[Sailor Steve]

I was scrounging through my storage unit yesterday, looking for movies I wanted to watch again, and I stumbled upon my copy of...SH4! I bought it last year, just a few weeks after the release, but couldn't play it because I was homeless at the time. I've been in my own place for four months now, but couldn't find my SH4, and since I've been busy with SH3 stuff I didn't worry about it.

Now I have it installed, and patched to 1.4, and I'm having the oft-reported lousy frame-rates. Since I just recently upgraded my PC to 2GB of RAM, I'm assuming the problem is my ATI 9600 video card, which is 128MB. Even with everything - and I mean everything - turned off the best FPS I'm getting is 35 inside and 20 outside. With any effects enabled I'm looking at 15 and 9.

I've searched the forums and read several threads, and so far it looks like I'm stuck playing at the minimal levels until I can either get a better card or a whole new computer. I'm currently running a 3GB P4, and you've seen the rest, so I won't go into it. Even a moderate improvement would be nice; I won't need too much since I'm ultimately looking at 100% anyway. I would like to look at all the pretties once in awhile, though, and I'd like the ships to look the best possible. Just wondering what my options are, especially since I long ago downloaded most of the available mods and anxious to start experimenting.

Oh, and first impressions: While I like the SH3 interface, the new one's not so bad. I hate the voices, but that's what SH1, SH2 and Pacific Aces sound files are for. It will be awhile before I really understand what's what, but at least it's a start.