rec.autos.simulators

Thanks,
-Brad

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One thing you could try is to take the video card from your brothers
computer and put it in yours and see what happens.

Secondly, just cause you have a P90 doesn't mean you go fast
automatically.  There are 486/100s that can go faster than P66s.  It's
all in the hardware.

A good idea. Benchmark witha couple of programs/games before and
after.

Tphphphpht!!!!!! :> (P-90 owner here). I'm curious what framerate
486/100 users are getting in NASCAR (and what options). Is there a way
to get the framerate in NASCAR?

--- Gavin

D'oh - I forgot to mention what video card I had - it's a Paradise PCI w/
1 meg. VRAM.  I'm pretty much a 'newbie' when it comes to upgrading hardware,
and I know pretty much nothing about video cards.  I have heard that the
Paradise is a bit slow, but could it be *that* slow?  I'll upgrade it if it
is.... problem is that I need something that is (a) fast in DOS, and (b)
supported by Linux/X-Windows.  Suggestions?

Great idea, except that my brother doesn't live in the same time zone I
do. :-)  Some of the stores around here have a "try-before-you-buy" type
policy, where you can return stuff if it doesn't do what you wanted it to...
so I may have to take advantage of that and begin the search for a better
video card.
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The problem is that my BIOS setup utility doesn't seem to provide much
room for 'tweaking'.  There aren't any options I can see that have
anything to do with "memory waits".  Then again, I'm new to this sort
of thing and really don't know what I'm doing!  I've changed all the
options available, (writing down the old values so I could set them
back of course), and all I've succeeded in doing is making it even
slower than it was before! :-)
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Hi Brad:

You were asking about 3d Bench results for various configurations:

I am running a P-90 on an Intel Premiere II/PCI M'Board, 16 MB RAM,
Diamond Stealth 64 PCI Video with 2 MB DRAM, and my 3d Bench score is
83.3.  This was achieved both using a boot disk and using my normal
autoexec.bat and config.sys files with all drivers loaded (no difference
noted).  I haven't done any special tweaking or tuning to improve the
frame rate (at least nothing I've done has any noticeable effect).  I run
NASCAR in SVGA with 38 opponents, car graphics on, paint/skidmarks on,
low level objects on, horizon on (on the larger tracks anyway; on the
short tracks horizon seems to slow down the frame rate), smoke auto,
crowds off, wall texture off, track/grass texture off, FM sound and
performance is smooth as can be (except perhaps when I'm behind heavy
traffic at the beginning of a race or right after a caution period).

Ian McIlroy
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

My 486dx2-66 with ET4000/w32p VLB graphics card gives 50.0. When I got the
computer, it reached something around 40, but after tweaking the BIOS setups,
I got it that high. With a slow Trident 9000 graphics card on the same machine
I only got 28 fps.

Try to tweak your BIOS setup. Try to tune memory waits as low as possible
and make sure the system still works OK. You can safely try all settings and
test after each change if it affects system speed (you should try some other
benchmarks as well). Just make sure you can return the original values, if the
system no longer works.

If this does not yield satisfactory results, you may either have a motherboard
with too slow memory handling (not likely I think) or a slow graphics card.
If you need only DOS performance, I would recommend ET4000 based card.

Samppa
--
|   Samuli Takala  |E-Mail:             | WWW: http://www.jyu.fi/~tamasa/     |

Agreed, the video card is critical, but not the only deciding factor. As far as determining
the frame rate, the only way I know is by setting the min and max frame rates, start a race
and see what dissapears. I run SVGA with all graphics on and MIN frame rate of 14 and
never lose any of the detail( stands, grass horizon, etc.). I am running a DCA based
486DX4/100 with 16 meg of 15ns cache memory and a Stealth 64 VLB.

Nikki

Brad,  thank you for pointing out the Benchmark program.  I FTP'd it and
ran it on my system.

486 DxII 66
8 meg ram
Trident video card with 1 meg (cheapo)

After all the gears stopped turning, It spit out a benchmark or 37.  
Its something I need to improve upon.

Thanks.....

______________________________________________________________________________

                "It's good enough for government work"

Bolko R.

--
Bolko Rawicz | "I build them to go, not to stop." - Ettore Bugatti replies
at Simon     | to criticism of brakes in Bugatti cars.  "if you can afford
Fraser Univ. | a Type 55 Bugatti, surely you can afford a heated garage!"
in CANADA    | - Ettore Bugatti on starting problems in cold weather.

Uh, I've got the same configuration but only 4MB and 3 I got a rating of
48.0 frames per second. What bus system you're using (My is VLB)?

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D(-) B? e+(*) u+ h! f(+) r- n+ y?                                    Fnord.
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--
Bolko Rawicz | "I build them to go, not to stop." - Ettore Bugatti replies
at Simon     | to criticism of brakes in Bugatti cars.  "if you can afford
Fraser Univ. | a Type 55 Bugatti, surely you can afford a heated garage!"
in CANADA    | - Ettore Bugatti on starting problems in cold weather.

This is just slightly better than the 486DX/40 8 meg, 1 meg ISA board
it replaced.  Aaaaaargghhh!!!

It uses an AMI BIOS if that matters any.

Terrill