HELP, TERRIBLE FRAME RATES

[wigmn]

First thank you SPATULA and CHEETAH6 for straightening out the joystick problem, now on to bigger and more confusing issues.  I started flying AH 2 mths ago and had very good frame rates, however for the past 3 wks my frame rates have gotten so terrible I can no longer hit the back side of a barn be it BH's or other aircraft.  I know enough about puters to get myself and other people in alot of trouble so here is my system components.  233mhz pent 2, 96 of ram, on board graphics AKA(no graphics card). Running win98, ATT cable hook up. (Note)This is what I was running when I had great frame rates and I have made no changes to my system before or after all of this started, it just all of a sudden went to pot one day. Well thats about all of the complaing i've got, any information as usual would be appreciated, take care and see you in flight, with bad frame rates of course.  Sam Pate AKA(wingmn)

[flakbait]

Get a dedicated graphics card. Aces High needs one to really scream.

First things first; what resolution are you running AH at? If you're going for 1280x1024 drop down to 1024x768 and run in 16 bit color. I've got a computer slower than yours and as long as I stay away from burning fields and carriers I'm fine. I average 21 frames a second using an old pentium 200!

Next hit Control-Alt-Delete ONCE to find out if you've got any programs running in the background. If you see anymore than 4 or 5 you need to get rid of some. As a note, never run Norton Auto-Protect, Anti-Freeze, or Crash. I mean NEVER! They're nothing but trouble so stay away. I also suggest you get Tweak All ( www.abtons-shed.com  ) so you can see what's running when you start your computer. It also comes in handy to free up some memory.

Don't run an MP3 player in the background; they chew up too much power. CD players are Ok since I do it all the time without any problems.

Your real source of trouble will come from not having a dedicated graphics card. GeForce cards are pretty good, so are 3DFX cards. You'll have to ask around about cards though; I'm far from an expert on them.

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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta 6's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb
 

[wigmn]

Hi Flakbait, my current settings for my screen were 600x450 with 32 bit of color, and only 2 programs running. Tried decreasing color down to 16 bit, but of course no good. I will get one of the suggested graphic cards tomorrow and give it a whirl, again thank you for the speedy reply to the needy take care. Wingmn

[Spatula]

I agree with Flak, get a new video card!

If you got a built in graphics card, then you may not have an AGP slot, which will severly limit what cards you can use in it.
If you have an AGP slot, i recomend a TNT-2 Ultra (or non-ultra, but NOT an M64) as anything more powerfull would be wasted on your slow CPU.

If you aint got an AGP slot, then you still can get PCI TNT-2 cards (but they not as good). Orr you could just get a Voodoo 3 PCI or something.

Also:
- make sure no other apps are running in the background! This means get rid of as many icons in the task bar (next to clock). And also check by CNTRL-ALT-DEL to see whats running.

- Use 16 bit color, it should be alot faster.

- 800*600 or lower res, as anythin higher will bring you to a crawl.

- Check to see you have disk-drive light going a fair bit while you are playin Aces High. If it is you may need to buy more memory.

- Check that you have not used up more than 80% of your drive capacity, as HDs become very innefficient if you use up more than this. The more free space it has the faster it performs.

- Defragment your drive, windows will probably say it dont need to be done, but do it anyway.

- Manually set the size of your swap partition to about 96 megs as a min and a max. control panel->system->performance->virual memory. Click "Let me specify..." and put in the min and max values. If you have 2 or more physical hard-drives put your swap space on the D: or where ever windows is not installed.

- Change the role of your computer to a "Network server". control panel->system->performance->File System.  This allows more file handles to be open at any given time.

Hopefully this should squeeze a bit more out of ya system.

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S p a t u l a

 

=357th Pony Express=

[This message has been edited by Spatula (edited 02-09-2001).]

[StSanta]

Get newer drivers.

Initially my fps was 7-9 with 1.05, installed new drivers and it went back up to 35.

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Baron Claus "StSanta" Von Ribbentroppen
9./JG 54 "Grünherz"
"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up space"