Finally...My Turn!

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

What speed is your processor? I run SH4 on 3.0 Ghz p4 with 2 Gb RAM and a geforce 6200 256Mb card and setting set to medium. I do have no fog and other things turned off, but I get a good frame rate, even with taskforces.

Sorry, forgot that part. Mine is also a 3GB P4. And thanks, sober. I figured that was the problem from things I'd read on other threads, but wanted to be sure. Unfortunately, it'll have to wait awhile, as even a cheap card is out of my budget right now. But it's okay, I have other things to keep me occupied.

Oh, and another observation. I found the mod that removes the grainy effect from the Post-Processing Filters, and with PPF turned on it looks so much better, and a t a very small framerate drop, so I'll live with it. And the animated crews on AI ships are a great addition.

[rrmelend]

Steve, I understand your excitement. I remember seeing a preview of this game a couple years ago and then over the next several months forgot about it. All of a sudden one day I remembered and found out that it had been released for a couple months so I went out and bought it. Like you I suffered through crappy frame rates (way worse than yours) until about 2 months ago when I finally got a new computer (quad core, 3gigs of ram, 8800GT). It was worth the wait and it is a beauty to play.

[Slick Wilhelm]

Steve, I assume that your system uses an AGP bus, not PCI-E? If this is true, for a mere $200 you can make SH 4 look smooth as silk. Save up for an ATI Radeon 3850 AGP video card. That's all I did to my elderly AGP system(well ok, I also added a new 650W PS) and now she's running SH4 like a dream with all the eye candy turned on, and sliders at medium.

My point being, even though $200 is a lot of money, it sure beats $2000 to build a new system.

[Sailor Steve]

Thanks for the recommendations. I agree $200 is a trifle when compared with $2000 or even $1000, but when you said "mere" I had to laugh: it's taken me almost two years to finally have the $100 for a 2GB memory upgrade, and I thought I was lucky when I suddenly found $30 to finally have a real sound card.:rotfl:

But who knows? A decent job might be right around the corner, and until then I'll keep playing with mods and things, if not actually running a real career.

[edit] This is strange, but only in that I don't understand what I'm looking at. What I'm looking at is the precise specs, using Sandra. The video device type is listed as "PCI\VEN etc", but the adapter type is "ATI etc AGP".

Same with the sound card: "PCI\VEN etc"

The "etc" in both cases is a string of numbers and letters, referring to the model and type. I can give you all the numbers, but I'm just wondering what the references mean.

[Zantham]

One possibility from SANDRA faq:

http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html...us&langx=en&a=

Q: Sandra detects my AGP Video adapter as PCI!
A: If the adapter does not report any AGP capabilities (not even a header block) then it is really a PCI design adapted to work with AGP - probably an early one. AGP adapters support advanced data transfer modes and texturing which yours lacks. Technically it is not an AGP adapter. Just because it uses the AGP connector does not mean much. It has to be designed specifically for AGP if any improvements are to be realised.

Another possibility is the AGP runs off the PCI controller, so while the card is AGP, it still detects through the PCI bus.

And a 3rd possibility is your chipset drivers may be installed incorrectly.

[Sailor Steve]

Well, that certainly makes sense. I don't like it, but it makes sense.