Minimum requirements for ICR, NASCAR, or F1GP

I'm thinking of picking up a PC so I can play these games (I'm normally a Mac user and I can't afford a PowerMac right now). What are the minimum requirements to play these games (i.e. would a 386 25mhz be adequate?) Thanks in advance... -- Chris Carlone [link lost in import]

###>Subject: Minimum requirements for ICR, NASCAR, or F1GP ### ###>I'm thinking of picking up a PC so I can play these games (I'm normally a ###>Mac user and I can't afford a PowerMac right now). ### ###>What are the minimum requirements to play these games (i.e. would a 386 ###>25mhz be adequate?) Hehehe...no it wouldn't. DOOM wouldn't run very well on a 386. <g> IndyCar Racing requires a 486dx/33 (thats not IndyCar 2 mind you), NASCAR requires I believe a 486dx2/50 with 4 meg RAM (8 meg to see full graphics) in VGA, and a 486dx2/66 with 8 meg for SVGA. BTW, being off-topic but pertaining to the message, id Software has reported the "target" machine of Quake to be a 486dx2/66. Define target. <g> Since you say you can't afford a PowerMac right now, maybe consider getting either a 486dx2/66 or a 486dx4/100 with 8 megs RAM, 16 if you can afford it. That would be your best deal in my opinion. --- * TLX v4.10 * Beware! This is a dangerous product, manuals required. --- * OLX 2.2 TD *

HAAHHAHHAAHHAAHHAHHHAAAA!!!! HOOHOHOOHOHOOHOHOOHH!!!!!!! 386/25Mhz :) Try Pentium 133 (preferably it should be even more powerful .. but you can't buy one yet) for Nascar.. 486/66 for Indy... well F1GP does work on a 386... but it's crap, really... Tommi Pajari btw. if you want the minimum machine for Nascar.. i think it'll work ok with 486/50 in VGA mode... (Nascar is really the only one worth buying right now... Indy 2 will be in soon)

> P-133? Yeah.. I might spend $3000 to $4000 on a new pc. It ran fine on > my dx266 with about 75% of the textures off in SVGA. my 120mhz 486 > runs great now with full textures! (I turn off the road,grass, and > walls because I don't like the way it looks anyhow!) Thats the whole problem with this question, it too subjective. I have a P5-120 and choose to run in VGA. Sure I can run SVGA, but then the frame rate drops below 25-30. Even in VGA I turn off the track and grass textures, I don't like them and the increase in performance doesn't hurt either. I personally enjoy the increased frame rate over the higher resolutions and detail. I would like to see the frame rates that the above person feels is acceptable. I find it very difficult to believe that any 486 can run SVGA at a high frame rate (one that I would deem as aceptable) when Papyrus themselves admits most high end pentimums can't. -- Eric T. Busch Emory University

I run NACSCAR and ICR on a 486 66 w/ 16mb and it's ok most of the time. For instance, in traffic the only graphic dressing I use is the car graphics and all other texture mapping is turned off. A 386 would really ***on even the lowest res settings

Define 'fine' please? My dx4100Mhz sucks, i can play SVGA but it's pretty jerky, and I have 95% of details off. My next computer is gonna cost something like 6000$ (or more), I'm tired of playing around with toys. I think I'll get a Nokia 445X 21" display, at least 32 Megs of RAM, and a P150 when they come available. Also a 3D accelerator for Win95 and a new soundcard that has a proper S/N ratio (Turtlebeach Multisound?) You ask why. Because 30fps is what i want, and i think a lot of the guys out there think the same. (sorry for the arrogance, but i really think your 120Mhz dx4 doesn't run SVGA Nascar with full detail on without a huge performance hit) Tommi Pajari

says... Gee, is there any wonder. This chip still has only a 33mhz bus speed. No matter how fast it is internally, the graphics just will not get any faster. Why stay with the P5? Why not a P6? bryon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Vehicles must carry 3 or more persons to be in the "car-pool" tunnel. Bryon S. Lape

Well geez, for $6000 you can get an old Formula Vee, or for a third of that you can get a competitive kart, and you can do some real racing. How would you define those sort of frame rates and graphic details? Seriously, though, you get what you pay for. I just have a 386DX-40 with 8MB RAM and a 1 MB Trident clone video card, but that hasn't stopped me from having a LOT of fun running ICR, NASCAR, and F1GP on it. So I don't get to run SVGA on NASCAR, I only run 15 cars in ICR, and I don't get to see all the little sponsor stickers on the cars I'm running against -- I can still tune all 3 games and pick appropriate tracks to make them very playable. The best thing I did was ignore people who said these games won't work on my PC. It may not look anywhere near as realistic as on Tommi's dream PC, but it's still a lot of fun. If "reality" is the ultimate goal, well, skip the "virtual" part... (for a person buying a PC, I'd still recommend a mimimum 486DX2-66 w/8MB, whether you want to play these games or not.. And the 386-25 mentioned in the first post could well be too slow for these games. Your mileage may vary) Just my opinion.... Chuck Slana (BTW, one of the biggest improvements I got tuning NASCAR for my 386 was in switching from digital to FM sound. That made a HUGE difference. Doesn't sound as nice, but it's much more playable.)

