Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: 2bull on January 28, 2002, 06:31:51 AM
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Running a 1.5 gig,p4, 512 meg ram 64 meg rivaTNT vid card, and only getting a frame rate of 1 or 2 max when a plane gets on my 6 in buff within 500, frame rate drops as plane gets closer, in flight, max nobody else around fr is maybe 35,
This is a new system, with windows xp, and seems to have some major issues.. can't seem to get the dam thing to crank up with less than 22 apps running. and when i try and control alt del em out, it restarts in the new xp "safe mode" ... other than a 50 cal round into the middle of it, any suggestions? have installed latest vid card drivers, no help, one would think it would give a better performance than the 700 mhz 256 meg ram, vodoo 5 card system its replaceing, but so far, no luck....
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Well it looks like you got screwed pretty good with that computer deal.
1.5Ghz P4 is not much faster than 1Ghz PIII (I suppose you have also a motherboard that uses SDRAM instead of rambust.. lol)
However your biggest problem is the TNT card which is simply outdated. No new system should come without a Geforce3 these days IMO.
The first thing you should do is to take the whole computer back in the shop and tell them to stuff it where it belongs. They ripped you off with 2 years old technology that they wanted to get rid of.
If you can't do that, at least put that old Voodoo5500 in the new computer (although you need to get rid of XP probably then which is not a bad thing anyway) find latest drivers for all parts and install them.
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put your old hardrive (I assume it's running Win98) and video card in your new computer and check ur framerates
gl
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The very first things you should try are:
1. NVidia Detonator drivers. http://www.otakupc.com/downloads/nvidia_drivers.shtml Try the 21.81's (WHQL) versions and see what happens.
2. Try setting your AGP Apeture size in BIOS to 128. Although it shouldn't matter to a TNT card much... who knows. If it doesn't do anything, set it back to 64 or whatever it was before.
Now, that TNT isn't that great a card, but it should play the game. What size monitor do you have, what video resolution and color depth are you trying to run?
You should really look at swapping that TNT out for a GeForce 3 Ti 200 if you can afford it, or if not something like a GeForce 2 TI or MX... any of those will be better than the card you have.
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yep, on the sdram, http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/popup/specs_rx550.pdf
400.mhz bus, 256 133mhz sdram < upgraded to 512, >cording to specs, 4x agp nvida tnt2 m64, vid card, will try the vodoo card in it and will see if i can figure out how to plug in old hard drive.
thanks for help
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Man I hate when the computer dealers pull these stunts on people. They install the worst possible combination of parts available today trusting that the low price and lack of expertise on the customer will get their product sold.
And too often it does - leaving the customer with the realization that he / she has to upgrade 90% of the system if he/she wants to have an up-to-date performance.
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How much did you pay for that system without monitor?
$750 or more?
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Your major problem is the vid card, in your first post you referred to it as an Nvidia TNT which is old sure but would have given you better frame rates than you report.
However in a later post you refer to the Card as an Nvidia TNT M64.
That is a totaly different animal, it is the worst possible video card that Nvidia produced. It was specifically created as a bargain bin crippled version of the TNT mainly for cheapo system builders who dont really give a rats bellybutton what the performance is gonna be like.
Virtually any other video card will kick its butt.
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I'd strongly suggest you return the whole computer and kick the dealers butt if they promised ANY gaming performance from that box.
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If you want any level of gaming performance from that system you are going to have to get rid of the TNT2 M64 video card and switch it for something else. I'd suggest a GF2 Titanium or Gf 3 Titanium 200.
I need to warn you that if that system happens to be a Gateway or some other name brands you may not have an AGP expansion slot! I really hope this is not the case.
The fact that it's a SDRAM rather than RDRAM or even DDR SDRAM board also hurts performance significantly, though a video card upgrade will at least allow decent framerates.
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Punt, need to find this string when i get home, Low frame rates here as well
BeachS
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MRSID, you said only new boxes should come w/ geforce3, I just bought a 1.6 P4 256 40GB cable modem w/ geforce2, am I bumming now?
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Compared to your CPU speed, yes. The Geforce2 is too low-end for that system.
However with that combination you'll play most modern games ok so its not a disaster.
Just out of curiosity: did you also get a P4 with a sdram motherboard?
