Video Card and frame rates

[Darryl]

Hello everyone. I've never played Dominions before and I'm an admitted Master of Magic addict who has decided to try Dominions II out. I downloaded the demo and have gone through a walkthrough and as I was doing it I noticed that watching my battles was completely unacceptable. The benchmark was 1.266 fps I believe.

Now I'm running a 1.2 Ghz Athlon with 896 MB RAM, so I figure that should be enough there. The video card is an S3 Trio3D/2X. Actually, I run dual monitors, but the one that Dominions would play on is that one (the other one is an ATI TV tuner card - I tried it on that screen as well - similar results).

Now I'm not much of a gamer and my system runs fine with everything else. So if I wanted to get a video card, I need something "with Open GL"? Supporting OpenGL? If so, any suggestions? Anything I should look for? Or is it just that battles are just painfully slow? Also, what kinds of video cards are people using? I have no intentions of getting a video card with 2 Ghz of onboard memory (you know what I mean) but something that makes the battles run more smoothly would be worth it to me. Thanks.

Darryl

Depending on the settings.

The battles are very slow if you have large battles and alot of scripts.

What OS do you run and DirectX Version, both of those affect your Frame Rate on anything on your machine.

[Saber Cherry]

The problem is the S3 card... that sounds pretty ancient, and S3 never made good video chips even back when they were in the biz. And they always seemed to have bad drivers, too.

I have an Nvidia Geforce 4 4600 and get about 50fps (because VSYNC is on). Yes, you need a video card that supports OpenGL, and all modern cards do. But that pretty much limits you to 2 companies, ATI and Nvidia. Any recent card by either company will be fine - a GeForce3, GeForce 4, GeForce 5 (aka GeForce FX), or ATI Radeon 7500 or above. For Nvidia cards, avoid the ones with "MX" in the name.

I would suggest going to http://www.pricewatch.com/ to get a feel for prices, and if you're in the US, going to www.newegg.com to actually buy a card, as newegg is reputable and cheap.

Specific recommendations, in order of what I'd probably buy:

Radeon 9800
Radeon 9700
Radeon 8500
Radeon 9600
Radeon 9500
Geforce FX 5900
Geforce FX 5600
Geforce4 TI 4600
Geforce4 TI 4400
Geforce4 TI 4200
Radeon 9200/9100/9000 (I don't know much about these)
GeForce4 MX 440

Some of these are pretty cheap. There's no sense in blowing over $100 on a video card unless you're going to buy Half Life 2, for example, or play other 3D games (which you probably do not, judging from your card).

-Cherry

P.S. The latest Matrox cards should be fine as well.

P.P.S. "All-in-Wonder" cards support TV's and multiple monitors and stuff. All three companies have cards with gizmos and multimonitor support in their drivers, but I can't advise you in that area. You may also want to try updating the drivers for your current card, though I suspect that's a lost cause.

[ November 22, 2003, 23:26: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Darryl]

Ok, I went to a computer show that is in my area until tomorrow and bought an MSI MX-440-T8X....exactly what you said NOT to get, which I found out when I got back home (I was just looking for Geforce2 or higher). Just out of curiosity, why do you say to avoid the ones with "MX" in their name?

At any rate, I never got the card to work properly in my system. It initialized as a secondary card but never showed the desktop. There was always an error. Tried to install it for about 4 hours. It always initialized for multiple monitors, but never showed the desktop. After that I popped my ancient S3 back in and it worked fine once again.

Guess I'd better check what cards work well with multiple monitors AND OpenGL. For some reason trying to get that other card to work disabled my "TV" part of the other card as well. When I took the MSI card out the TV started working again.

Guess I'll have to try another card.

Darryl

[Saber Cherry]

Well... multiple cards probably don't work too well in this age of AGP. It's best to have one good AGP card that does everything... also, multiple video drivers can conflict. All the ATI All-In-Wonder cards do this kind of stuff (dual monitors, TV in and out) but they are kind of expensive. I know some Nvidia-based cards have TV and multi-monitor support, but I don't know which ones.

Why avoid MX? They are inferior. MX cards are crippled Versions of Nvidia's main cards, and they have an inferior chip and (usually) cheaper components. I generally prefer a high-end previous gen card with good components than a low-end current gen card with crippled chips (like half the pixel pipes) and cheap, inferior components (lower reliability, worse image and signal fidelity).

ATI and Nvidia both make high-end and low-end cards, and sometimes even the high-end ones use crappy components and break or don't work right, but I always avoid the low-end ones. Middle ones are OK, like the GF4TI-4200 which is the bottom of the true GF4 line, but much better than the top of the low-end GF4MX line (the 440).

Nowdays, both companies hide this stuff, and don't stick obvious letters like "mx" or "ve" (value edition) in their products. So Radeon 9800 and 9700 are good, and 9600/9500 are mid-range but use a crippled chip (probly with a half-width memory datapath), while the 9000, 9100, and 9200 I don't know much about but probably use a badly crippled chip and crappy components on the card to lower the price to the minimum.

