Is this level of performance normal?

Hey,
My Comp is a:
AMD Duron 700,
ATi 8500LE (7.74 drivers)
VideoLogic SonicFury (TurtleBeach SantaCruz (4112 drivers))
EPoX 8KTA+ MoBo (Via KT133 chipset)
WinXP

The autocalibirate settings on GP4 (with Hardware 2D and 3D sound) yield 1024x768x32 at 14fps with all the lowest settings (bar the car geom being medium.)
Strange thing is tho', 640x480x16 with all the lowest settings is still 14fps.

I can increase the the performace to 16fps max, by turning OFF 3DHardware sound support, but leaving on 2D Hardware sound...

My CPU may be a bottleneck - but surely not that much?

Help would be appriecated...

BTW, I have no programs running in the background.

You are running a Duron, they are like the Intel Celeron, the low budget welfare CPU's. So they are not as powerful as their cousins.



Beta tester for;
Descent 3, C & C Generals, Independance War 2, Starfleet Command 2,
Settlers IV, Tzar, Allegiance, Starfleet Command,
MAX 2, Defiance

But that doesnt explain it. I have a p2 350 with 8mb gfx card, and I got 12fps max.



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

Buy a new cpu(1.4-2GHz). With that you can reach 25 fps at least.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Maybe a Athlon XP2000+ or a XP 1900+


AMD are cheaper than Intel, and if your motherboard has an AMD chip in it now (duron) then the XP should be compatible. I think. Maybe.



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

Yes.

Put it this way, i cannot comprehend the differing frame rates we all seem to get, especially those with similar specced PC's.

I too have a Duron, only marginally faster ( 750) and Geforce 2 MX ( inferior to Radeon 8500 ) and I can get 36 fps at 1024 x 768 with all settings maxed except environmental and mirrors.

Weird !!

What OS do you run GP4 on?

I think it really is just luck. Perhaps gp4 has a inserts random seed for performance upon first installation?



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

i run win xp pro

Thanks for the replies.
I can't use a AXP proc in my mobo (it has a 266mhz bus, my mobo only supports 200mhz).

I might ask Infrograms tech support and see what they say, or hope that the infamous patch fixes this dodgy performance level.

I once reran the recalibration, and it yielded 21fps - near max detail. I then tried playing and the PO was about 500 and then another recalib set everything down the 14fps levels...

Weird...

If any-one has had the same problem, and knows how to fix it, any help would greatly appriecated...

Cheers.

what about athlon? 1.4Ghz

Re: "what about athlon? 1.4Ghz"
Thanks for the reply, but 1.4Ghz (200mhz bus) athlons are:
a) hard to find
b) more expensive than the quicker XP versions
c) will leave me wanting a new mobo and thoroughbread AXP cpu in 6 months time...

Also, John Leslie's post indicates the D700 might not be the problem.

What drugs or drivers is your computer on? I have a Duron 900 with GeForce 4 Ti 4200 running at 21 fps. Everything maxed except Enviro Maps and Reflections (which are crap anyway). 1024x768 res.

Cheers

Thank's Whitey for your post, my drivers were shown on the original post - but here they are again.

ATi Radeon 8500LE - v7.74
VideoLogic Sonicfury - v4112
Via Mobo Chipset - v.4.40