rec.autos.simulators

Btw, Abit BF6, PIII900, 256mb,Live, GF3

There's far more to getting good FPS in N4 than the hardware.....that's only
"the starting point."

Your PIII 900 CPU is probably hurting you a little bit.....but for the most
part your hardware is capable of 60 to 80 FPS (maybe more once your GF3 card
can stretch its legs with the right drivers and settings).  I get anywhere
from 50's to 90's FPS......using the settings below....only running a GF2
ULTRA (which won't be much different than a GF3....not in N4 they'll be
almost indistinguishable...since they both have the same DDR memory and run
at the same clock speeds).  When you get your FPS in the 60's to 70's or
better.....you should try running the FSAA that is a totally new "graphics
engine" on the GF3.....see what "hit" you take to FPS....which should be
minimal with the GF3's FSAA architecture/methodology.

I should point out that I have posted the settings below here on RAS several
times....and almost everyone (with similar equipment to mine) gets the same
results as I do.  Follow them closely.....all of them.

Wishing you success.....

Tom Pabst
Pabst-Racing.com

PS:  What GF3 card did you buy and how much?

******GeForce 2 (MX, GTS, ULTRA) Tweaks and Settings for N4******

Desktop Color:  Set to 16-bit color for N4 and all games.

DirectX: Make sure you are using a DX 8.0 compatible driver (Nvidia Ref
drivers versions 7.0 or higher)

For N4:  Run OpenGL (not D3D) in "XXXX"x16 (you must use a screen res
compatible with your CPU speed and ram).

Monitor:  Make sure you have downloaded the latest drivers for your
monitor...DO NOT USE "Plug and Play" Monitor drivers!  Set your refresh rate
at the highest setting you are allowed for your monitor at the specific
screen res you want to run N4 at.

Advanced Settings Tab For OpenGL:
           In The Scroll Down Box:
                 Enable Buffer Region Extension (checked)
                Allow the dual planes extension to us local video memory
(checked)
                Use fast linear-mipmap-linear filtering (checked)
                ****all others are unchecked****

            Default Color Depth for Textures:  Always Use 16 bpp
            Buffer Flipping Mode:  Use page flip
            Vertical sync: Always off
            Full Scene Antialiasing Method: Always off

            Use up to [62] MB of system memory for textures in PCI mode

Mother Board BIOS Settings:
            Video BIOS Shadow = "Disabled"
            Video BIOS Cache = "Disabled"
            Palette Snoop = "Disabled"
            AGP Turbo (or x4) = "Enabled" (if your mobo supports
it....disabled or 2x or 1x if it does not)
            PnP Aware OS = "Yes"
            AGP Aperture Size = 128 mb (only if you have 128 mb or
more...which you should)
            Resources Controlled by = "Auto"
            Assign IRQ to VGA = "Yes"

From what I've been able to gather, unless the game is optimized for Directx
8, the GF3 will show little improvement over a Pro/Ultra.

I'm pulling up to 75fps at 1280xwhatever with my GeForce Pro, and that's
good enough for me :)

Also, it takes a powerfull processor to feed a GeForce Pro/Ultra/3.  I
noticed a pretty good increase with the same card when I went from a 800Mhz
Athlon to a 1.2Ghz DDR Athlon.

-Larry

Thats what they found too.

So, even though N4 requires DirectX 8.0+ (doesn't it?), it isn't
optimized for it?

-pw

 Microsoft recommends (forces?) to include newest DirectX, optimized for or
not is not matter.

Y. Minami

Tom