I wish I could tell you exactly what to buy, but I haven't tracked the market much lately, what with no good demanding 3D games coming out. All I can say for sure is that retail stores rip you off=) A 2-year-old $129 GeForce MX 440 at Best Buy will cost $50 on the internet.

-Cherry

[NTJedi]

Daryll

A quick fix worked for me as I had the frame rates also moving as what you were seeing.

Go into display properties and set your color settings into 16-bit (true color). This worked for me and got the frames moving great !

[Darryl]

NTJedi: Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work for me. 16bit and it still goes about 1.192fps.

Saber Cherry: Went out and got a Radeon 9200 - same results. It says it supports OpenGL and even has a spot for it in the "Display" properties but Dominions battles run at the same slow rate. So I take it Dominions battles only run with a high end Video card? Or should the Radeon 9200 be able to show battles faster?

P.S. - I've been determining my frame rates using "benchmark" in the demo. If this is inaccurate please let me know, although with how slow everything moves (I can 'see' each frame independent of the others) 1.2 fps seems about right.

[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!

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Darryl:
Saber Cherry: Went out and got a Radeon 9200 - same results. It says it supports OpenGL and even has a spot for it in the "Display" properties but Dominions battles run at the same slow rate. So I take it Dominions battles only run with a high end Video card? Or should the Radeon 9200 be able to show battles faster?

No, that should be fine, those are more modern than my video card. The only thing is this: Did you update the drivers? First, go to www.ati.com and download the latest drivers (probably Catalyst 3.9), then uninstall the existing drivers, reboot (it will probably install default VGA drivers), and then install the new drivers.

Want a full description of what I'd do in your shoes? Ok! This is what you should do for unexplained problems in any game, in general. It will probably help in every game and every application, ESPECIALLY if you haven't done any of them in a long time!

1) Run scandisk (in XP, c: drive > properties > tools > check for errors)

2) Defragment (same location)

3) Go to www.windowsupdate.com, and fully update your computer. This may take multiple attempts... I suggest doing XP Service PAck 1 and any Internet Explorer service packs, alone, before anything else. But after those are done, MAKE SURE you have the latest Direct X Version (9.0a? 9.1? I forget) and all the critical updates. You can skip things that sound stupid, like "gives your computer .NET platform development blah blah." or "Lets you make Windows Media 9 movies." Reboot.

4) Install new motherboard drivers. I assume you have a Via-based motherboard? If so, go to www.viaarena.com and download the latest 4-in-1 drivers (probably 4.50), and install them. Reboot twice (rebooting once finishes installation, the second time makes sure it boots normally).

5) Install new video drivers: First, go to www.ati.com and download the latest drivers (probably Catalyst 3.9), then uninstall the existing drivers, reboot (it will probably install default VGA drivers), and then install the new drivers. Reboot twice (rebooting once finishes installation, the second time makes sure it boots normally).

6) Install new sound card drivers. If you use onboard sound, Windows Update may provide this for you... otherwise, try the manufacturer. For SoundbLasters, go to www.creative.com. Reboot twice (rebooting once finishes installation, the second time makes sure it boots normally).

7) Run scandisk again.

8) Try playing the game.

I give this a 90% chance of eliminating the problem, but it will be a lot easier to solve if you try all this and there is still a problem, so please repost, if so! This is all stuff I would suggest even if you DIDN'T have any trouble, as it is good maintenance, and should be done quarterly, or bi-yearly at a minimum.

-Cherry

[Darryl]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
No, that should be fine, those are more modern than my video card. The only thing is this: Did you update the drivers? First, go to www.ati.com and download the latest drivers (probably Catalyst 3.9), then uninstall the existing drivers, reboot (it will probably install default VGA drivers), and then install the new drivers.

I'll try that.

1) Run scandisk (in XP, c: drive > properties > tools > check for errors)

Do this a couple times a week. No problems as of earlier tonight.

2) Defragment (same location)

My drives are pretty carved up (drive letters go up to "L") for optimization of the hard drive. The most fragmented any drive is is 1.7%.

3) Go to www.windowsupdate.com, and fully update your computer.

Always been pretty wary of this one since things have spontaneously stopped working after this in the past. Plus I'm using Win 98 due to a pro soundcard that STILL has crappy drivers for XP.

4) Install new motherboard drivers. I assume you have a Via-based motherboard?

WAAAY to lazy right now to go and turn the computer on it's side, although I'm not sure this is the issue. TV works fine (got a separate TV Tuner card) and other 3d games (like NBA live) work just fine.

5) Install new video drivers: First, go to www.ati.com and download the latest drivers (probably Catalyst 3.9)

I'll try this.

6) Install new sound card drivers. If you use onboard sound

I despise onboard sound. Got 2 sound cards, a SoundbLaster Live and a Delta-44 (for pro audio recording). Both work just fine. I also run Dominions with sound turned off, so this couldn't be slowing the game down if sound is off in the demo preferences.

7) Run scandisk again.

Granted, haven't run scandisk in a few hours...

8) Try playing the game.

Haven't tried the new video drivers, but one thing worked...sort of. Pressing "w" in the replay gives the "wireframe" and takes out the background, but the battle speeds up. I'll try the drivers and let you know.

Darryl