[VMan]

My dual CPU board died, so I had to slap this into my case:

AMD Mobile K6-2 450MHz
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
96MB PC100 RAM (Samsung, Hyundai)
10GB Maxtor 5400 RPM HD w/512K cache
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
ALi USB 2.0/1394a combo card
FIC VA-503+ motherboard w/ Via MVP3 chipset

I have tried everything...I'm usually pushing 10 fps.  I tried swapping in a TNT2, installing Cacheman, running both 2000 Pro and 98 SE, and nothing works.

I need this game up and running because I need to use this board in a second machine for a LAN party.

Can anyone help me?  My detail settings are at their lowest, and I am running in 640x480 16-bit.

[Setekh]

Firstly, welcome to HLP VMan. Secondly... ergh. Your CPU and memory are real bottlenecks there - not sure you can do very much with that. But even with the TNT2? (I used to run with a TNT2 on my old rig, and it managed 25 FPS fairly consistently.)

[WMCoolmon]

Damn...your best bet would either be retail FS2, or FS2_Open without any of the extra effects.

Disabling sound/music might also help; a Radeon 9700 is overpowered considering the CPU; your chief bottleneck will be the CPU-intensive stuff - that's sound, AI, physics unfortunately.

Oh, and DDS your textures and stuff if you use fs2_open. The video card should be able to handle decompressing them, and it'll reduce the amount of memory being used.

Finally, my new build (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,30736.0.html) should take up about 3 MB less than other builds, and will be just as fast, especially if you turn weapons effects down in the options screen (With your current comp, efficient use of the options  screen will be a necessity.)

[Bobboau]

wow, it runs at all on that!?!

[VMan]

Wow...the game is that demanding?!

Holy poop.

P-200 and a Voodoo 1...Minumum requirements.  How much did they undertstate how much power this game needed?

If I OCed my CPU to 600MHz, how much better would it run then?  I have great cooling on this CPU (Speeze Eagle Rock II).  I'm really not feeling the love from this machine right now...

Another question: If I installed a Sound Blaster 16 ISA, that would boost my framerate a bit, right?  No 3D audio stuff with that thing.

I have a mountain of parts in my closet.

[Bobboau]

oh, wait a sec, your talking plain old retail FS2, not FSO. hmm, what you have should be plenty fine for it then. not sure why your getting 1/4th the framerate you should be getting. I'm thinking it's the mobo.

wow, an ISA, were are you getting all this legacy hardware from? it's sort of neat, but realy, if that's what your relying on find an office building some were and go dumpster diveing.

[pyro-manic]

Gah, spend £100 and get an Athlon 2500+ and a new mobo, and a stick of DDR. You'll probably get it for cheaper than that to be honest - and it'll be much more useful as a backup than what you're using now...

Although, I ran FS2 retail on a Celeron 333 and a TNT2 back in the day, and that ran pretty sweetly,  so I think it might be your memory (or lack of it) that's slowing you down. I had 128mb, so try and get it up to at least that much (I'm sure you'll be able to find an old machine to cannibalise).

Anyway, good luck with it, and a warm



to you!

[Razgriz]

When things like that started happening on my old computer, my solution was get a new one, costs lots of money, but worth it in the long run, less repairs and such.

[VMan]

I'll try putting some new RAM in...

I will have a more powerful backup machine once Gigabyte repairs my dual CPU motherboard.

I'm gonna try to OC that old Duron to 2.4GHz in my future backup rig.

Sadly, I gave all my old, large sticks of SDRAM to a friend.  I built him a cheap P3 machine for free.  I do know where I can get another 64MB stick, but it's in NYC, at a friend's dad's business.  He has some old derelict Pavilions that are PERFECT for scrapping.

As to all that old legacy hardware?  Dumpster diving/old machines/mooching.  I used to have a bunch of old 486's.

[Dark RevenantX]

My mac is the weirdest thing.  My video card in it is the oldest piece of crap ever made, and my cpu is a 750mhz G4.  For some reason, higher resolutions result in higher framerates.  This is simply not possible with a 2:1 cpu to vidcard performance.  Though, it is.  Good luck with the fps... My mac can't even run the port at 10 without setting resolution on high and other things to low.