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Thanks MrSid, here is what I have:
Dimension 4300, Pentium 4 Processor at 1.6Ghz,
256MB SDRAM
Video Card: 64MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX Graphics Card with TV-Out
40GB,ATA-100,7200 RPM,Hard Drive (340-3093)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition,English (420-3079)
Operating System:
10/100 PCI Fast Ethernet NIC Factory Install (430-5353)
I spoke to HTC folks and they assured me GeForce2 is good for at least next two upgrades. I actually emailed them the specs, and they said it would be a very nice system and I should have no problems. Since they have nothing to gain, I believe in them
As for your SDRAM question, I have no joy on that answer.
IN any event, I told the Dell folks I would be gaming primarily, so if they screwed me, I'm gonna be pretty upset at Dell...
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Hmm, that's a geforce2 MX not a geforce2.
That is definately too slow card for the system, I thought you had a geforce 2 Pro or something. You got screwed there..
Pentium4 SDRAM boards should not be sold for gaming use so yes, Dell screwed you.
Windows XP home should not be sold to anyone, you got screwed there also..
I suggest you give Dell some feedback. That sdram motherboard is going to eat a good slice away out of the potential computing speed of your P4 processor. It was designed to use RDRam with is about 4 times faster than normal sdram.
Geforce2 MX is as fast as the original geforce that came to market 2 years ago, it's outdated for 1 year now. However since aces high has low hardware demands it might give you around 60 fps, less than 20 in heavy smoke. A geforce3 Ti200 will outperform geforce2 mx in all applications by at least 3x speed (even 5-6x in Dx8 applications) and costs only about double from the mx. I'd get that one - or radeon8500 which starts to have drivers now.
Windows XP home is a mutilated version of the Pro, it has huge security flaws like IIS preinstalled, poor gaming compatability (problems with hardware like joysticks) etc etc.
Of course your first mistake was to buy an Intel board if you wanted to get a cheap computer.
If you must stick with Intel, you should have bought P4 1.6+ with an RDRam motherboard, 256+ rdram, win98se for gaming although I'd suggest w2k which I use. XP at the moment will bring you more trouble than benefits, it's still too young a release.
If you have any chance to return that computer and do the changes above I'd strongly suggest that. Your Dell was not optimized for any use imaginable. For gaming it has too low-end parts. For office use it has a graphics card which is infamous for its poor 2d quality and fuzzy high-resolution picture..
So your computer is good for nothing basically. Sorry to say this but its true.
It will probably beat your old computer in terms of performance, but I can assure you that the computer I built myself from VIA parts, geforce3 ti200, ddr ram etc.. will outperform your new computer with similar price here and back. Another consumer has got Dell'd it seems.
Oh, and if you're going to stick with the XP home you need to download, install and run this (http://users.kymp.net/cable130/nvreffix-setup.exe) if you want to have more than 60hz refresh rate in games (trust me, you do.)
Run it with the option 'set all resolutions to 85hz or closest' and then check that your desktop is set to 85hz refresh.
With a geforce2 mx I don't suggest using anything over 1024x768x32 resolutions, it's picture gets fuzzy at higher resolutions.
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I'll give them a call and get on their case...thanks
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Well, I think I may return this....I paid about 1350 for it, so what do you suggest I get for the same price, less, not more...
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Did that price include the monitor?
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Example (pricewatch.com)
Epox EP-8KHA+, Via KT 266A chipset ultra ATA100 AMD Socket A ATX Form Factor. Retail Box w 1yr warranty. - with cpu - ATHLON XP 1900+,1.6GHZ 266MHz AX1900DMT3C,W/VOLCANO 5 FAN
$ 324
Tufshop.com
888-919-1101
562-290-0111 -- P.O.'s accepted
CA 100868
Antec SX1240 NEW AND FACTORY SEALED ATX FT 400W P/S BGE 6 5.25 8 3.5 2 92MM FANS FULL TOWER CASE
$ 126 $14.72 UPS GROUND!
EMS Computing
800-939-3948
352-374-8400
FL SX1240
Mushkin! PRICE FOR ONLINE ORDERS- 512mb PC2100 Basic DDR SDRAM LIMIT 5pcs AMD VIA ALI approved PC2100 Rated 2.5-3-3 @ 133MHz 32Mx8 Chip Density
$ 113 $6 (FedEx 3-5 day) 1/29/2002 4:02:46 PM CT Mushkin!
800-569-1868
303-534-5306 -- P.O.'s accepted
CO 990841
Leadtek Winfast Geforce3 nvidia Titanium 200 64MB DDR AGP4X Retail.
