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Mosman22
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 15
Location: Philadelphia area |
| Athlon 600 w/new GF4 - the detailed results are in! |
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As much as hate to throw another twig on the framerate debate fire, I know some people were curious to hear about the results of my video card upgrade - which was to slap a mega-fast GF4 4200 w/128 MB RAM ($190 after shipping) onto my Athlon 600 w/256 MB RAM as a replacement for my TNT2. So now I have a lowest end processor with a (near) highest end video card. Did it help my Morrowind experience?
First of all let me describe what I had before the upgrade. I was using the safeguard-free executable and had my lighting set to quadratic. My PC was pretty free of memory resident programs and the few I have I would usualy shut down before playing Morrowind. My PC could also probably use an OS reinstall and a defraging. I would run the game is 1024x768 with the viewing distance at 1/3 max and shadows off. With this config I usualy got 7-12 fps outside in towns, 10-15 outside elsewhere, and 20-40 inside a home or cave. I am one of those people for whom ~10 fps is pretty tolerable, atleast for short trips between buildings in the cities, but more clearly would have been nice.
Then last night I installed the new card. After wrestling with some apparent driver issues for about 4 hours (that actualy were related to overclocking software I had been using before called tntclk that confused the heck out of my new chipset  ) I finally got everything back to normal and started up the game. First thing I noticed was that the initial loading screens seemed to go faster than usual. The safguard removal patch had helped too, but now it was even quicker. Loading and saving games also seemed to go faster. I didn't change any settings the first time in and just loaded my latest save which was inside a building in Balmora. Saw the fps counter jumping between 40-60. Nice  Though it wasn't a very spacious or busy building. So I stepped outside. It was dark and rainy, and well, I wasn't getting 40-60 fps. As I wandered around the city the fps were a pretty stable 10-15. The wilderness was 15-25 and inside it rarely went below 30. Next I started playing around with various resolution settings. The 2 highest settings ( I forget, though I don't think they reached 1600x1200) had fps almost identical to what I got at 1024x768. But on my 17" monitor the text was way too small so I went back to my starting res. I also moved my visial depth up to 2/3 max and turned on shadows briefly. The depth didn't seem to have much impact on the fps but I think max shadows did cost me a few.
Next I quit the game and went to the options screen where I could turn on that pixel shading feature. After loading up I ran to the canal and peered in. Nice, if really not as impressive as I had imagined. Though obviously a step up from anything I've seen before with water. As for fps it might have been a frame or 2 slower when looking at water but nothing noticably worse.
Some other differences I've noticed. Entering a new area for the first time seems to go much faster. Perhaps becuase of all the extra and faster video memory. However it also seemed like there were more "video stutters" than I remembered before the upgrade. And when exiting a building I often had to wait through about 2-3 seconds of total blackness before the outside world would appear. Previously the little progress bar might keep me waiting longer but there were no lengthly blackouts between areas. Haven't a chance to play around with AAliasing settings yet or any of the other video driver enhancements.
So what does this all mean? It seems that a big video card upgrade (atleast on an old machine with a slow processor that might have serious bottlenecks) will buy you a few extra fps, but not more than about 20% more. It will however let you set most visual options much higher, improve load times, give you pretty water, and probably help you with other games even more. I also ran the demo of Dungeon Siege I had on my machine which was choppy at 800x600 before and now it ran smoothly at 1024x768 with details on full.
Feel free to discuss what I've observed. Just please try to avoid the topic of whether these fps would be enough for you personaly. There are other topics around here where you can rant about that.
Whew! Long one. I'm off to play some Morrowind... |
Fri May 10, 2002 9:53 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
Yeah, CPU is the bottleneck. I had the same on a mid-range system (1300), changing from a GeForce 3 Ti 200 to a Geforce 4 Ti 4400. Not much added in regards to framerates, but I can squeeze in all detail and beauty without going down
So basically, on my system, the investment was a good one.
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Fri May 10, 2002 9:59 pm |
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Guest
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I concur with Rendelius. There isn't a cpu out there that can currently max out a Geforce 4. (The only way to truely max it out is to run at a rediculous resolution, thus limiting its available bandwidth.)
I'm running on a 2.4A Northwood at 1280x960 with Quinux AA and its smooth as silk. (Geforce 4 Ti 4600)
The Ti 4400 runs pretty smooth on the 1.8A with similar settings.
Greg Hess
3dluvr.com |
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Fri May 10, 2002 11:13 pm |
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