Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Axel Wers on September 01, 2008, 03:54:40 am
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Hello,
one month ago I purchased graphic card GeForce 7300 GT. Lot of games are running fine without any problems, except these two: Conflict FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2.
When I run FreeSpace 2 everything is OK until more ships arrive and battle begin. Then game is lagging and runnig slow. Conflict FreeSpace is going better but after few minutes game freezes (graphic freezes, sound is running).
My PC:
Power: 350 W
MB: Asus A7N8X
Processor: AMD Barton XP 2500+
RAM: 1 GB
Graphic card: nVidia GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB
Graphic Drivers:
- Version: 174.93
- Date: April 2008
DirectX: 9.0c
OS: Win XP SP3 Pro
When I used to the old GeForce4 64 MB these two games were running fine.
I posted similar topic on nVidia forums. I got some help but problem still persists although I installed newest drivers recommended for my card.
Please help me fix this issues because life without FreeSpace is a crap. Thanks in advance.
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First thing that pops out is the 350 watt power supply. Is that even enough to power the video card?
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I affraid that my power supply is really poor for my video card :blah:
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7300?
The card might be your problem.
Your CPU is also kinda slow,
I know FS was slow for me when I had a AMD 3200+ CPU and a XFX 7600 GT
You could get a much better computer for $450 these days.
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-Are you running retail games? They are pretty old, and your GPU is pretty new. I wouldn't be surprised if some driver issues were making the games lag with the new graphics card even though it worked on older card.
-If you insist on playing the retail games, check what sound driver you have selected from FreeSpace 2 Launcher. If you have it on Aureon 3D sound or something like that, try the other options (don't remember which options they are, possibly DirectSound) - when I first got FS2, that option made the game lag like hell indeed.
-If you want to enjoy FS2 to the fullest and beyond, download FS2_Open and FreeSpace Port. This will enable you to, first of all, play the game, fully utilizing newer hardware, enable higher resolutions, play the original Conflict:FreeSpace the Great War with FS2_Open engine, many mods that don't work with retail, and if you want you can download all kinds of graphical upgrades for the FS2 and Great War campaigns (though your PC will likely choke on at least some of them). Also, you will get whiter teeth.
Basically, what you need is the following:
-FSOpen Launcher (http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/Launcher55d.rar), which will let you select the fs2_open executable instead of the retail FS2.exe;
-FS2_Open build (http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/3.6.9.rar) - these are the latest official release builds, 3.6.9, which is rather stable and good starting point for you I would say.
Simply copy the launcher and the executables into your FreeSpace2 directory, then open the Launcher, hit "Browse" on the upper part of the window and select "fs2_open_3_6_9.exe" from the list. Other files in the rar file are a debug build (which you should only use when solving problems) and FRED2_Open normal and debug builds, which you should use if you're designing missions.
Then navigate to Video tab of the Launcher, set the resolution and bit depth and then run the game.
Other option is to use the online installer, which downloads a crapload of cool stuff onto your PC, including the aforementioned graphical goodies, but you might want to first try playing with FS2_Open and retail FS2 media, just to find out if you can get things working that way (and to save time). If that works OK, then you can easily run the fsoinstaller in the directory if you want to see if your PC can handle the MediaVP's. And of course you can use it to get FSPort, which like said is basically a port of original FreeSpace onto a form that can be played with FS2 and FS2_Open engine.
Power supply might be a problem, then again I have a 400W PSU and it seems to manage the power demand of my 8800 GT (and AMD Athlon X2 4800+ and three HD's and an USB sound card) with no problems... things aren't always as simple as looking at the nominal power output of the power supply.
You might want to also check that your card isn't overheating and throttling itself down (which causes graphics to slow down, of course); if the card has passive cooling, makes sure the case is well ventilated, if the card has active cooling make sure that the fan and cooler aren't clogged with dust... and makes sure the case ventilation is OK, although you would likely have noticed overheating related issues affecting other things as well if that was the case.
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No offense but I was running retail on my P2 400 with a (wohoo) 32mb ATI vid card and 756?MB of PC100 memory! I didn't start upgrading till like 2003ish... So all you upgrade guys might not remember the old days, fs1/2 vanilla ran quite adequately...
:D
Ok, I admit using the subspace missiles might have slowed things down a hair...
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2 problems here. For a geforce 7 series card you need to get better than a 350W, get like a 450W instead. 350W doesn't do good at all for geforce 7's. Your next problem is that you were just dumb enough to buy a 7300gt.YES!!!!! You totally wanted to buy a low end really crappy card :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:
Check benchmarks and reviews before you buy.
