jerky graphics

[andygo]

I am playing race driver2 quite a lot at the mo - specially the fford stuff, but find the graphics almost unplayable at times. I have a 2.5 gig athlon, 1gb memory and a radeon 9600.

Any ideas on how to improve the graphics performance?

Not sure if its a total graphics problem as if the car hits the reve limiter the game stutters until I chuck another gear in.

[FourWheelDrift]

What RAM does the 9600 have, and what does Race Driver 2 recommend (not the minimum settings on the game)?

Have you tried turning down the video/graphics settings on the game?

Are you sure the stuttering isn't just cockpit shake when you hit the rev limiter?

[Marc W]

That pc should be able to run that game easily in theory as the specs are way above whats need to run the game. (Even Race driver 3 doesn't ask for as good as that!)

Have you got the most up to date drivers? If so another possibility could be overheating. That game shouldn't really be stressing a pc of that spec though

Edited by Marc W on Monday 8th January 15:18

EDIT; re-reading your post I guess it could also be realated to the sound so it might be worth updating those drivers too. Also make sure the game has had all the patches applied. (Although I can't remember off othe top of my head if Race driver 2 needed any!)

Edited by Marc W on Monday 8th January 15:20

[andygo]

There is no facility to alter the graphics within the game.

My Radeon card has got 256 mb of memory onboard. I would have thought my hardware should easily handle a game of this age. It plays more modern games perfectly.

[Digby]

I think you will find there is a hardware setup section you can launch
before you play.
Go to the start button - programs - codemasters - look for setup and advanced setup etc.
I assume that is what it installs under anyway.

Things like mirrors, shadows, high resolutions, lighting effects, fsaa or aniso filtering
and texture quality can all impact performance.Try messing with any options you see and find
a balance of speed and quality that suits.

I also read this just a moment ago while seeing what patches were available:

"Stuttering frame rate when a controller is unplugged - If you normally have a
controller plugged in to your pc, but have recently unplugged it then you may
experience bad stuttering of the frame rate in the game. This may be caused by
Windows trying to find the unplugged controller. If you experience this
problem, please ensure that you also remove the drivers of any unplugged
controllers prior to running the game."

I'm not sure that will aplly though, such things tend to be included in readme files
for the odd extremely unlucky person rather than the majority of issues.

Edited by Digby on Monday 8th January 15:34

[big_treacle]

Also, try doing a full virus scan, de-spyware, overnight defrag, update all drivers - sound, graphics, motherboard chipset if possible. Kill any unnecessary processes running in the background that might be using your memory & processor. And do as above re. finding & configuring settings in the game. Have a search online - sometimes there are config files for games that you can mess with to get better performance.

Edited to say - race driver 2 I'm sure has a separate application you run for configuring settings as mentioned previously. As a comparison, I had an athlon 2600 with 1Gb & an nvidia 5950 card & ran that game fine.

Edited by big_treacle on Monday 8th January 16:16

[andygo]

Hi Guys,

thanks for your help. Found the seperate setup util and ran that - tweaked everything down 1 click and got the latest soundrivers from Gigabyte and it runs pretty well now - using FRAPS frame rate counter it seems to run at abot 55-60 fps.

Thanks once again for your pointers folks.

Andy