Ns Performance On My Crappy Machine

LittleB

I have a Duron 1.3 with a Voodoo3 2000, and 256 MB RAM.

I run at 640x480 at 16 bit. Game performance is fine, except when there are lots of players on screen. Then it all bogs down to about 4 fps. So, is this a T&L limitation of the cpu, or a fillrate limitation of the videocard? In other words, which should I upgrade first? And, please remember, I don't have alot of cash. So I'm either getting an Athlon XP 1800 cpu, or a Radeon 7000 vid. card.

Also, in co_kestrel, the game lags IMMENSELY. Is this a high-detail map, or what?

Marine0I

<!--QuoteBegin-LittleB+Jun 21 2004, 01:20 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (LittleB @ Jun 21 2004, 01:20 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I have a Duron 1.3 with a Voodoo3 2000, and 256 MB RAM.

I run at 640x480 at 16 bit. Game performance is fine, except when there are lots of players on screen. Then it all bogs down to about 4 fps. So, is this a T&L limitation of the cpu, or a fillrate limitation of the videocard? In other words, which should I upgrade first? And, please remember, I don't have alot of cash. So I'm either getting an Athlon XP 1800 cpu, or a Radeon 7000 vid. card.

Also, in co_kestrel, the game lags IMMENSELY. Is this a high-detail map, or what? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hrmmmm - I really dont know. Honestly, you'd be heaps better of posting your specs in the Off-topic forum and asking for their opinion, I'm sure you'd get heaps more info on upgrading there.

MindFlayer

Try setting higher resolutions - maybe even in 32bit, since Radeons tend to like it more. If it doesn't get any slower, then your bottleneck is probably your CPU.

If it gets a lot more slow, then... well, your best bet it to upgrade your video card, or try some Half-Life tweaks like ati_npatch "0", ati_subdiv "0", gl_max_size "128" etc etc.

About the map co_kestrel, I recall having similar problems in some areas, and also in co_rebirth. So yes, those maps seem to be rather heavy-detailed.

redScare

I'm not an expert, but i've seen NS run on a lower specs PC in higher resolution with no problem, so the first thing you should do is check your video card drivers and update them. If you have good drivers and still get low fps, I THINK it's more of a video card issue (but im not an expert).

But dont be surprised at all if the games runs better ar 800x600 than 640x480 without changing anything, some cards like some res more than others, so try that first.

BTW, Athlon 2800XP and ATI Radeon 9600 cost now the same (100 euros, at least here in spain), so if you upgrade the video card, get that one <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

LittleB

Yeah but a Radeon 7000 is only 20 bucks US, and I only need it for NS.

Dantemss

Ok here's the problems: Voodoos are quite old and they need the 3dfx minigl driver to work properly with half-life. However, Steam has disabled those minidrivers. There is some info somewhere on this forum (use search) about how to make minigl work with steam. Your processor IS rather old, but you should be able to get constant 30 or 60 fps with that. So now it's up to you to decide. Be careful, though, some people complain about some radeons not working correctly with half-life, but I think they are talking about the newer ones.