGent** » Sat, 13 Jan 1996 04:00:00

And even
better, if the Papurys guy was one of the developers of ICR/ICR 2, he is
definately trying to push GP 2 down, since ICR 2 is something he made!
AND, the Papyrus guy had tried out the DEMO version of GP 2, who knows
how old version was that (last summer? October?) so the actual game might
be different and better.

Those guys at Papyrus should be quiet about rival products anyway, since
they
are just trying to turn people against GP 2. That's what I think.
<<<

Well, you are incorrect in this case. I'm not trying to put down GP2, just
report what I observed. The demo I saw was dated some time in October as I
recall (I saw it last month), so I would assume that performance has
improved since then.

Formula 1 racing and IndyCar racing *are* two different sports; I believe
there is room for both in the world :-).

Rick Genter
Technical Lead, IndyCar Racing II
Papyrus Design Group, Inc.

by **RickGent** » Sat, 13 Jan 1996 04:00:00

Rick, since the VGA demo of GP2 is a several months old non-public beta
quickly cobbled together
for the several European shows, I would be very wary about making
assumptions based upon it. A
much more recent demo was shown recently at the Autosport show in London
(SVGA) and all people
who saw it _unanimously_ comment that it is (quote) "Miles better" than
ICR2. Frame rate looking
much better and still a couple of months to improve it. I fear you may be
eating those words....
<<<

Not at all. I can only report my personal experience. I would *hope* that
it has gotten better since than, and from the demo I saw I know that it
has better graphics than ICR 2.

Rick Genter
Technical Lead, IndyCar Racing II
Papyrus Design Group, Inc.

by **Keiron Ra** » Sun, 14 Jan 1996 04:00:00

>Formula 1 racing and IndyCar racing *are* two different sports; I believe
>there is room for both in the world :-).

I'd second that point of view Rick. I also like to reiterate yet again
my personal thanks for your continued valued conributions to this
forum.

Regards,

---Cogito Ergo Sum--- *

* Fidonet: 3:640/377 *
Keiron Rado, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia *