rec.autos.simulators

Anyone recommend the best motherboard for rendition games. I seem to
remember problems with Tyan M?Bs? I have Reactor card & will want MMX with
maybe an AMD K6 CPU.

Cheers

Steve Garey

I do know that the Intergraph Reactor works with the ASUS P55T2P4
board that is mentioned on Tom's site.  

Your question will become more complex this month when the new boards
ship.  I expect most of the new rendition boards with the 2200 chip
will be available in both PCI and AGP versions.  Notice that they do
not quote different specs for PCI -vs- AGP versions.  I suspect they
will be priced the same since they will probably perform the same.
Future cards might require the use of the AGP for higher levels of
performance?

I've got my eye on the ASUS P2L97 Pentium II board for whenever in
September the Herculese Thriller 3D AGP board comes out.  I want to
see first hand the difference (if any) between the Thriller 3D PCI and
the Thriller 3D AGP.  If there is a big difference, we might all be
asking your question with the addition of AGP support.

--
Best Wishes!!!
Robert Huggins
Raleigh, NC

Steve,

        For what it is worth, I just got a K6 233  w/ the Abit IT5H
motherboard.
I have it underclocked right now to 225 with a 75mhz bus speed.  I have
an
Intergraph card and 64MB of 60ns EDO ram.  Grand Prix II wouldn't run
with
hardly any graphics turned on with my 133 - I can now run with ALL the
graphics
turned on, start from the back of the field at Monaco and get silky
smooth
graphics.  It is smooth in traffic, through the turns and runs great -
it is
a totally new game as I had pretty much given up on it until I got a
faster
processor.  I have run Nascar II extensively (using the Rendition
executable)
for quite some time, so I have a decent comparison between my 133 and my
233.
Bottom line is they run almost EXACTLY the same speed wise.
Martinsville is
still poor into the turns and certain tracks still have their glitches
coming
out of turn 4 or at other spots.  I was pretty disappointed when I ran
this.
I don't have any PCI latency things to tweak in the bios, but I believe
the
problem with Nascar II is the programming of the rendition executable.
I decided to try Nascar II running the normal nascar2.exe and while the
graphics were poorer, there was no noticeable lag or choppiness at any
of the
spots I normally see them.  I just read from someone on the group here
that
there will be a new and faster rendition executable with the BGN track
pack.
Gosh, I hope they are right!!!  If anyone has any official confirmation
of
this, I'd love to see it.  I think just a little better programming
would
make the Rendition version of N2 smoke on my setup.  If you have any
questions
about my setup, just shoot me an email.

                                                                --Aaron

---Jim

Thanks to Jim for this suggestion/explanation.  I had heard of this
feature
before (hell, it's probably in the manual but who reads those things?),
but
I wasn't sure this was the problem.  By running 'nasrend.exe -dma -4'
not only
do the graphics still appear to be the same (I surely can't tell the
difference),
but I get exactly what I would have expected out of my K6 233
performance wise.
Every glitch that was there before and every slowdown at the tracks that
were
there before are GONE.  The fantasy tracks are silky smooth and yes,
even
Martinsville is like running on the backstretch at Tally.  Thanks for
the
hint on trying to solve this.  I apologize to any programmer who I may
have insulted....  But it does bring up the question that if the
graphics
don't appear to be different and the speed is double or triple, why
isn't
the 4 bit textures the default?  Is the default something like 16 or 24,
or
is it 8?  No point in arguing, it works great.  Thanks again.

                                                        --Aaron

I recently upgraded to a Dell Dimension XPS 233 mmx system with 32 mb
sdram. I took the Sierra rendition card out of my old system (p90) and put
it in my new system. My frame rate is very smooth in win95. While it was
good in my PB p-90 with the rendition card, I got pauses in the turns in
win95. On this new system, there are no pauses. I have set the min frame
rate to 30 fps and run with all graphics on, and they all stayed on.
If your getting pauses, try running it in rendition with the -4 command
switch. This forces the system to load 4 bit textures instead of 8 bit
textures. I believe you have to have the patch installed in order  to use
the -4 switch. Just start the sim with the "renddma -4" command. This
should alleviate your pauses. I don't have any problem running it without
the -4 command.
DonB.