[neoterran]

You don't even need to look on ebay, actually. This will allow ancient computers to run FSO pretty comfortably for $30.

No, no it won't. It's a PCIe (PCI Express) card, and 99 percent of computers don't have it.

[CP5670]

Sorry, I clicked on the wrong one there. I meant this.

[neoterran]

actually i don't think he actually stated he has a geforce 4 mx anywhere. I saw this :

gr4fx

and made it up

(no need to write graphics like that btw)

[MP-Ryan]

The major bottleneck for me may have been the front-side bus - Toshiba motherboards are crap. 

More likely it was your video card - Mobility cards are generally handicapped compared to their big-brothers in a desktop system, and a 7000 series is old technology.  Not to mention, your adjustment of the AGP aperture size makes me think your card was handicapped more than usual.

Your CPU and RAM are far in excess of what FS2 SCP requires.  I run the SCP, with all mediavps except adveffects and both specular and glowmapping enabled and generally have steady framerates of 50-70 fps.  This is on a 1.33 Ghz Athlon Thunderbird processor, 512 MB of SDRAM, and a Radeon 9500Pro 128 MB (AGP).  Granted, I have my video settings heavily tweaked for performance.  The bottleneck for my system is now, unfortunately, the CPU.  It's possible that an upgrade to a 9800Pro might boost it somewhat, but probably not enough for me to go through all the effort.

[fsi.scsi]

The major bottleneck for me may have been the front-side bus - Toshiba motherboards are crap. 

More likely it was your video card - Mobility cards are generally handicapped compared to their big-brothers in a desktop system, and a 7000 series is old technology.

Your CPU and RAM are far in excess of what FS2 SCP requires.

Maybe, but I've worked with a lot of Toshiba notebooks, and even in non-graphics based operations they suck.  I once made a comparison:

Specs:
Compaq 1.60 GHz laptop with Intel integrated memory, 512 MB ram, 60 gig hard drive with 400 MHz front-side bus vs a Toshiba Satellite 1.60 GHz with Intel integrated memory, 512 MB ram, 60 gig hard drive, unspecified FSB speed (usually 133 MHz or thereabouts)

Operations: Quake III Arena, network data transfer, hard disk write test...

Results: Compaq kicked the Toshiba's ass in all tests.  I wish I had never bought my crappy laptop.  Plus, their tech support sucks - the motherboard (on my current laptop) shorted out a while ago whilst still under warranty, and when I sent it in for repair in Louisville, it came back erased, with fingerprints and grease all over it and 512 MB of ram missing.  I had a good fun time with that one

So yeah, you might be right.  But I've overclocked my Mobility and allotted more memory to it, so I figure that's the max performance I'll get out of it. 

[THE Phreak]

Well I was hoping to get a brand new computer rather than souping this one up.

$600 will get me something good.

[Turey]

Well I was hoping to get a brand new computer rather than souping this one up.

$600 will get me something good.

Hell, $300 got me a laptop capable of playing FSO at 60 fps with mediavps.

EDIT: Specs:
IBM T30 Laptop
Pentium 4 2.00Ghz
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500
768 MB RAM
40GB HDD

[THE Phreak]

I just tried it again with no media vps whatsoever, completely stock except for the .exe.

I've come to conclusion that the SCP is badly unoptimized. With the default FS2 retail, I play with good framerate etc. even with a few programs like winamp or whatever in the background. Just now I had the FS2 SCP running with all stock options (minus the launcher and 3.6.9 exe)  and media yet it still lagged so badly I got a message from Windows saying Virtual memory was low, followed then by a crash.

[Wanderer]

I have had kinda oppisite issues.. only with the retail exe. That is for me the SCP exes have generally functioned better (smoother gameplay) than the retail exes when trying those out in laptop

[neoterran]

I just tried it again with no media vps whatsoever, completely stock except for the .exe.

I've come to conclusion that the SCP is badly unoptimized. With the default FS2 retail, I play with good framerate etc. even with a few programs like winamp or whatever in the background. Just now I had the FS2 SCP running with all stock options (minus the launcher and 3.6.9 exe)  and media yet it still lagged so badly I got a message from Windows saying Virtual memory was low, followed then by a crash.

yeah i highly doubt that is a problem related to SCP, but more likely an issue with your computer.

[redsniper]

Could it be an HT&L issue?

[Unknown Target]

That sounds like what it'd be.

[MP-Ryan]

I just tried it again with no media vps whatsoever, completely stock except for the .exe.

I've come to conclusion that the SCP is badly unoptimized. With the default FS2 retail, I play with good framerate etc. even with a few programs like winamp or whatever in the background. Just now I had the FS2 SCP running with all stock options (minus the launcher and 3.6.9 exe)  and media yet it still lagged so badly I got a message from Windows saying Virtual memory was low, followed then by a crash.

yeah i highly doubt that is a problem related to SCP, but more likely an issue with your computer.

+1

All bets point to mis-configuration.

[fsi.scsi]

i agree. SCP 3.6.9 played fine (without mediavps) on my first PC (500 MHz eMachines Tower, 10 GB hard drive, 256 MB RAM, 66 MHz FSB, 4 MB onboard graphics).

And by "fine", I mean 25 fps on average.  SCP certainly isn't "unoptimized."  Did you try increasing the swap file size (as you say a "virtual memory" error pops up)? 

[bizzybody]

It plays pretty decently on a Dell Dimension B110 or 1100 (same exact thing, two different names) with 512meg RAM and Intel 865 integrated video. Sucks arse at OpenGL but does quite well with DirectX.

[fsi.scsi]

Sucks arse at OpenGL but does quite well with DirectX.

It seems that this is true for most lower-end computers.  OpenGL is not too well-liked by the bargain basement PCs.

[MP-Ryan]

Sucks arse at OpenGL but does quite well with DirectX.

It seems that this is true for most lower-end computers.  OpenGL is not too well-liked by the bargain basement PCs.

OpenGL runs fine on everything but integrated graphics.

I said it before and I'll say it again... onBoard video is good for nothing more than a monitor connection.

[MP-Ryan]

Here, this was 2 hours of my morning today:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45310.0.html

[Grizzly]

YOu don't have to remove all the mediavps. The Mediavps you can use all the time are:

Music.vp
Core.VP
Nebulae.vp (Lightspeed nebula's)
Lightspeedfs2.vp (thats the improved campaign thingy)

[jr2]

I've seen SCP run on a comp with a 500mhz chip, 256 mb of ram and a 64mb graphics card, so it is possible! Granted a few of the graphics intensive stuff was switched off but it ran with very little lag after it was set up right.   

500 MHz AMD K6-2 (system board max=66MHz, overclocked it to 83 MHz x 6)
256 MB RAM
BFG 5500 256 MB OC PCI
-it runs slow, but with some options shut off, it does run!  (It'd prolly run faster if it had a decent sound card that supported acceleration.)