rec.autos.simulators

Hi everybody,

I am currently evaluating a new computer.
The new one is a pentium pro 233 with my old
Intense 3D.
Overall Performance (W95/NT) is good, but I can't
get my intense 3d 100 to work fast with icr2/3d.
(Although using indyfast ;-))

I am upgrading from a Pentium 120 and think I
should see some performance increase, but it's
a decrease. (p120-Performance for icr2/3d was ok,
about 20-30 fps with everything on).

What is the bottleneck? PPro, Mainboard, I3d?

Dmadiag reports 8 mb/sec fifo, 50 mb/sec dma (both).

Icr2/3d seems to struglle in turns, fps going down by
about 10!
Turning off AA in ICR2 gains about 10 fps!
Turning off grass & asphalt gains some fps.
(I never saw that with my p120)

The non-rendition accelerated (;-)) ICR2 runs
steady with 30fps, but looks extremely ugly.

VHexen2 runs ok (23fps/640x480), VQuake as well
(25fps/640x480), what's wrong with icr2/3d?

Would upgrading to a v2x00 Card help?

(Icr2/3d is the game i really want to play,
hexen/quake are just benchmarks)

Any hints are welcome. Your system performance
for comparison as well.

thanks in advance,

Joachim B?ddeker

(Please reply via email as well)

Assuming that your PPro (already overclocked) is using the 440FX chipset, I
would recommend that you go to www.fastgraphics.com and get a copy of FastVid
for your system.  It works really well, once you figure out how to optimize it
for your system.  Just make sure you read everything about it at the site so
you dont suffer any major headaches once you install it into your autoexec.bat
file.

Hope this helps,
F1Filter  

% I am currently evaluating a new computer.
% The new one is a pentium pro 233 with my old
% Intense 3D.
% Overall Performance (W95/NT) is good, but I can't
% get my intense 3d 100 to work fast with icr2/3d.
% (Although using indyfast ;-))
<snip>

% What is the bottleneck? PPro, Mainboard, I3d?

% Dmadiag reports 8 mb/sec fifo, 50 mb/sec dma (both).

While someone suggested getting fastvid, I don't think it will do
anything at all for the DMA performance of your Rendition.  It will
however help with your performance in regular graphics.  

The bottleneck looks to be your BIOS settings related to PCI and DMA
timing.  Search your BIOS manual and setup screen for things related to
PCI and Latency Timing.  Make sure you have PCI Streaming enabled and I
also think you want PCI Concurrency enabled.  You can try upping the
number in your Latency timer (though my old Award BIOS seemed to work
better with lower numbers -- I think it was a bug in my BIOS).

If you can't find this stuff in your CMOS setup, get the excellent
program TweakBIOS at http://www.miro.pair.com/tweakbios/ and you should
get access to stuff your MB manufacturer hid from you.  This was the
only way I could boost the performance with my old Award BIOS.

I was able to maintain almost full fps with my P5-166 and the Intergraph
Reactor (aka Intense 100) card once I tweaked the BIOS settings.  Make
one change at a time and then run DMADIAG to see if you get any
improvements.
--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

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