To benchmark with either the DEMO or the
released game, enter the following command line.
GP500 +benchmark +setup +nosound +uberzaph 3
The benchmark will do 3/4 of a lap of Mugello
using the number of bikes you have set in the realism window.
The +setup commnad allows you to pick the
graphics card and resolution you wish to benchmark
The +nosound turns off the soundcard. Leave
this out if you want to run the benchmark and see what effect of frame
rate the sound
card settings have.
The +uberzaph commdna is followed by a number
between 1 and 3.
1 means fastest graphic setting (16 bit, low
res bikes and track etc)
2 means normal graphic setting (16 bit, medium
res bikes, track etc)
3 means high quality graphics. (up to 24 bit if
your card suports it [16 bit for Voodoo 2 and 3], high res bikes, track
etc)
After the game starts in benchmark mode just
hit the escape key to bypass the intro screen. The game will then
automatically start
a race. After the benchmark has finished the
game will exit. If you look in the root directory of the game or demo
you will find a file
called Gp-stats. This has all the infor about
average frame rates, min and max fram rates, driver version etc.
For example;
1024x 768x16 QUAL 24bits 67.73/s (
41.50-139.27) (3612 frms) P/s: 0k/ 248k P/f: 0/ 3666 : Mugello,8bikes
COMPUTER : RTL
Vertigo D3D $Revision: 277 $ DLL REL PII/448mmx
Cache:4+4:16+16:512+512 128mb Vertigo Direct3D: "ASUS AGP-V3800U
SGRAM v2.25 beta2" "Direct3D HAL"
Some observations.
1) The benchmark will run at the max frame rate
possible. This means on fast cards the bikes are travelling in fast
forward!
2) The DEMO appears to be faster with the same
settings than the released game. It has earlier version of the Vertigo
drivers and if
you use these with the released version than
the frame rate will increase slightly. Since the newer drivers probably
fix a few bugs I
wouldn't really advise this!
3)The demo show the frame rate dynamically in
the top right corner. This would have been nice in the released version.
4)The number of bikes dramatically changes the
frame rate. (DUH!).
5) When benchmarking with the sound on I found
that selecting A3D for 3D dramatically improves the framerate for cards
that
support it!.
6) Turning Vsynch on or off, changing your anti
aliasing or refresh rates of your video card doesn't affect the
benchmarks.
Have fun. I have found the Benchmarks terrific
for fine tuning my various PCs.
------------------
Mark C. Dodd,
M.C.Dodd Computing Services Pty Ltd.
