Hi guys,
I have been trying to figure out why I have such lousy frame rates with N42K
under Win XP Pro. Well I am sad to say I have not figured it out. Since I am
running a dual boot system with Win98se, I been able to make some quick
comparisons.
First off here is my system specs:
P4 1.5gig
Visiontek GeForce 3 using the 23.11 drivers
Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer (latest XP drivers installed)
512 RAMBUSS
Act Labs Force RS wheel (latest XP drivers installed) USB
Asus P4T Motherboard
Here are my settings from N4 and N42Kdemo:
1024x768x32
All details maxed
Drawing distance, I experimented from 50-100% (no difference)
With N42K I turned off anisotropic filtering
Of course under regular N4 I am using OpenGL. With the N42K demo we are
stuck with D3D. With ye olde N4, I am getting acceptable FPS but it does
fluctuate a lot more than it does under Win 98. In Win98 I get a solid 50
with (quincunx) FSAA on.
N42K problems:
I am getting 15-17 FPS during a race at ATL. During a testing session I can
get as high as 50 but the FPS jumps wildly from 25-50 depending on where I
am on the track. If I turn maximum sounds played down from 24 to 8, I pick a
few extra FPS. Now a friend of mine has similar system in power (but it is a
Athlon system)and is having beautiful FPS under N4 and N42K under XP. He has
the SB Audigy Gamer as well and can run with 24 sounds without a glitch.
Even if I switch to 16bit color, I only gain 5-10 FPS. There should be a
much larger FPS gain when switching to 16bit color. No matter what I do with
N42K the highest FPS I can achieve at the start of a race at ATL (from the
back of the field) is 25. This is not acceptable for my system's specs.
Where is problem on my system? What could be the bottle neck? I moved all my
cards around this morning making sure nothing was sharing any IRQs. That
made no difference at all. I reinstalled most of my drivers, no help there
either. I made sure everything is turned off in the background. Nothing
really helps the FPS.
Under Win98se, I am getting a smooth FPS with N42K. Its a little lower than
my N4 but there is more detail in 2K so I see no problem there.
I am wondering if it is a certain combination of things that is causing some
of us to have lousy FPS under XP.
Any thoughts, suggestions or comments are appreciated.
Run N4 under D3D and see if ya get the same results as the 2002 demo.
Everyone i know with a GeForce is getting the same cruddy fps in D3D. Go
figure, they release a demo in D3D when most of the world is gonna be owned
by nvidia soon :)
