Win2K frame rate unplayable

[thufir]

Can anyone clarify who is successfully running AH under Windows 2000? I start in the tower with about a 12 FPS. When I jump in the plane and prop up, FPS drops to 6ish. Joystick response is horribly delayed...unplayable situation.
Help please.
Cheers

[bloom25]

Can you please tell us your system specs?  I.e. CPU type and speed, video card type, amount of memory, etc.




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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[kbman]

Hi bloom,
          He's my friend and he should know better... I went to his house and tried to get it going but I don't know much about Win 2K. Here you go:IBM Aptiva onboard sound PII 300 128MB RAM CL Banshee 16MB MS 3D Pro 56k Winmodem. I took a look and decided it was background apps of which there were 33 running in the Task Mgr. He deleted a whole bunch and the OS croaked and needed reinstalling. I dont know which ones are critical or which are having yhe adverse effects. H e is running all the drivers native to the OS. I know Win 2K is slower but he should be able to get a low end playable frame rate I would think. After reinstalling he got it down to 22 running apps in task Mgr but I still think its one or more of those creating problems. Its an IBM mobo and I gave him my old Celeron 400 to try but it needs a BIOS flash to recognize it and cant find one or wade through the BS on IBM's site to locate one. Any ideas would be appreciated...

kbman

[qts]

128 MB P2-300 eh? That's pretty much minimal for W2000.

[Lephturn]

Throw a winmodem into the mix and it's pretty boarderline.

What resolution and color depth are you trying to run.  Be sure Dirext X 7.0a is installed, and the latest drivers for that video card.  If you still don't have any luck, try some older drivers for the card, they sometimes work better.

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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com


"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
 - Steve Earl

[thufir]

Thanks kbman...duh-huh I dunno much about these com-pu-ter thingies   I ommitted the hardware stats 'cause when I was running win98, with all else the same, all was fine.
My res is 1024x768 High 16-bit. Same perf @ 800x600 and 640x480 same depth.
I'm down to 19 procs...no effect.
Lephturn:  DirectX 7.0a doesn't want to install...Banshee v.5.0.2080.1 from MS...I'll give the latest Banshee driver a shot, although other DirectX games are functioning OK.
Thanks gang!

[thufir]

OK...got the latest Win2k beta driver from 3DFx...FPS in the tower up to 22 (woo-hoo!).
Jump in the plane, still 22, prop up...down to 13, start moving down the runway, FPS goes to 6 with the same lack of control. The latest driver was definitely a good thing, although the perf is still in the pooper once the terrain starts moving. Is it odd that the DirectX 7.0a doesn't want to install?
Cheers.

[Starbird]

win2k already has 7.0a I believe.

There is no DirectX update for win2k, unless you install 8 beta.

[bloom25]

With a PII300 and a Banshee I don't know if there's much you can do.  Win2k is not really a good OS for games at this point.  On top of that drivers are still pretty immature right now.  My guess is DX 8 will actually lose you a few FPS.


One little thing you can try, and I know it sounds strange.  Make it so no modem icon is displayed on the taskbar when connected.  You might find this makes the game smoother.  I don't know where this is in Win2k, but in 98 it's Dial-up networking -> connection menu item -> settings -> uncheck "show connection icon on taskbar" or something like that.

I've found this makes the game smoother on ATI and 3dFx video cards.




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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[thufir]

Well I do remember now that you mention it Bloom, that gave me a frame or two when this machine was running 98 -- no such luck this time 'round. Again, a good tweak, not THE tweak.
DirectX version on this here W2k Server SP1 config is 7.0(4.07.00.0700). The MSDN BB confirmed the "...could not find SETUP.EXE..." error I get trying to upgrade to 7.0a. I agree beta DX8 is a low percentage option.
I'm testing process combinations to minimize the load on background stuff, of which W2k server is not lacking. I haven't casually perused any W2k docs to see which basic procs are needed (strip down mode).
That's the last thing I'll try before installing kbman's formerly over-clocked Celeron 400.
Finally found the BIOS flash I needed for this 3+ year old beast. We'll see what a heart transplant accomplishes. (Hopefully 33% more).
Cheers

[bloom25]

I had a 400 Celeron for a while, they can run AH pretty well in 98 at least.  I was able to get mine running at 498 Mhz without any problems.  That extra 100 Mhz might help in your case.  Win2k sure runs a LOT slower than the win9x versions.  Perhaps a dual boot with 98 being used for games wouldn't be a bad idea, that is if formatted your hard drive with Fat32 vs Ntfs.



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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[thufir]

Yeah, dual boot if I installed 98 first... didn't. All one gets is "...you have a newer version...blah". Reformat wouldn't be as bad as a sharp stick in the eye. It'd be a small victory actually be able to fly a sortie.

[qts]

Windows 2000 is a vastly better platform for gaming than Windows 98, if you have the machine.

Unfortunately, AH won't read USB joysticks in Win 2000. Since other games will (eg Starlancer), I'd suggest that the fault lies with AH.

[Sancho]

I am running Aces High in Windows 2000 on a Celeron 566 overclocked to 765 with 128MB RAM.  It runs beautifully... 40-60FPS in almost all situations with my GeForce SDR card.  

Consider a graphics card/cpu upgrade if you're going to get serious with this game.  Also, try increasing the priority of the aceshigh.exe process in the task manager.  This will give aceshigh more CPU time and may improve FR a little bit.  Just don't go "realtime".  

[Lephturn]

Whoops, I wasn't thinking.    You can't install Direct X 7 on Win2k.  You will be able to install Direct X 8 on it, but it's not quite out yet.

I'm afraid that AH will just require more horsepower on a Win2k box than it will on a 98 machine.  2k uses much more of the system resources itself.  128 Meg of RAM is the MINIMUM for Win2k IMHO, and I would want 256 do play games on it... or do anything other than write documents in word.    I think you'll really need to upgrade that machine to do much about the slowdown.  That old Banshee is likely the first bottleneck, I'd get a GeForce2 MX, they are a great value for the performance you'll get.

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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com


"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
 - Steve Earl