For those of you wondering about this graphics card and the version of
Nascar Racing that comes with it, here's my take on it:
First of all, it comes with Nascar ver. 1.2, but it is for Windows. If
you are still running Win 3.1 it comes with the 32 bit DLL's you need to make
it work. Win 95 has that stuff already built in. It requires 16 bit color.
I've run it 640X480 (full screen), 800X600, and 1024X768 and didn't notice much
degradation in speed. I ran with everything in AUTO except paintjobs and skids,
and with 38 cars on the track. The frame rate settings were default at 13 &
27. The track texture was the only thing that would flip on and off. I'm
using a P120 with 32mb. This is a major improvement over what I could have on
in the DOS version.
The downside to the game is that everything is real blurry. You can't
read the logos on the cars. They show up as blotches of color. I figured that
maybe Papyrus threw in a generic carset, so I added one that I was using in the
DOS version. It looked the same way. I was really expecting to see some real
sharp detail with this version, but was really disappointed to see that it is
even worse than the DOS game. Track scenery was the same way.
Another major problem was that the digital joystick port didn't work with
the T2. I could get it to work with my Thrustmaster FCS. (both DOS and Win 95)
I have E-Mail into Diamond Tech Support on this one and am waiting to see if
they have a solution. I couldn't even use my old game port in Win as it
appears that the Edge game port will interfere with it even if you have it
disabled.
The last thing I noticed is that the sound in the Win game is really bad.
I couldn't get the music to play and the race car sound has a real loud hiss
behind it. I know that it's there in the DOS game, but it isn't as apparent.
As far as the DOS versions of Nascar and ICR2, it provided some
improvement over my old graphics card, but without the games being optimized
for it, I didn't expect much.
A word of caution. The card only comes with drivers for Windows. Dos
drivers are for the game port and MPU-401 portions. There are no drivers for
NT or OS/2.
