newbie stupid question

please excuse the newbie's stupid question (i just got gp3 last week after stumbling across this forum)

after i calibrated the graphics i've got everything working great in practice (nice steady 24 fps everywhere on 1024 x 768 all details on max) but it all goes to pieces in a race & starts running at 7-8 fps

is there a way of reducing the number of other cars from 22 down to maybe 10, i've looked through the manual but can't find anything.

According to the system spec on the box my system should be ok but i think the problems could be because of my onboard soundcard not being directx7 compatible, does anybody else think this could be the cause.

p3
500mhz
256mb ram
geforce 4 mx440

Chiltz

You can't reduce the number of cars.

You hace ALWAYS to race with 22 cars.

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Hello there, welcome to the forums , you would be much better off disabling the onboard sound and fitting a soundcard with the latest set of drivers. You could also try disabling some off the sound features in the in-game sound setup menu. Sometimes this has been known to help with PO (processor occupancy) problems. Have you tried running the graphics at 800x600? I'm sure that other users will post with ideas to help you out, I'm a bit slow on gp3 as it's been a while since I've used it. Good luck m8

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central

Welcome to the community

also a good tip is turning mirror detail down. I used to do that on gp3 when i had a poor pc (worse than yours) and it helped alot.

DO you have XP by any chance? as that is around the FPS I get (I have not tried practise). I think it could be XP limiting the FPS or something dodgy like that

In another forum, I think Vader pointed out right clicking on the gp3.exe and running it on Win 98 format. (No offence to any1, but I personally hate XP). I think that fixes most probs.

Also, did u manually configure the graphics? Try auto calibration. Some compromise, but as mortalwombat said, shud run fine in 800x600.

Good luck!

yer, I tried to run in win 98 compatability but it wont start up and gives me an error

Well, might be because you are running XP on such an old PC, as XP needs a certain specification to run well.

Welcome though

ok, also try to disable some images, like trees on the mirrors, and walls. Honestly, take away stuff like rain effects, sucks because if you're stuck behind a car in the rain, you gotta change cameras, or drive like me (crazy ). But whatever you do, good luck there!

thanx 4 the suggestions guys, i'll try them out tonight & see how i get on

i'm using 98SE & thats why i can't understand why i'm having problems. According to the specifications on the box I should be able to run it fine.

i also play GP500 (bike racing sim) & i've figured out that i suffer a loss of fps because of my on board sound card so I can only assume it's a similar problem. maybe it's time to stop being a tight arse & buy the sound card!!!

Anyway if anybody else has any ideas keep em comin

thanx again guys

p.s. bloody good game, with excellent mods. i just wish i could race against other cars

Well I think any soundcard would be fine - I bought a 5.1 C - Media card for £10 and its fine, works well.

I can only imagine that because of the proccessor being 500mhz, it puts a lot of strain on it in race by having to calculate sound, but saying that, gp3 doesnt have any 3d sound, so it shouldnt be more demanding than practice :|

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

I ran Gp3 on this system fine,

300Mhz AMD K6-2 (overclocked to 350Mhz)
16Mb Creative TNT graphics
96Mb PC100 Sdram
Soundblaster Live!
Win98SE
DirectX 7
Dual Analog Playstation Pad hooked up to printer port

Used to run in 800x600 with trackside objects LOW, no textures in mirrors, reduced texture detail.
24-25.6 fps

This was the system I had when I bought Gp3.

Although used to get some viscious slowdown on the 1st lap.

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Make sure you`ve got antialiasing and anisotropic filtering turned off on your Geforce display properties, and set texture detail to best performance.

i tried all the suggestions but no luck so far, thanx anyway guys

i can only assume that the processor isn't man enough for the job like qwerty said which is odd considering the minimum requirements for the game are below the capacity of my steam powered machine.

i can race in software mode but can't get more than 9fps in hardware with everything turned off on 800x600.

i'm not finished yet though, i've hopefully got a soundcard coming to see if that helps & my bruv said i can borrow his pc which is a more powerful.

p.s. i can run gp3 on my work computer which is P3, 550mhz, 128ram, Matrox MGA200 & it runs at 22fps on 800x600 with me at the back of the grid at Monaco. the work computer doesn't have a sound card so i can only assume that my pc at home hasn't got a processor thats powerful enough to run the game and sounds together.

Well in theory sooftware mode will be harder on your cpu - its a vicious circle! So you should be aiming for HW mode, especially with a fairly good gfx card that you have. It's a strange case for sure...

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

yeah it is odd

i checked practice again last night using HW & even on the highest res i still got a constant 15fps at monaco which i assume would be a graphics demanding track.

when playing gp500 i can only run 12 riders (from a maximum of 24) otherwise i get the stutters. one of the guys over in that forum said it could be because the PCI bus is trying to run the graphics (my card is PCI as there were no AGP slots) and the on board sound all at the same time. in time trial (practice) it runs as smooth as a babies bum at 30fps.

maybe i'll just tell my bruv he can't have his computer back eh!!!

at least i'll know all the tracks by the time i find a solution with all the practice laps i'm getting.

oh, its a pci graphics card? could well be the reason then!

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal