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Mosman22
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 15
Location: Philadelphia area |
| My Morrowind experience on an Athlon 600 with TNT2 |
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Since my PC is closer to the minimum than anyone else I've seen posting about performance around here I thought people might like to hear my experiences with Morrowind.
I'm managing quite well actually. My PC runs off a 1rst generation Athlon 600 with 256 MB of SDRAM and a TNT2 Ultra video card. I last updated my video drivers with the latest Detanator version about 2 months ago. I am running the game in 800x600 which is the res I am used to running all my 3D-based games in. The shadows are off, the AI is about 2/3rds of the way in close, and the viewing distance is set maybe one notch short of the halfway point on the slider. With these settings I get maybe 22 fps indoors and 18 outside. These are estimates but I think fairly accurate ones. There is obviously some jerkiness and lack of total smoothness, but that is fine by me. Atleast in the short run and for an RPG. Would I want Quake3 or a similar game to run that slow? Hell no! But in a game like morrwind that is mostly about exploring and character development it is fine.
One thing I have been doing so far that might be helping (or not, I haven't tried it any other way yet) is to hit cntrl-alt-del before every Morrowind session and end every process except for Explorer and the Systray. I usualy keep my system pretty free of all those hidden, background programs. But I figured every little bit will help in this case.
Another interesting thing I noticed is that the game seems to run much faster starting the second time you play it. Perhaps becuase of caching the areas I have been in before. The first time I played the game I was thinking that it might have been a mistake to try it on my machine. But ever since then it has seemed much smoother and playable.
One more thing... I have a GF4 4200 on order that should hopefully be here by this weekend. Hey, I want to see the extra-ripply water! And I was due for a vid. card upgrade anyway. When it gets here I should be able to tell everyone how much this game REALLY depends on the processor verses the video card.
Mike |
Fri May 03, 2002 6:28 pm |
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iplaygames2
Master of The Realms
Joined: 06 Sep 2001
Posts: 745
Location: Chicago, IL, USA |
Indeed, keep us informed of the processor vs. vid card battle..my upgrade may depend on you! 
Also, glad to hear you have it running on your rig. I have to be honest, when I saw your thread, I figured you'd be flaming it because it wouldn't run at all! I'm happy for you that you got it going. 20 fps isn't so bad, considering all things....most ppl would not agree with me on that point though..
Again, congrats...hope all stays smooth for you!
_________________
Member of the "Fantastic ONE"
(hell, everyone else is a member of something..)
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Fri May 03, 2002 6:34 pm |
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Somnus
Guest
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Nice one bud, good to see someone who doesn't mind a little choppiness. Too many people moan about sub 30 fps.
Thanks for the info, enjoy the game
Somnus |
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Fri May 03, 2002 6:44 pm |
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Guest
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As for stability since there seems to be some debate about that...
I've only played it for about 5 hours (those full-time jobs can really cut into your valuable game playing time) so far but the stability has been fine. Had to change my desktop resolution to 32 bits but after that it has run fine without any crashes. Saw one, brief and wierd visual glitch that never happened again while walking up that lighthouse in the first town.
I'd comment on gameplay too but I'll wait till I log a few more hours. Mostly possitive so far. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 6:46 pm |
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Mosman22
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 15
Location: Philadelphia area |
This damn msg board keeps losing my login! That last post about the stability was by me
Mike |
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Fri May 03, 2002 6:49 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
btw this could be stupid question but what is AI slider you are talking about (I do not have game yet)...AI ussually means artifitial intelingence, but how I can increase/decrease it by slider? |
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Fri May 03, 2002 6:57 pm |
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Mosman22
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 15
Location: Philadelphia area |
The AI Slider is one of the preferences on the options screen in the general preferences section (as compared to say audio or video prefs). I'm not exactly sure what it does but I think it means how far from where your character is do you want the computer to be controlling the AI of wandering NPCs and monsters. So if you set it close they might just be standing there until your are about 20 ft away, while if set to max you can see them wandering around far in the distance. Didn't seem like a very important thing to keep up high and have affect my already limited performance |
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Fri May 03, 2002 7:09 pm |
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iplaygames2
Master of The Realms
Joined: 06 Sep 2001
Posts: 745
Location: Chicago, IL, USA |
That doesn't sound that important to me...
Perhaps that's another feature I can crank down when my copy arrives..
And, as for the boards losing your info, I just leave a cookie on my machine that automatically logs me in each time I hit the forums...toggle it on in your profile, if you wanna..
_________________
Member of the "Fantastic ONE"
(hell, everyone else is a member of something..)
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Fri May 03, 2002 7:12 pm |
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Danicek
The Old One
Joined: 15 Dec 2001
Posts: 5922
Location: Czech Republic |
Ah, I see, thanks for info.
It is surely not very important and it is nice to have such option to improve performance not just a little bit but a lot, because AI is ussually very...
But it would be nice to see that world live all around, but I will need to decrease it also. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 7:14 pm |
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Guest
Guest
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Not entirely positive about this but I am pretty sure the AI slider controls how far away from NPCs/Monsters you can be before they react to you. |
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Fri May 03, 2002 7:37 pm |
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CorIgnis
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 2
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Mosman2,
I have a similiar setup:
Slot1 Athlon 600
256Meg SDRAM
GeForce DDR
Asus K7M
Windows XP
SB128
Morrowind plays decently for me as well. I have the fog set to 1/2, AI 1/3, and shadows off. I have it set on 1024x768. I didn't see much of a difference between that and 640x480, especially outside. I don't know the framerates. So far I've had only 1 crash to desktop and that was when I set the resoultion to 640x480 and the fog distance to the max. I switched it back to 1/2 and haven't had a problem. I only played for about 3 hours.
FYI, if you have the AMD750 chipset you can only run AGP at 1x otherwise the computer will freeze on you. Has to do with power consumption and glitches on the clock line. Another thing, is that i tried a geForce 3 and I saw only about a 20% increase in performance (measured with 3dMark2001). Didn't seem worth the $300 (at that time) to me.
Regards,
CorIgnis |
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Fri May 03, 2002 8:26 pm |
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Guest
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What?
I have a Athlon 750Mhz PC. Why does it only effect that one particular Mhz processor. I thought it was only an issue with certain motherboards. Please explain more or perhaps a few links to info. Thanks.
I can't wait to get this game |
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Fri May 03, 2002 8:36 pm |
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CorIgnis
Village Dweller
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 2
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quote:
Originally posted by Anonymous
What?
I have a Athlon 750Mhz PC. Why does it only effect that one particular Mhz processor. I thought it was only an issue with certain motherboards. Please explain more or perhaps a few links to info. Thanks.
I can't wait to get this game
AMD750 is the name of the chipset not the processor. AMD created the chipset years ago because no one else would build a chipset for the soon-to-be released Athlon processor. Everyone was afraid of Intel. So you are correct--the problem is with only certian motherboards with the AMD750 chipset (Asus K7M).
Regards,
CorIgnis |
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Fri May 03, 2002 11:39 pm |
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