rec.autos.simulators

I am looking to upgrade my PC to accommodate GP 2.  I would like to
achieve a processor occupancy rate below the 100% and a reasonable
frame rate to display many of the features to make the Tracks look
someone realistic.

I intend to buy a Intel PII either 233 or 266Mz, but  don't know which
type of Graphics Card to go for. Any information on how a graphics
card affects GP2, and what card may do the job would be most
appreciated.

I have noticed some discussion Re the use of 2D/3D cards.  Can anyone
explain the differences and advise what would be most appropriate?

Mark

Mark.....
I may not be able to answer this in as technically-correct a method as
some of the others here but, in essence, GP2 relies totally on
processing power for the speed of its graphics and not on whether the
video card is 2-D, 3-D or whatever.

Therefore, if you are upgrading and wish to run GP2 with as much detail
as possible, go for the P266.  If you intend running other
games/simulations that take advantage of 3-D then you will need to make
some decisions on video card(s).

For example, I run GP2, ICR2, NASCAR2 and will be running Ubisoft's new
sim.
In my system I use a Rendition 3-D card to take advantage of the two
Papyrus sims (ICR2/NASCAR2).......which run beautifully.
I also have an Orchid Righteous 3-D card for those games that are/will
be available in 3Dfx mode.

This is NOT the best setup (I don't think it's possible to define
that.......the technology changes so quickly) but it definitely covers
my requirements in that it caters to the types of games that I
personally prefer.

--
Bruce
(at work)

"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
(Simon Cameron)

I used to have a P120 and Diamond Stealth 64 PCI 2MB video card that ran GP2
around 16 fps at 320 x 200.  With CPU occupancy of 75% at Germany down the
straight.  I had an old Diamon Speedstart Pro1MB ISA card laying around and I
swapped them and the occupancy went ot only 83%.  So I concluded that there
wasn't that much data being sent to the video card for it to be the bottleneck.
 I put in a AMD K5-166 and the frame rate went to 25 fps at the same settings
with just the processor change.  

Upgrade your CPU for GP2 not the video card.  This might not be good advise for
other games but it ts true for GP2.  

Jerry

The graphic card does little if anything to increase frame rate in GP2.It is
mainly CPU intensive so the bigger the CPU the better the frame rate.I just
upgraded to a P11 300 and now GP2 runs beautifully with 25> frame rate in
SVGA mode with everthing on except sky.With sky on it drops to 21.3 which is
still quite good.
Sid.

I agree with this, the graphics card has no effect. I'm currently
running a PII-233MHz with 64M SDRAM and get 25 frame rate with 85-120%
Occupancy, depending on traffic etc.

Having said that, for fun I'm running an ATI card with PC-to-TV and it
looks fantastic on a bigger screen (not as sharp but then it's
bigger!)

this is almost totally true - s3 cards have some sort of vesa bug that makes
gp2 run ***- its supposedly fixable with a software patch, but having
tried it, im unimpressed.

If GP2 is your main reason to upgrade, then you definitely should go for the 266
processor. Graphics card is much less important for GP2.

Gp2 doesn't support 3D cards, but you might buy a 3DFX card for other  games. Or
wait for the next generation (VooDoo II) another few weeks/months.

JoH
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Go for the CPU. A P2 is a good bet although it doesnt make it totally
playable even with a 300 at max resolutions and details. I get an
estimate of 21.3 with all details in SVGA and then occupancies of
80-160% at Monaco which makes it fairly well unplayable. This is on a
P2-300 64m SDRAM, Millenium2 4m, and UW SCSI subsystem. Go figure.