Formerly Babra Posted June 16, 2000 Share Posted June 16, 2000 Upgrading my drivers and directX version to 7.0a has only modestly improved my graphics in CM, but the game no longer runs as smoothly as it did with my outdated driver. Unfortunately, I no longer have the original driver disk for my video card, so I can't go back. My card is an S3 Savage 4 with 32 MB RAM. Computer is a PIII/500. Surely there is enough processing power there to smooth things out -- but I obviously need to optimize something somewhere. Any suggestions? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted June 17, 2000 Share Posted June 17, 2000 Hiya, I really didn't notice too much of a difference with DX7.0a either. I just recently upgraded to a TNTII 32meg from a banshee and I noticed a BIG increase in the graphics but not so much in smoothness. I then went from 64meg RAM to 128meg and suddenly I'm skimming across the battlefield with NO skips or pauses at all! I don't know what your system has but my little story might help you out a bit. btw I am running an AMD K6-2-450 and still have win95(that's gonna change tomorrow though) I hope for even more of an improvement. also, can't you find older drivers on your video card makers website? I got a tip on a great site that offers tips on tweaking 3d performance Tweak3D.net you might try that. ------------------ "It's a hardball world son. We've got to keep our heads until this peace craze blows over." 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Formerly Babra Posted June 17, 2000 Author Share Posted June 17, 2000 hmmm... I'm currently in possession of 64 MB on the main board. Sounds like 128 is the way to go. Okay, thanks for the tip. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted June 17, 2000 Share Posted June 17, 2000 As far as I can tell DirectX 7.x is slower than v. 6.x. A bit of unoptimized code from Microsoft.... an unwanted trade-off for more features. More memory will ALMOST always help. And as Danno said - the tweaking tips at tweak3d.net should help things a little. I'm not sure if PowerStrip will work for you, but it may have an overclocking feature that might work with your video card. You may want to search around for some overclocking utilities that support your video card/video chip. Though you may not be successful at getting more performance by overclocking (very dependant on the quality of your video card's chip and memory). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoffel Posted June 17, 2000 Share Posted June 17, 2000 Danno I have the same amd as you have and also directx7.0 a but with 64 ram. After 5 turns the game crashes notting works anymore. Are you sure an upgrade to 128 will solve this problem? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pfalz XII Posted June 17, 2000 Share Posted June 17, 2000 I'm not an expert, but this sounds like a memory leak to me (ask someone else for the technical explanation, I am out of my league here). Other than buying more RAM, make sure to close up ALL other unneccesary programs before running CM. The only programs that need to be running are Explorer and Systray. This will free up system resources and is much cheaper than buying more RAM. Good luck. ------------------ Formerly known as not THE Charles from BTS 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoffel Posted June 17, 2000 Share Posted June 17, 2000 I closed all applications and had 60% of my systems memory left. Still the game crashed after 5 turns. Can anyone tell me what is wrong? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted June 18, 2000 Share Posted June 18, 2000 Are all video and mouse drivers fully updated? Charles 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted June 18, 2000 Share Posted June 18, 2000 Stoffel, Well, I've never had CM crash at all even before I upgraded. If you only have 60% resources free after closing everything then it doesn't sound right to me. With background programs running with win98, 128meg RAM I have 73% free on the net with netscape, ProDSL, Download Accel. all running too. Like Charles said, make sure you have all the latest drivers installed, run scandisk and defrag and see how that goes. after that you might try getting rid of junk files etc...with a program like system mechanic, but I don't think stuff like that would cause a crash. ------------------ "It's a hardball world son. We've got to keep our heads until this peace craze blows over." 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoffel Posted June 18, 2000 Share Posted June 18, 2000 I have done defrag and cleanup 3 days ago. I willdo it again see what happens now. I am not sure if everything is upgraded to the latest level.I am not sure for my mouse for instance. Can you give me an indication of what I need and where I can find it. Thanks 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philistine Posted June 20, 2000 Share Posted June 20, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stoffel: I closed all applications and had 60% of my systems memory left.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You should have substantially more than 60% free resources. Should be > 90% with nothing running (You should be able to get ~ 94-97% free). You probably have a number of programs running in the background (like virus-checkers, find-fast, etc.) In order to maximize your free resources, your system tray on the task bar should be pretty much empty. Each icon is a program which is running. To see what you have running (and close it down), hit Ctrl, Alt and Delete simultaneously ONCE (hitting it twice in a row reboots the computer). This will bring up a "close program" dialogue. This will show you all the things that are running, taking up resources. The only things that need to be running to play CM are explorer and systray. To close other programs, highlight each one and hit the "end task" button. (After ending each one you will have to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del again to bring the dialogue back). Do this and see what your resources are. It should also run much better without everything running in the background. I would suggest changing your startup (in the startup folder & using the system information tool in Win 98) to get rid of most (if not all) of the programs running at startup. Good luck. --Philistine 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoffel Posted June 20, 2000 Share Posted June 20, 2000 thanks for the reply Philistine but someone else told me that to. I have done that allready and my system now has 85% left which is enough to play CM. I have not deleted the virusscan and two other programs. But there is memory enough left But thanks anyway. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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