GPL and RAM

Hi, I currently own a Celeron 300, 32 megs RAM and Monster 3D card. GPL runs very well in training, but in a race with all the competitors, I must remove a lot of details to get a decent frame rate. Will upgrading to 64 megs RAM improve the frame rate? Or is it just like in others Papyrus sims where the RAM is almost only for the replays? Should I just get a Voodoo2 card, even though I don't have the money? Well, anyway I still have a lot of practice to do to be competitive at the novice level! Thanks! J-F P.S. remove NOSPAM from my email.

Have you ever thought of overclocking your CPU? I don't have a celeron, but I've learned from this NG that MANY out there are getting great results overclocking their Celerons. These chips seem to be VERY forgiving when being overclocked. Some of the guys would even run a 300 at 400.

I can't answer your question directly, but I have a related question that maybe some of you people can help me with. I have a Pentium2/266 with 128 MEG of RAM, an ATI Xpert XL 4 MEG PCI video card (Rage Pro), and a Diamond Monster 3D II 12 MEG. My Sound Card is a SB AWE32 PnP. It is running Windows 98. After reading all the praise for GPL in this Newsgroup I decided to download the Demo and check it out. I made sure to download the NEW demo, which is supposed to work OK in Win98. Even with everything I can find turned off, the game looks like a bad sim from about 1993 and I get frame rates (guessing) around 2 fps. I have seen the screenshots and i know this is a nice looking game..what is the problem? I can run ICR2, N2, MTM2, GP2, NFS3 and they all look perfect and smooth with all detail and textures turned up all the way. Is GPL really all that hardware intensive that my system can't struggle through it? Any suggestions would be appreciated. daxe

well, more ram would help for sure but if you have a 300 and not a 300"A" you will not see much improvement as the plain 300 has no L2 cache which gpl uses heavily. the 300A has an L2 cache and runs gpl much better. you should investigate changing your bus speed to overclock your cpu. standard bus is 66mhz and options include 75,83, and 100. as you up the bus speed your whole system will get faster (and hotter) and everything will run faster. also a rendition 2200 video card or voodoo2 would help too. i broke the bank and went from a 200mmx, 64 ram, 4meg video to a 300A ( at 450!!) 128 meg ram and an 8 meg thriller and it is AWESOME!!! well worth every penny.

Quoted text (17 lines)

> Hi, > I currently own a Celeron 300, 32 megs RAM and Monster 3D card. GPL runs > very well in training, but in a race with all the competitors, I must > remove a lot of details to get a decent frame rate. Will upgrading to 64 > megs RAM improve the frame rate? Or is it just like in others Papyrus > sims where the RAM is almost only for the replays? Should I just get a > Voodoo2 card, even though I don't have the money? > Well, anyway I still have a lot of practice to do to be competitive at > the novice level! > Thanks! > J-F > P.S. remove NOSPAM from my email.

If you can get a Voodoo II without any money then I want to know your secret :) In any case, get one. And running under Windows is best done with 64meg ram +.

Quoted text (17 lines)

> Hi, > I currently own a Celeron 300, 32 megs RAM and Monster 3D card. GPL runs > very well in training, but in a race with all the competitors, I must > remove a lot of details to get a decent frame rate. Will upgrading to 64 > megs RAM improve the frame rate? Or is it just like in others Papyrus > sims where the RAM is almost only for the replays? Should I just get a > Voodoo2 card, even though I don't have the money? > Well, anyway I still have a lot of practice to do to be competitive at > the novice level! > Thanks! > J-F > P.S. remove NOSPAM from my email.

-- Byron Forbes Captain of Team Lightning Bolt http://members.tripod.com/~HOSHUMUNGUS and http://www.frontiernet.net/~godsoe/bolt/home.htm

On Mon, 9 Nov 1998 21:10:13 -0500, "Daxe Rexford"

Quoted text (10 lines)

>I have a Pentium2/266 with 128 MEG of RAM, an ATI Xpert XL 4 MEG PCI video >card (Rage Pro), and a Diamond Monster 3D II 12 MEG. My Sound Card is a SB >AWE32 PnP. It is running Windows 98. >After reading all the praise for GPL in this Newsgroup I decided to download >the Demo and check it out. I made sure to download the NEW demo, which is >supposed to work OK in Win98. Even with everything I can find turned off, >the game looks like a bad sim from about 1993 and I get frame rates >(guessing) around 2 fps. I have seen the screenshots and i know this is a >nice looking game..what is the problem?

Since you have the new Win98 demo (the old demo would give slow frame rates with Win98), the next question is if you are sure GPL is using your Voodoo card? In Options/Graphics, make sure the 3Dfx/Voodoo renderer is selected. If it was using your 2D card, it would be pretty slow. NAR Northeast Regional Contest Board site - points and more...

>I currently own a Celeron 300, 32 megs RAM and Monster 3D card. GPL runs >very well in training, but in a race with all the competitors, I must >remove a lot of details to get a decent frame rate. Will upgrading to 64 >megs RAM improve the frame rate? Or is it just like in others Papyrus >sims where the RAM is almost only for the replays? I upgraded my RAM from 32 to 96MB total, and it had no effect on the frame rate per se. Yet, I used to have a problem with "stuttering" graphics (frames kept being displayed for a longer period of time) which is now gone. Prior fiddling with virtual memory settings had no effect, btw. Wait a moment, you're not asking if you should steal the card, are you? ;) I think your machine is one where the old Voodoo 1 could already be a bottleneck. -- Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.