Video Card and frame rates

[Saber Cherry]

The motherboard drivers are very important! I would say... that's the second most important step, after video card drivers.

To check, just go to device manager: right-click on My Computer, and under one of those tabs, it lists all the hardware in your computer. It's different in 98, and I forget the exact wording of the tab.

In the list of hardware devices, expand "System Devices" and there should be things like "VIA AGP to CPU bridge", on a VIA chipset. For an AMD chipset, it might say "AMD Irongate 751 AGP bridge" or something. And, if you have a VIA chipset, I strongly suggest you update the drivers - even if it doesn't help the game, it prevents things like HDD data corruption... quite important! But these drivers are integrally linked to AGP and PCI bus efficiency, as well.

-Cherry

[Darryl]

Ok, updated video driver for the Radeon 9200, updated the driver for my VIA motherboard, ran scandisk over a dozen times (I run it everyday anyway) and updated with Windows update. I'm up to 1.566fps, and I think that's because I set the frame rate to "low as hell" or whatever the Last choice is in the demo.

Is there something I'm supposed to set in the "OpenGL" tab of the display for my video card? Or am I the only one that has it running so slow? The only way I can get a decent battle going is to press "w" in the battle screen, which gives me the wire frame. Of course it's extremely difficult to differentiate the units with a black background, but it does run faster. I end up toggling back and forth with the4 background so I can either differentiate the units OR see them move normally.

Anyone have any other suggestions? Other drivers maybe? I'm using Windows 98 if I didn't mention that before. Anyone have it running ok on 98?

Darryl

[Saber Cherry]

You can try the omega drivers... ( http://www.omegacorner.com/ ) since it is possible that ATI stopped updating its 98 drivers when XP arrived, and thus, has no good 98 drivers for the new 9200 series. That's speculation.

I suggest you PM Johan. I would have thought what you've done had a 95%+ chance of resolving the issue, and since it didn't, I can only speculate that the problem is Windows 98.

[ December 10, 2003, 03:20: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Johan K]

I don't know anyone else who has this problem, anyway I think Cherry is the expert when it comes to fixing Dominions frame rates. A Windows reinstallation might help, especially if it is another Version. Does your other OpenGL games (if you have any) run properly?

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
I have a worn old Voodoo 2 card in my older machine. The framerates are just fine (15+ fps with fairly good quality settings) on that, so I don't think you need anything high-end. I don't know what the problem is!

If you have Voodoo 2 card you should also have a secondary card since Voodoo 2 did only 3D rendering and other card was needed for 2D. I'm just curious which other card you have.

Also, Voodoo 2 is far superior in 3D to any S3 Trio card no matter what Version of S3 Trio you have. Voodoo is created strictly for 3D while S3 Trio is basically 2D card that can do 3D but is not biased toward it. Even though they called that card S3 Trio3D/2X don't let that 3D in its name fool you - Voodoo 2 can beat S3 Trio with its hands tied behind its back.

[ December 10, 2003, 14:20: Message edited by: Daynarr ]

[Psitticine]

My really old machine (a dusty 300 mHz P2) has just onboard graphics backed by a PCI Voodoo 2. There's no 2D acceleration on it. Dom II runs slower on it than it does with either of the machines I didn't drag out of the closet to test with, but it still runs OK.

That one isn't even used for rendering. I keep a desktop with a GeForce 2 around to render my work with while I'm using an infinitely newer laptop as my do-everything-else-with system. I only gave Dom II a quick test on the really old one mentioned above, but it ran OK. I didn't hit any huge battles during my brief test though. Maybe next time I hit a super-battle, I'll take the saved game and test it on the ol' beastie.

[Daynarr]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
My really old machine (a dusty 300 mHz P2) has just onboard graphics backed by a PCI Voodoo 2. There's no 2D acceleration on it. Dom II runs slower on it than it does with either of the machines I didn't drag out of the closet to test with, but it still runs OK.

Your on board card is secondary card.
Secondary is relative here. If you judge by importance Voodoo is secondary since your PC can't run with Voodoo 2 alone (if you disable your on-board card in BIOS for example), while your other card alone is enough to run PC (with miserable 3D graphic effects though). However, I called Voodoo primary from 3D point of view where Voodoo is more important and your on-board card is just supplement.
OTOH, Voodoo 3 cards could be used as stand alone cards.

[Darryl]

Ok, I tried the omega drivers from that site and spent the Last hour trying to get something to display in more than 16 COLORS (not 16 bit color, but 16 colors!). The Omega drivers were loaded, but didn't seem to work with my adapter. Went back to the latest ATI drivers (after a few unsuccessful attempts to reinstall) and my system is back to working the way it used to (Still clocking about 1.311fps).

Is there an "OpenGL benchmarking tool" or something that I can use to check is OpenGL is working. I don't have any other OpenGL games.

Darryl

[Saber Cherry]

Are you doing all this with exactly one video card in the computer? Just the new one, and no other video cards? And if so, did you also remove all the drivers for the old video cards (in add/remove programs)?

[Johan K]

Here is a bunch of applications that use OpenGL. If you download a game demo that supports both OpenGL and direct3d then you should be able to see the difference quite easily.

http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/