TV-OUT Only Retail Box 3 Year Manuf warrty Games(DRONEZ, GUNLOK)
$ 169
PowerStart Computer
877-480-9981
718-776-3702
NY
IBM DESKSTAR 60GXP 60.0GB EIDE 7200RPM 2MB CACHE IC35L020AVER07 Model IC35L020AVER07ULTRA ATA 100 8.5ms average seek times 3 YEAR IBM WARRANTY
60.0GB
$ 104 13.95+
Sofistic.com
866-336-5428
626-336-5428
Hitachi HITACHI DVD IDE DVD RAM DRIVE. 2.6GB/5.2GB DVD RAM. GF1000. BARE DRIVE ONLY. ONE YEAR WARRANTY. CAPABLE OF READING ALL FORMS OF MEDIA INCULDING 4.7GB SINGLE SIDED MEDIA. INCLUDES VOB DECODING SOFTWARE.
$ 199 9.95 UPS
Alinamicro
888-625-9441
949-863-0500
Creative Labs SOUND BLASTER LIVE PLATINUM 5.1 NO REMOTE WHITE BOX VERSION .
$ 83
888-393-0340
847-364-9900--School&Govt P.O.'s
That still leaves you $232 for keyboard, mouse and monitor..
If you want, you can skimp $50 off the price of ram if you buy something else than mushkin 512mb. As long as its DDR.
This kind of system will beat that dell box here and back easy.
The downside is that you have to assemble the computer yourself - but it's not that hard. The motherboard comes with a full manual which will tell you exactly what to put and where.
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Yes that included the momitor, it also came w/ a DVD and CD/RW, as well as assorted support options, shiping, and stuff...
I'm looking at the pricewatch thing, it looks really good..but I suck at putting anything together, I even have trouble putting colored socks together...no kidding!
I would be savig a ton though....but I think it's probably safer for me to get a system already running.
I emailed the HTC folks, and they again re-assured me that my box works fine in their game (and it does, so far), but in terms of value and age of equipment, I got shafted...
I am writing a letter to Dell...those bastages..looks like I'm now in the hunt for a GF3 200 (any sellers?)
Good Grief this is getting costly LOL
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I don't think you got bad value at all. Sure it's not a pimped-out gaming rig, but it's a very decent machine that will play games just fine. Sure, there are better video cards out there, but they do cost more money. Yep, you could build something cheaper yourself, but you have to build it and support it yourself too.
I don't think Dell screwed you at all. It's unlikely that the Dell folks know as much about gaming and video cards as we do. If you want to change something, I'd ask Dell to swap you for a GeForce 3 Ti 200 if they will. Even if you pay the price difference, that would still be a fair deal, since I don't see that they overcharged you. If you would rather have a more expensive but more powerful card, ask them to swap it for you. Make them pay for shipping though since it was their dubious advice. :)
In the future, ask on this message board before buying, and we can likely help you choose a very good "bang for the buck" gaming machine even from Dell if you want their support and warrantee. If you don't want to build your own, Dell is a good choice. In fact, although I build my own machines, I recommend my family and friends who are not technically savy to just buy Dell. I help them choose the system, everything works fine, and they get a good computer at a reasonable price. Oh, and they never call me with problems either. :)
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Thanks Lepthurn, I think I will do just that (getting a better game card)
Good job also on the Trim Articles. It's been very helpful. Now if you want to go to "Technical Support" and work your magic on my programming issues,(CH issues) I'll give you my first born
:)
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I too am soon upgrading my system--I'm currently using a p3/500 w/ 256mb ram, TNT 2 Ultra card, SB live Value. I get 40-50 fps in the arena and around 15-20 fps in smoke and crowds (and around the bloody sheep).
I am being told that the p3 1.2 ghz(?) runs faster than the newer P4's--something about ram combinations and mobos. I'm not sure what to believe. I've also been told to wait a month and get one of the new Geforce 4 cards due to be released shortly.
I'm not in a huge hurry.
What do ya'll think? Am I being led astray?
TIA!
Horn
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Horn if you want to go the expensive way, get a P4 2.2 Ghz CPU with a RDRAM motherboard and the new Geforce4 card.
You'll pay about the double price compared to a AMD XP2000+ KT266A board and GF3 Ti500 but gain maybe 20% in speed.
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Red Tail: If you don't want to build the system yourself, but want still a kickass box, check these: http://www.azzo.com/test2/systems.html
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Looks good...
I'm probably just gonna get the GF3 upgrade, and I guess the USB controllers....I'm ticked off CH is just casting us analog people aside, however..