Help With Graphics Please
 

Will doubling my current RAM from 1 to 2GB more or less guarantee me an improvement in frame rate?

At the moment I'm getting between 15 and 30 FPS, the 15 being maybe on the bridge leaving port (light harbour traffic enabled) and the 30 looking at a ship through the scope.

It's definately playable but you can tell it's struggling.

I can't up my video card anymore because I have an old PCI bus.

My system specs are in my signature, and anyone wants more technical info I can post that.

Thanks for any help.

Well your basically screwed..............:rotfl:
Just kidding.

its pretty close to my set up
but I have a 2.4 chip and a
better card.

I dont have any trouble running
upper end graphics at all
try maybe shutting off what
background programs you can
when playing and set graphics
settings down to 75 or 50 %
and see if it smooths it out.

Im not any kind of hardware expert
so further help will have to come from
elsewhere but I hope it helps a bit.
M

[edit]Normally when I do develop those symptoms
my heat exchanger needs cleaning out.
also I do have 2gb ram so there may be an improvement
rams pretty cheap and it will help with it for sure
but my not solve all issues

Don't joke :doh: my heart sank when I read the first line! LOL Although you are certainly correct to a degree anyway, because my computer is bit dated now.

I've tried shutting off my anti-virus stuff, dropping the graphic effects in the game menu and giving the game a higher priority in the task manager; none of that seems to make much difference.

EDIT - ah, OK. I priced 2gb at £50. I'm not sure about heat exchangers but I'll check it out. Thanks mate.

I would take the time to look at the heat exchanger then
are there any smokers in your house?
M

Stuff like reduced harbour traffic will help too as the game has less to render

No, no smokers; just me and the dog (maybe I should check his pockets, see if he's a secret smoker:hmm: )

a word of caution on that one of the best tips I ever got in two and half
million kilometres in the taxi is

"Never Pet a burning dog"

:|\\

One more thing. your computer was current when the
game engine was made. dont lose hope.

Hello Mate, I had the same problem 5200 videocart and 1 gig ram after updated to 2 gig every thing goes fine .
I hope this helped ?

Dutchie-one :up:

PS. no AGP bus ?

No, no AGP, just PCI. Thanks for the re-assurance on the RAM.

One thing I've just decided to try first is running Rivatuner to see if that makes any difference.

I'll let you know.

Riva tuner made no difference. Tried to unblock some pipelines but there wasn't any, forcing the driver, and over clocking by about 20% made no difference either. :hmm:

New RAM it is then.

I have your answer for you.

Upgrading to one gig of ram will help, but not dramatically solve your problem. Your problem is with the graphics card, both in the low bus of the PCI regular slot and of the GPU...graphics processing units. Game speed is dependent upon three factors, sometimes four: processor speed, RAM speed, hard drive speed (RPM), and FSB. If one of these is slow, it can pull down game performance. If one or two are slow, then game performance really suffers. The best thing that you could do would be to upgrade to a better GPU graphics card, but finding a newer one that will run in a regular PCI slot is going to be difficult. I suggest save up and go for the totally new upgrade of Motherboard, RAM, processor, and Graphics card, but this is not the answer for everyone...or their wallets. Mine included. If you want to look for a new graphics card, try www.newegg.com

For what it's worth, I have occasional "slide shows" while playing SH3. I'm running an AMD XP2800, 1.5GB of DDR, and an ATI 9800 Pro AIW card, so I'm falling steadily off the capability end of the scale. Still, most of time, SH3 is quite playable with reasonably smooth frame rates. For awhile I was getting an occasional crash-computer-reboot thing, so I tried the usual memtest diagnostic and the only thing that turned up was an acknowledged anomoly related to AMD processors (according to the memtest forum). I was at a loss as to anything to be done until my daughter mentioned an idea. When frame rates get choppy, I hit the Windows key (same effect as Alt-Tab) to drop SH3 to the task bar. I let it set maybe 5-10 seconds, then click on the SH3/GWX to re-expand it, and it seems to settle out and run smoothly. Since I've been doing this, I haven't had a single crash-to-forced-reboot event. I'd thought about buying a more powerful video card like the XP1950 Pro, but I think I'd be better off waiting until I can do a full system upgrade rather than trying a band aid approach that will leave me bottlenecked by the CPU. Oh, in case you haven't tried it yet, run dxdiag and set the Sound Acceleration slider down to either the lowest (unaccelerated) or the one just above it (Basic acceleration). It's surprising that sound settings can have such a profound effect on video performance, but it's true.

My system is in my signature. I think the Pentium 4 is ok, so is the 2.8ghz, definately need to up the RAM to 2gb. The card - I'm afraid I'm stuck with it. I'd rather get a new system than spend serious money on this one. I've only had the card a few months; it was the best compromise I could make. I needed Directx 9c; in addition I have only a PCI fit on the board. So that was the best I could do.

That's why I was trying to get something extra out the card before buying RAM. But it looks like I'll need to.

Thanks for your reply mate.

I will definately try the dxdiag and let you know how I get on. Thanks mate.

First things First :D

I have 2.4
I have 6200Turbo
I have just taken my rig from 1GB up to 3GB :cool:

The effect is amazing/confusing at same time (depends on game)

I play IL 2 which is now running on "Perfect" :cool: :cool: :cool:
I play SH3 GWX which is now running extremely well with a little tearing here and there, but overall the performance with Mods like Racerboys SH4 for SH3 running are excellent.

I believe I have a gaphics driver problem.Its set on latest driver 163.?? and according to past posts in here 94.?? to 97.?? are SH3's peak

Hope this helps

maddysad

I've seen a number of people mention IL 2. Is it any good?

It think that did make a slight difference - I say 'think' because if it did it was negligible. Worth a try though.

You and I have similar GPU, but I have mine on a PCI-X16 interface, which increases the badnwith. Your processor is more than fine.

I'm very dissappointed today. Got my 2GB upgrade fitted and there's no improvement at all on the frame rate. I know it's an entry level graphic card but it's the best available with a PCI fit and surely to god it should be doing better.

Leaving harbour, on the bridge looking aft it's achieving 12 fps!?!?! (light harbour traffic enabled) The rest of the rates around 20-30 except explosions/fires in the periscope view which is very laggy, the same as leaving harbour.

I've experimented with the v-sync and turned particles down to 40%. As well as that I've individually selected the 3D settings in the NVidia control panel to performance levels, as opposed to just setting performance priority or accepting the default NVidia settings for SH3 (I had tried those previously anyway). I've also tried things mentioned above like adjusting the sound accelerater, checking for locked pipes, giving the game priority in the task manager. I even checked the PC was showing all the memory installed properly in case it wasn't fitted correctly.

Where do I go from here? I'm tearing my hair out! I'd hoped to get a big enough improvement to try GWX 2.0 but I just don't see any point now :cry:

Looking for help please people :ping:

P.S. someone mentioned older drivers being at the 'peak' for running SH3 - could anybody shed more light on that and point me in the right direction finding them? Had a little look but no joy.