I thought I'd share a bit of information with all of you. Many of you will probably already know this, but for those of you who don't it may help you.
Often we see threads in this forum dealing with framerates on someone's computer being much lower than the framerates on another person's computer that is nearly identical. Now obviously there are a number of factors at work here that may account for the differences. (Examples: Dx version, Pentium or AMD, RAM, etc.) There is one factor, however, that is often overlooked. This is your monitors refresh rate. (Yes, your monitor can GREATLY affect your framerate.) I'll see if I can't explain why to you.
Most of us, whether you know it or not, will be playing AH with what is known as VSync (Vertical Sync to monitor) enabled. This is the default setting for DX. (More about this setting later...) What this means is your video card is syncronized with your monitor. This means that your frame rate, at max, will be the rate at which your monitor is currently refreshing. Now, lets say you have a cheap/old 15" monitor that you are running at 800 x 600 resolution. Depending on how good of a monitor it is your refresh rate will likely fall within the ranges of 60 to 85 Hz. For the sake of ease of understanding, lets say your monitor is refreshing at 60 Hz. (It's highly likely noticible flicker would be occuring.) Since your video card is synced with your monitor you will NEVER exceed a framerate of 60 fps in AH. This is where the story gets a little interesting. What happens if your computer cannot maintain a frame rate of 60 Hz continuously? What happens is that your maximum refresh rate at that given time will be a factor of your monitor's refresh rate. (1/3, 1/2, 2/3, etc) In another thread I stated that my computer maxes out at 57 fps when in internal view in the c205. Now, my monitor (1024 x 768 res 32 bit) refreshes at 85 Hz. Try this: 85 x (2/3) = 56.666667. Interesting isn't it.
When flying the p38 my frame rate will often drop to 43 fps. This isn't surprising at all, 85 x 1/2 is equal to 42.5 fps. Now back to the case of a 60 Hz refresh rate. Again lets put me in a c205 in internal view. If again my computer will not handle the 60 fps, it will drop to 2/3 or even 1/2 of that. This means that even on a PIII 600 with a Viper 770 card you may only see 40 fps at a max when flying a plane, when I using a 466 Celeron with the same video card will see 57 fps.
With some monitors you may be able to increase the refresh rate get better performance in AH. Try this: right click desktop, properties, settings tab, advanced button, adapter tab. On the refresh rate pull down menu try changing this setting and seeing if you can't get a higher refresh rate. (Optimal and Adapter default may be all you have available on a Plug-and-Play monitor. If this is the case you might try finding drivers for your monitor.)
Now above I mentioned VSync settings. It is possible to turn this off. By doing so you are allowing your video card to render frames as fast as it can. Unfortunately this is generally a bad idea when playing AH. Many people report "rubber bullets", gunnery troubles, and bombing misses when doing so. You must also remember that your montitor is not able to refresh fast enough to display all these frames. This means that not all of the screen is being updated with each refresh cycle. (VSync off is normally used when performing benchmarks. By doing so you eliminate the refresh rate as a factor when testing the performance of a system.) The location of where to disable VSync also differ with each type of video card. Generally though you will find it in a utility program for your video card. You can try playing AH with VSync off, but don't be surprised if you have any of the above symptoms.
Hopefully this will help a few people out.
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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS
