Power Color Radeon 9600 PRO

[Cheetax]

Hey all,
I have a different pc rig and wanted to ask a few questions about it.  I am running an Asus P4P800 Mobo, Pentium 4 2.8 ghz/ 800 mhz fsb, 1 gig of PC3200 dual channel ddr ram, and an 8x AGP Powercolor-Radeon 9600 PRO w/ 256 mb of video mem.. I am also connected over a cable internet connection.  I get excellent frame rates with most game settings at the medium resolution (avg. 70-90 fps).  The highest frame rate posted is 99 fps.  

I love playing at this level but some friends said, with this rig, I should be able to run this game with settings set at their highest resolution and still get good frame rates.  When I crank-up the details/resolution my frame rates drop to sub 20 fps.  I do not have the ATI Catalyst Driver loaded.  I am using the latest video drivers for the card, I just do not use the catalyst interface.  I use the "right click" on the desk-top, then "properties" to change any video resolution/color settings. My resolution is set to 1024 x 768 with 32 bit color.  

I am running XP Pro with some of the system services disabled that are suggested in the Tech. Info Forum: i.e. IBTS and Automatic Updates are disabled.  I have also disabled page filing.  

Is this rig capable of running Aces High at high resolution settings with good frame rates?  What kind of performance should I expect?  What should I change to improve performance?  Would loading the ATI cat. interface help my frame rates?  Any other suggestions for possible tweaks would be appreciated. Also, what would be a good middle-of-the-road flight stick that has little or no issues with Aces High and Windows XP?

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to answer any part of this question?  Thanks.

[Krusty]

I don't have definite answers. This post is typed with the idea that you don't have any driver conflicts or software problems.

Make sure FSAA is off on the card. Apparently that can use 4x the memory, or 4x the GPU cycles, or something.

HTC has said that if you run 1024 textures, and preload all textures into memory, you will need 1.25GB of RAM. You can either have high resolution (1024 texture size) or better details. I'd suggest staying in 512 texture size. I recently upgraded my RAM and went from 256 to 512 and it makes a big difference.

One thing that will absolutely kill your FPS is the ground range detail slider inside AH video setup. If you max it out (to the left of the slider bar) you will lose almost all of your FPS. Move it over a bit to the rigth, and again, and again, until you get semi-decent FPS. That probably is the main cause of your FPS loss. (<-- that's a wild guess, based on what kills my FPS when I tinker with my settings)

[Skuzzy]

FYI: That 1.2GB is getting ready to go up with the next skin batch release.

For your configuration, do not use 1024 texture sizes.  Use 512, or less.
Do not preload skins into memory.  
Do not preload textures to video RAM.

If you want to run with anti-aliasing, then use 256 size textures.

[Flit]

I guess I'd better order another gig of RAM !