Particle effects cause drain on FPS?

[Ack-Ack]

My frame rates go to hell whenever I'm in a furball with numerous smoking planes or when I'm over a field that's smoking heavily or in the clouds.  This started a while ago when the new particle effects were introduced.  My frame rates will drop from the 60s all the way down to below 15fps or lower, especially if it's a furball over a contested smoking base.  Pretty much renders the game unplayable unless I milk-run or look for solo planes on the extreme fringes of the furball.  My frame rates also plunge when attacking bombers when they're in formation.

Does anyone else experience loss of fps in situations I described above?

My system specs:
Win98SE
950Mhz Duron over-clocked to 1.2Ghz
384megs RAM
Geforce 3 Ti 200 128meg (running on the 41.09 drivers and the problem exists no matter what driver version I use)
DirectX 9.0 (problem also existed with DirectX versions 8.1, 8.1b and 8.2)
SB Audigy II

I never had a problem with frame rates until the particle effects were introduced and Aces High is the only game that I have any problems with frame rate wise.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Ack-Ack
479th FG - Riddle's Raiders

[Shane]

Originally posted by Ack-Ack
My frame rates go to hell whenever I'm in a furball with numerous smoking planes or when I'm over a field that's smoking heavily or in the clouds.  My frame rates will drop from the 60s all the way down to below 15fps or lower, especially if it's a furball over a contested smoking base.  Pretty much renders the game unplayable unless I milk-run or look for solo planes on the extreme fringes of the furball.  My frame rates also plunge when attacking bombers when they're in formation.

Does anyone else experience loss of fps in situations I described above?

My system specs:
Win98SE
950Mhz Duron over-clocked to 1.2Ghz
384megs RAM
Geforce 3 Ti 200 128meg (running on the 41.09 drivers and the problem exists no matter what driver version I use)
DirectX 9.0 (problem also existed with DirectX versions 8.1, 8.1b and 8.2)
SB Audigy II

< snicker > now you know why you're always finding me alone and looking forwards to shooting you down.  

all of those happen to me, except i'll get even lower fps. it's occurred all the way across the board with various dx versions. the worst is a smokey buff (or fighter, but buffs worse) over a contested smoking base.

all i can really suggest is a better vid car as the rest of your system has the horsepower to get at least more than you are now in those situations.

cave in, you know you're lusting for an ATI.

< hopes to order a new system today depending on results of a meeting shortly. >

[akak]

Originally posted by Shane


all i can really suggest is a better vid car as the rest of your system has the horsepower to get at least more than you are now in those situations.

cave in, you know you're lusting for an ATI.

I was holding out until the new GeforceFX cards came out but with recent news from Nvidia about stopping production of the FX cards to concentrate on the NV35 graphic chipset, I might have to rethink my plan.  Only thing is that I hate ATI cards, always have.  They make great professional level products but when it comes to the consumer graphics products, they have been seriously lacking, mainly in the driver department.  It has always been that way with ATI and probably always will. So I might just be forced to stick with the GF3 card (it still runs every game I have, except AH, great with all the bells and whistles cranked up to full) or look on Pricewatch to see if I can find a GF4 Ti card for a steal.


Ack-Ack

[Skuzzy]

Yep, I would suggest you stay with NVidia cards.  The NV35 looks like it might (big *might*) be available in late July,  early August.

NVidia is still going to ship the FX, but not the Ultra.  I wonder why though, as fog is broken in the NV30 chip.  They could emulate it in software, but then the card would be slower than a GF4 Ti4600 card.

[buzkill]

ACK-ACk....do you cook breakfast on that duron?
and your not the only one who sees fr bottom out in clouds.....think it's a memory issue

[Griego]

AkAk my framerates went up when I upgraded my processor from 1.3ghz duron to a 1800xp athlon.

 IMHO I would upgrade the cpu at this time if your going to wait on the FX cards. Since AH is more processor dependent at the moment.  According to Skuzzy and he should know.

 I've also noticed that overclocking the cpu gives you more framerates than overclocking the video card.

 Overclocked my cpu from 1533mhz to 1682mhz and framerates went up like 10fps.

 when I overclocked my GF4 ti 4200 from the stock which is 250/500 to 300/600 i got lots of anomalies. I rest it down to 275/550 things work fine but with no real noticable difference than stock. If you plan on getting a GF 4 card the ti 4200 64ddr is the card to get IMHO.  I had bought the GF 4 ti 4200 128mb and took it back wasn't much of improvement over the GF 2 pro 64mb ddr ram card I had. I don't know if it was just a bad card but I tried 2 of them with no success.  I went to the GF 4 ti 4200 64mb ddr card and had some improvement but not as much as I expected.  

 JMHO.

[Wrayth]

While I admit that ATI has had several issues with drivers in the past, recently they have been stellar.  When the 9700 came out the drivers were fine, they were even good with the demo boards they sent to reveiwers.

As for GPU power, ATI has taken the lead in GPU performance, in most benchmarks, the GeForceFX only barely beats the 9700 pro and the Geforce runs at 400 - 500 mhz, whereas the 9700 runs in the 300s somewhere, don't have exact numbers on me.

ATI is about to release another card, code R350, the 9700 was R300.  It will have a clock rate closer to the GeForce and so it will probably beat it.  So Nvidia will be playing catch up again.

If you want a new card, I'd wait a few months, prices should fall somewhat by spring.

I'd be willing to bet that's why they aren't going to push out the FX very much.

All that said.  AH is more CPU than GPU so you will be much better off upping your CPU and/or MB & RAM buss speed.

Personally I have a Radeon 8500 and a Duron 1100 and I have no problems anywhere.

[krazyhorse]

wow  and i use to squeak when mine went into the low 20's fpsduring smoke and heavy furball stuff's (notice  proper spelling and grammerization) any how  pent 4 2.0 120 hd 512 ddr ram   but now  gf 4 ti 4200  ah what a relief , maxing at 87 but min fps is now  ... drum roll please......... 67fps minimum,  "dancing around singing happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy, yeehaw  smack my hiney and call it shiney:),, cuz im a happy boy ,happy boy,aint it great when things are going your wayyy heyy heyy  hubba hubba  hubba hubbba happy boy

[Eagler]

when a pilot is as good as ack-ack and shane there should be a 20fps limit for them anyway