I hope this will not go into a flame war, but your knowledge of PC's seems to be a 'bit' lacking, no offence. The 33Mhz bus at 32 bits can still transfer 132 Megabytes per sec, the problem is A. the slow processor which cannot calculate the positions of the textures fast enough, and B. The ISA bus which can at most transfer only about 5MB per sec (1 640x480x256 frame being 300kB in size) which is far too slow.. the 33Mhz processor bus affects the speed too, but much less than the two things I mentioned. My original posting, anyway, was about how I doubted that a 120Mhz 486 can deliver good performance in Nascar, and it has, to my knowledge, a 33Mhz external data bus too..? So why did you have to flame me? Well I've seen the test results of the P6 in PC Magazine, and Win95 seems to slow it down due to 16 and 8 bit instructions jamming the instruction pipeline for up to 7 clock cycles (which is equal to 21 32-bit instructions in the P6), and thus _even_ when the supposedly 32-bit Win95 runs a 32-bit app, P6 will run only at 98% the speed of an equivalent P5. Note this is two months old info, so Intel might have made changes to the processor... Sooo... I'm getting a P5 which I think can run Indycar 2.0 for Win95 as well as P6 *sigh* I'd like to have Indy 2.0 for Windows NT, so I wouldn't have to get Win95 and then I could get a multi-processor machine... well you can't have everything.. Tommi Pajari

: says... : >Define 'fine' please? My dx4100Mhz sucks, i can play SVGA but it's : >pretty jerky, and I have 95% of details off. : Gee, is there any wonder. This chip still has only a 33mhz bus : speed. No matter how fast it is internally, the graphics just will not : get any faster. Nope. If the bottleneck is with the graphics card, then yes, there won't be a noticeable improvement, but with NASCAR, the bottleneck in a DX33 is the lack of processing power. I have a DX33, a friend has a DX4-100, we both have Cirrus Logic cards - I have to turn all the detail off in VGA mode to get 25 fps, he can run with everything on except grass and track texture and *still* get 25fps. He uses VGA for racing and switches to SVGA for pre-season testing where the lack of other opponents causes a major increase in the frame-rate. We also both run with the -f option, the digital sound is nice, but it slows down the game too much. : Why stay with the P5? Why not a P6? Not all of us have bottomless pockets. : bryon Hmmm, sounds familiar that name..... :-) DR J -- ______________________________________________________________________________ me90drj : "It's an old code sir, but it checks out. I was about to clear him." is94drj : "....5....4....3...Wait! What's that red light?...." ______________________________________________________________________________ ------======= <URL:http://http1.brunel.ac.uk:8080/~is94drj/> =======------

Quoted text (7 lines)

>Subject: Re: Minimum requirements for ICR, NASCAR, or F1GP >says... >> >>

BL>>Define 'fine' please? My dx4100Mhz sucks, i can play SVGA but it's >>pretty jerky, and I have 95% of details off. BL> Gee, is there any wonder. This chip still has only a 33mhz bus >speed. No matter how fast it is internally, the graphics just will not >get any faster. BL>>32 Megs of RAM, and a P150 when they come available. Also a 3D >>accelerator for Win95 and a new soundcard that has a proper S/N ratio >>(Turtlebeach Multisound?) BL> Why stay with the P5? Why not a P6? Because the P6 won't run Pentium software faster. It will, in fact, run slower. The P6 will only run software faster if its made specially for it. --- * TLX v4.10 * No job is so small it doesn't require all your tools --- * OLX 2.2 TD *

>Subject: Re: Minimum requirements for ICR, NASCAR, or F1GP NA>Well geez, for $6000 you can get an old Formula Vee, or for a third of that >you can get a competitive kart, and you can do some real racing. How would >you define those sort of frame rates and graphic details? Wishful thinking. :) NA>Seriously, though, you get what you pay for. I just have a 386DX-40 with

Quoted text (8 lines)

>8MB RAM and a 1 MB Trident clone video card, but that hasn't stopped me >from having a LOT of fun running ICR, NASCAR, and F1GP on it. So I don't >get to run SVGA on NASCAR, I only run 15 cars in ICR, and I don't get to >see all the little sponsor stickers on the cars I'm running against -- >I can still tune all 3 games and pick appropriate tracks to make them very >playable. The best thing I did was ignore people who said these games won't >work on my PC. It may not look anywhere near as realistic as on Tommi's >dream PC, but it's still a lot of fun.

NA>If "reality" is the ultimate goal, well, skip the "virtual" part... NA>(for a person buying a PC, I'd still recommend a mimimum 486DX2-66 w/8MB, >whether you want to play these games or not.. And the 386-25 mentioned in >the first post could well be too slow for these games. Your mileage >may vary) What I can't understand is how NASCAR (or IndyCar for that matter) could even come close to being playable on a 386. My other computer is a 486sx/25 with 4 megs RAM and it can't do smooth graphics running DOOM on low detail with the smallest screen window. I imagine I could try them myself...but I don't feel like spending the time. --- * TLX v4.10 * The Do-It-Yourself Borg kit. Some Assimilation required. --- * OLX 2.2 TD *

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That's funny... I seem to remember the minimum specification for this game ( as stated on the box ) as being a 286 pc. I also seem to remember running the game very happily on my 386 25DX for a number of years. Fraser