VIDEOCARD - ADVICE NEEDED

[jbrigden]

I recently purchased a new videocard so I could run the latest games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RTCW) and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MOHAA). I'm concerned that my card isn't configured effectively, and I need advice.

Here are my system specs:

Dell Dimension L Intel Pentium 3 733MHz
256MB PC-100 RAM
GeForce2 MX 400 64MB SDR PCI (w/ latest drivers installed - 23.11)
7200RPM 20GB Maxtor HDD
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Windows XP Pro

I should note that the system has an integrated Intel 82810E Graphics Controller, which I've disabled in the Device Manager. I set the virtual memory to 512MB and this has helped performance dramatically. It was set at 381MB.

Currently MOHAA is running at anywhere from 10 - 100FPS, and usually runs at 30FPS. I turned off anti-aliasing in the videocard's properties as well as turned off all shadows within the game and both helped the performance, but I'm still not satisfied. My PC usually has no problem running games with the settings at max. - RTCW ran flawlessly with all settings set to their max. There was virtually no choppiness and the graphics were both sharp and rich. I am currently running MOHAA in 1024 x 768 with all settings on max, except shadows, which are turned off. I have color depth set at 16-bit and texture depth at 16-bit. (I've noticed very little, if any, visual difference with those turned down, but got a huge boost in performance.)

Anyway...

Under Direct3D Settings the PCI Texture Memory Size is set at the default 31MB of system memory. I can go to a maximum of 127MB. And under OpenGL Settings, 5MB of system memory is set, which is default. I can go to a maximum of 16MB. My question to those who know: Should I alter these default values? They seem low and I really haven't tweaked my videocard's settings other than to turn on fast linear-mipmap-linear filtering. For a 64MB videocard I don't seem to be getting the performance I anticipated.

Any help in the right direction is greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

 

[phoenix79]

Did you disable the on-board video in the BIOS. If not, then that is probably the problem

Phoenix

 

[Willoughbyva]

Are you sure that that video card will perform well in those games? I think that some of the newer games might over power that video card.

Good luck with it.

Will

 

[jbrigden]

phoenix79,

I've previously tried doing that, but in the BIOS all I have is the option to set Video to "On-Board" or "PCI." There's no option to disable. This leads me to believe that in order to do this, one would have to disable it physically on the motherboard by changing the jumper settings. I'm pretty sure I have a Intel D810E2CB motherboard, and I'm almost certain the integrated video cannot be disabled physically.
Intel give instructions on their website to disable the integrated video following the method I described and implemented in my first post, by doing it in the Device Manager.

Willoughbyva,

I've read that MOHAA is poorly coded and thus the optimization is poor as well. Many people who have a far more powerful system have had similar problems. Still, some with less powerful videocards claim that it works beautifully on their system. I'm assuming it's the game because as I said, RTCW runs like pure silk with the settings all set to max, and too many people have had the same problems with this software.

Well, thanks for your advice anyway, fellas, but the issue of the game is somewhat secondary to the bolded question. Does anyone know what effect changing those values will have on my system? Will it improve performance? Should I leave them alone?

Thanks.

 

[killmeplease]

IMO, the results seem about normal. I don't think you can configure anything for much better results.

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

the speed of the video card has very little to do with the amount of ram that is on the video card. Try running the resolution at 800 x600 or 640 x 480 and let us know how that goes...