rec.autos.simulators

OK, so I just bought my Rendition 3D Blaster and have been having a
nightmare.

Before:
N2, SVGA, all textures except track & sky, 22 cars front, 3 behind.  
Good, smooth frame rates (don't know the number, but I'm fussy when it
comes to framerates).  Using UNIVBE supplied with the game with my
Stealth 3D 2000, performance was consistent no matter how crowded it got
in front.
I wanted more cars, all textures and even better framerates.  Everyone
here raves about Rendition N2 (and maybe somewhere I'll find ICR2?) so I
took the plunge.

Now:
Just managed to sort out the screwy colours in DOS (to do with Palette
snoop in my BIOS) and applied the latest BIOS to the 3D Blaster.
With N2REND I switch on all textures but no more cars.  I start in the
pits, hands get sweaty just waiting for this photorealistic experience,
and... What's this?  A slideshow?  I get out of the pits (any track
serves as an example) and everything flies, I come across traffic and
feel like I'm playing on a 486.  This can't be right can it?  Please
don't tell me that this is what I've got to put up just for slightly
prettier cars.  I'm gutted.  Worse performance that my 3D 2000.  I
*must* be doing something wrong.  I have to be.  Please tell me what it
is.
- Here's a thing, though.  In the garage screen the mouse pointer is
sluggish (3D car in the picture).  Never used to be.  What *did* used to
cause a sluggish pointer in the original version was the replay screen
if there was a lot going on (eg start of race, all cars in frame,
trackside panning shot).  That worries me, one car causing slowdown.
RENDDMA doesn't work, either.  It thinks I might be in Win95 or that no
vesa driver is present.  I use a Win95 shortcut which completely reboots
the PC in DOS to an AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS that I supply.  I play
all my DOS games that way and have never had problems.  What can I do to
get RENDDMA to work?  I have a fairly modern PC and should be able to do
it.
VQUAKE goes a bit better than the standard version used to, but it's not
*that* much better.  Am I expecting too much?  I thought I'd be looking
at 25+ fps with this in 640x480.

System: Intel P200, 430vx chipset, 32Mb EDO, 512K L2

What makes this all worse is that this is the last I'll get to spend on
my PC for a -long- time.  The wife wants some house renovations.  Don't
tell me I've bought a donkey.  I'm starting to wish I'd gone 3Dfx and
live with my Papyrus favourites as they were.

I relying on you all, guys.

Mark

Sorry about the essay, but I'm desperate.

That's your problem right there.  Don't judge Nascar2 performance by
the non-DMA version.  The Rendition card need to use DMA to get proper
performance.  Without it, the Rendition version will be quite slow (as
you obviously have experienced).  Try two things.  Download both
DMAtest and DMAdiag from my utilities page and let us know the results
they give.  It's possible that DMA isn't properly being initialized and
a BIOS upgrade may fix things.  

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

On Fri, 03 Jan 1997 22:43:09 +0000, Mark Davison

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

   Why do you say that?  Does the program report that?  Rendition
DMA-mode does work in Win95 (without shutting down) and it doesn't use
a VESA driver, so I don't see how that would be the case.

   Have you tried Win95's shutdown to DOS mode command?  (This is the
recommended method.)  How about booting in command line mode?  (You
might need to load your mouse driver by hand.)  If you have an older
version of DOS, have you tried that?  There have been reports of the
DMA mode not working by one boot process or another, so experiment.

   Get either DMADiag or DMATest from David Sparks' or Eric Busch's
WWW sites.  These test the DMA performance of your PC.  They require
DOS4GW to be available to them (the easiest way is to run them from
the NASCAR2 directory).

   Do you have any other PCI cards?  If they aren't PCI 2.1-compliant,
they could force your Rendition card to run in PCI 2.0 mode (at half
the maximum bus speed).

   Have you tried the latest VQuake beta (10?)?  I've heard that the
later versions have significantly enhanced frame rate (although I'm
not a Quaker ;).  Available from the Intergraph WWW site.

   What is the manufacturer and model # of your motherboard?, someone
might have Rendition experience with it.  Have you looked for a newer
motherboard BIOS revision which might allow/enhance DMA performance?

   We'll do our best...

Pick one or more: Model Rockets (competition-NERCB) / PCs (even Atari!) /
Papyrus ICR-ICR2-NCR / Who needs a life when you have multiple non-lives?

Mark:

I think you are getting crappy performance considering you run a P200.
I have a P100, run Nascar2 with full detail and 20 cars in front at a
very smooth frame rate.  Quake, I must add, does indeed run very fast in
640x480.  My qbench score is 24.3 fps (on my P100).  I get astounding
performance from rendition enhanced games.  Perhaps your dma usage, or
the lack thereof, are hurting performance a lot.  Rendition requires DMA
for peak performance.  Download DMAtest from www.crunge.com to check DMA
performance.  90MB/sec or better is peak performance range.

Matt Lewis