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2 problems here. For a geforce 7 series card you need to get better than a 350W, get like a 450W instead. 350W doesn't do good at all for geforce 7's. Your next problem is that you were just dumb enough to buy a 7300gt.YES!!!!! You totally wanted to buy a low end really crappy card :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:
Check benchmarks and reviews before you buy.
Let me elaborate my earlier statements.
I have a 400W PSU and I'm having no difficulties with a 8800GT on my system. That card comes with a "minimum system requirement" of 425W PSU with combined 12V current rating of 28A or more, but that recommendation is based on power requirements with an Intel Core2 Extreme X6800 processor, so that doesn't tell the whole story either.
Numbers don't always tell everything. If the power supply can keep up sufficient amount of amperes on the most important voltage lines, it could very well be sufficient for a card like 7300 GT, which isn't really intended for heavy graphics and likely therefore has lower power requirements than, for example, a 7600 GT. Another thing is to find out whether the power output is sustained or peak power - cheap PSU's are marketed with their peak power output, while quality PSU's usually use sustained power output in their markings.
I'm not saying that lack of power can't be the problem here, I'm saying that it's possible that the problem lies elsewhere, and since it's the retail games we're talking about I'm pretty sure they wouldn't even stress the GPU (or the PC as a whole) very much over idle power levels. It's likely an incompatibility issue between an old game and new hardware and drivers. Besides, power issues aren't typically showing themselves as slowdowns but rather system instability, crashes and shutdowns... as far as I know.
Granted, it's usually better to have surplus power than not enough; you never know what USB contraptions and extra HD's and stuff you'll be attaching to the PC by the end of day. However important power ratings may be, though the quality of the PSU is eually important.
Of course, unlimited power would be ideal.
(http://www.kevinfreitas.net/img/20050311-30.jpg)
:p
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In my manual for my old 7600gt it said 350W minimum. So i got a 350W psu. The system couldn't stay active for more than 8 hour periods. Also my old system would shut down a lot sooner if i was gaming. 350W psu's is just not enough power for todays 3d accelerators. I had to upgrade to a 450W psu before the psu overheating symptom disappeared. Both power supply's i used were coolmaxes. My old 350W was still useful, so i put it in my friends system who had a much lower powered radeon 9200 with a p4 1.8ghz, his system works fine. The 350W did not like my 7600gt and athlon 3200+ combination though (couldn't supply enough power).
That's why i recommend getting a 450W at least. I upgraded to a 450W because i didn't know how much wattage i needed and figured at least 50 more watts wouldn't get me out of the forest. So that's why i bought a 450W instead of a 400W.
Yeah herra i probably would've gotten away just fine with a 400W instead, but i didn't want to chance it.
After that the 7300gt..oh yucky. The performance on the 7300 class was so bad i would've rather stuck with my radeon 9800 which had ever increasing memory artifact problems in all games. Normally i like to stick with startech or asus psu's, but coolmax was all that i could find to buy in fairbanks. Coolmax is good durable and dependable, what i really liked about it was the short protection and selectable fan speeds they have. They have a fixed minimum less noise fan setting, a max noisy fan settings, and my favorite, the automatic variable fan speed setting. The variable was nice because if you were doing something like games, the fan will pick up speed in the psu to keep it cool, but if your doing normal desktop stuff, the psu fan gets really quiet since it doesn't need to provide so much cooling to the psu since the system isn't demanding as much power as compared with playing half life 2 or something.
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No offense but I was running retail on my P2 400 with a (wohoo) 32mb ATI vid card and 756?MB of PC100 memory! I didn't start upgrading till like 2003ish... So all you upgrade guys might not remember the old days, fs1/2 vanilla ran quite adequately...
:D
Ok, I admit using the subspace missiles might have slowed things down a hair...
Retail at max details with:
Pentium 2 266MHz
128MB RAM
Matrox G200 (or was it G400?)
:p
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I played fs2 back in the day with celeron 366, 12gb hdd, 64mb ram, and a voodoo 3 3000. I loved playing the game in glide.
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Awww snap. That is nearly identical to my old FreeSpace 1 /Half-life rig.
*Pc spec hi-5!
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Get FS2Open. See if it helps.
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Awww snap. That is nearly identical to my old FreeSpace 1 /Half-life rig.
*Pc spec hi-5!
:yes:
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Impressive indeed...
But do you have screenshots (of say) 350 asteroids you got done hand placing over 10 hours for a mission, but messed up and they ALL turned into enemy fighters and created an unintentional BOE dogfight?
Granted it was unplayable but I didn't BSOD, I manually ended it (mainly cause like 4 fps sucks)...
(note - while looking for said pic, I just turned on my main external drive and it's not detected, powering off and on several times detects nothing although the computer beeps when plugging and unplugging the USB cord...I think I just lost my main archive of pics,,, and some tools...)
