VIDEOCARD - HELP 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.

 

[stockjock]

Its not your video card...its the game!!! I'm running a:
AMD 1.2 266 Tbird
512mb PC133
64mb Geforce2 GTS
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card

All that and I'm still getting some chop when I play MOHAA. It just not real smooth running game...but it is still awesome to play!

 

[Tarmouth]

You state that you disabled the onboard video in device manager! Did you disable it in BIOS ????

 

[jbrigden]

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 now that 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.