help with 3d settings?

[DeepIron]

My resolution is set at 1440x900

Ah, I noticed I didn't mention it before... I use the 1024 settings... Higher than that and I get headaches... Astigmatism all my life...

BTW, what is your monitor refresh rate? Windows will automaticaly try and set 60Hz... I have dual 21" Westinghouse units and run at 70Hz... makes a big difference...

I found I gain a fps or two using the 174.xx driver as well. As for the SLI issues, I'm not sure the 76xx series is really that SLI compliant... I think one needs to get to the 88xx series to see a real difference.

Did you check out the tweak guide link? Something to check in your BIOS is the AGP apeture size and AGP speed. Mine are 128M and 8x respectively.

Right, my 40-45fps is external.

Currently I'm looking at the shader code support in SH4 and seeing if I can optimize that pipeline a bit. I'm not real sure the shader code is as good as it can be but with any luck, I might be able to squeeze out a few more fps...

I'm glad to hear your having success!

[M. Sarsfield]

I did read through some of the tweak link information. It was a lot to digest.

I will double check the settings in BIOS, but I'm pretty sure that I set the memory size to 256MB. My cards are PCI-e 16x, btw.

You're probably right that the 7600 doesn't see much improvement in SLI mode, but nVidia does seem to be making strides in driver performance. It sounds like it's as much of a software issue as it is a hardware issue.

When I installed the beta driver, it automatically set up my windows refresh rate at 59 Hz, instead of 60 Hz (the only two choices that I'm given for my 19" wide screen monitor at 1400 x 900). I'm sure that I'd get a performance boost at 1024x768. When I reinstalled the game, it had that as the default resolution and I noticed that the background movies were moving very quickly. I debated leaving it at default or trying something between default and 1440x900, but you get some distorted shapes with a wide screen monitor at oddball settings.

One nice new feature of the beta driver is that you can tell the main CPU how many frames to pre-render before it sends them to the GPU(s). I was playing with the settings and I did see the fps make some improvements.

Let us know what improvements you make with the shaders. They would probably have to be incorporated into the environmental mods.

[kiwi_2005]

Have you tried window mode 1280x800 wide screen option, not much difference in framerates in some cases i get better framerates in window mode than full screen depending on what i turn on/off in the graphic settings. But the reason for window mode is it kinda pushes all the graphics in place where the detail is exaggerated where it looks like im running a 8 series card on a super-rig.

[M. Sarsfield]

I'll have to give that a try. I never thought about windowed mode to fix the distortions on the lower resolutions.

My biggest impact to the performance is when I'm in fog using PE2, but everyone seems to be affected by that. On the bridge in fog I'm getting 17 - 20 fps. In other conditions it ranges from 30 - 40.

The new install and beta driver seem to be helping a lot.

[DeepIron]

Hey M.S -- What version of the nVidia control panel are you running? Mine is 1.5.700.44 ...

[M. Sarsfield]

I'll have to check when I get home. It's whatever came with the 175 beta driver from nVidia's website. They even have recommended settings based on your system and the descriptions are better, too, giving you more information to choose the best settings.

[DeepIron]

Originally Posted by M. Sarsfield

I'll have to check when I get home. It's whatever came with the 175 beta driver from nVidia's website. They even have recommended settings based on your system and the descriptions are better, too, giving you more information to choose the best settings.

Thanks... I'm curious because I haven't found the GPU frame rendering option in my version...