Well, unless I posted them somewhere online in the past I guess those recorded moments are gone...)
I guess it's a good thing I backed up my SHIPS archive to my internal D drive... (I would say over 5k ship folders easy...)
still sucks though...
Edit (ah good news I had it backedup, stumbled on it lookign fro Aldo's tuff...)
Enjoy!
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Thanks for all posts. They are usefull.
Basically, what you need is the following:
-FSOpen Launcher (http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/Launcher55d.rar), which will let you select the fs2_open executable instead of the retail FS2.exe;
-FS2_Open build (http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/3.6.9.rar) - these are the latest official release builds, 3.6.9, which is rather stable and good starting point for you I would say.
Simply copy the launcher and the executables into your FreeSpace2 directory, then open the Launcher, hit "Browse" on the upper part of the window and select "fs2_open_3_6_9.exe" from the list.
There is something REALLY wrong. I did what you wrote but I got error message: FreeSpace Launcher has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. :blah:
Your next problem is that you were just dumb enough to buy a 7300gt.YES!!!!! You totally wanted to buy a low end really crappy card :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:
So 7300 GT is useless for FreeSpace 2 game?
OK what video card is really good and generally recommended for FS2 (or FS2_Open) game?
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So 7300 GT is useless for FreeSpace 2 game?
Most surely not. It runs just fine on a Radeon 9600. With 512 RAM. It's just that, as it was said, your PSU might be unable to supply enough juice for that 7300GT.
There is something REALLY wrong. I did what you wrote but I got error message: FreeSpace Launcher has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. :blah:
To be sure: you have the Launcher and the FSO executables in your \freespace\ folder, right? Because they should be there. Also, you need to install OpenAL (link in my signature). Not having it shouldn't cause that particular error, but it still is needed for FSO to run.
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There is something REALLY wrong. I did what you wrote but I got error message: FreeSpace Launcher has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. :blah:
To be sure, you are running Launcher.exe and not Freespace2.exe?
If yes, delete launcher6.ini from your FS2 directory, and re-run Launcher.exe. Can't think of anything else right now... :nervous:
So 7300 GT is useless for FreeSpace 2 game?
OK what video card is really good and generally recommended for FS2 (or FS2_Open) game?
What Lobo said. Make sure your PSU can support the hardware; the GPU itself can definitely run the game graphics (though the most memory-intensive stuff will definitely give less than 60 FPS sustained...) but it's now a question of whether your PC can run the GPU. In a nutshell.
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Yes, those files are in my FreeSpace 2 directory and I am running Launcher.exe :)
I can open fs2.exe too without problems, but fs2_open_3_6_9.exe I can't. I get error window.
OK I'll install OpenAL when I downlaod it (I am trying but now I can't get that file, site is out of reach (?))
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but fs2_open_3_6_9.exe I can't. I get error window.
You have to run Launcher.exe at least once before you can run the FSO executable itself.
OK I'll install OpenAL when I downlaod it (I am trying but now I can't get that file, site is out of reach (?))
Strange. Works on my end. But here's an alternative link (http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/oalinst.zip).
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Thank, an alternative link worked.
After I installed oalinst.exe I could run FS2_Open without any problems. I tried OpenGL and then Direct3D (under OpenGL game looks like better) and in both cases game ran perfectly without any lagging :yes:
It seems that my problem has been fixed, thanks to all especially to Lobo :yes: :) In next days I'll test FS Port and other mods ;)
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Don't use D3D, it's no longer supported.
Get the MediaVPs!
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ive got a 7300 in my laptop and it ran every thing fine but i had to overclock it just a little to run mediavps and normal maps witout the fps doing a nose dive , my game runs fine with all graphics on max mediavps active and normal maps even in asteroid fields .... 7300 might be a low end card but it works hell of a lot better than microsoft intigrated 915 and many ati cards with fs
ps even the shader packs work
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Yeah, you guys hit the nail on the head. The launcher doesn't really like to work if you don't have openal installed. Considering that you have a 7300gt is a lot better than having a 7300gs. So, yeah you should be able to play the game just fine in all reality, but it might not exactly be the best experience. The radeon 9600se can load the game in fact also (lower end than the 9600), but it wasn't exactly the greatest game experience. I always got considerable slow down when chasing an enemy really closely, as oppposed to an enemy being farther away. This has also lead to me desiring more than 512mb system ram for the game as well. Hard drives use their virtual memory a lot more with 512mb system ram compared to more smooth performance with a gig of ram (512mb always gave me slight hiccups, that were very frequent even when i upgraded to a radeon 9800 with the 3.6.8mvp's, hell with 512mb system ram i still had slight frequent hiccups all the time with F.E.A.R.).