Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements

Did anyone at the show ask about the jerky frame rates problems we have on MSTS-1 . Did they do anything to fix the problem on MSTS-2Lets hope
Sol

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RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Pkman, May-20-03, 10:46 AM, (1) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, sstyrnol, May-20-03, 10:57 AM, (2) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-20-03, 12:39 PM, (3) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, wacampbell, May-24-03, 07:54 PM, (55) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, urslow, Jun-23-03, 09:30 PM, (71) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, Jun-23-03, 10:52 PM, (72) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, rdawes, May-20-03, 04:42 PM, (4) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, adamw, May-20-03, 04:59 PM, (5) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-20-03, 09:58 PM, (6) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, crow357, May-20-03, 10:09 PM, (7) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, adamw, May-21-03, 00:46 AM, (8) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-21-03, 04:07 AM, (9) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, probinson1974, May-21-03, 04:19 AM, (10) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-21-03, 10:19 AM, (11) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, JBP, May-21-03, 12:01 PM, (13) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, probinson1974, May-22-03, 03:37 AM, (26) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, JBP, May-22-03, 08:51 AM, (27) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, JBP, May-21-03, 10:47 AM, (12) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, niknak, May-21-03, 02:27 PM, (14) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-21-03, 02:59 PM, (15) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-21-03, 03:16 PM, (16) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, niknak, May-21-03, 04:13 PM, (17) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-21-03, 04:44 PM, (18) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, AlphaMaster, May-21-03, 05:48 PM, (19) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, heffed, May-21-03, 11:13 PM, (23) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, JBP, May-21-03, 07:21 PM, (21) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, adamw, May-21-03, 06:37 PM, (20) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, May-21-03, 10:04 PM, (22) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, adamw, May-21-03, 11:52 PM, (24) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, heffed, May-22-03, 03:13 AM, (25) RE: Prerender limit found!, JBP, May-22-03, 09:39 AM, (28) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-22-03, 11:41 AM, (29) RE: Prerender limit found!, JBP, May-22-03, 01:45 PM, (30) RE: Prerender limit found!, niknak, May-22-03, 02:59 PM, (31) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-22-03, 03:12 PM, (32) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-22-03, 05:34 PM, (33) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-22-03, 05:50 PM, (34) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-22-03, 08:11 PM, (35) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-22-03, 09:05 PM, (36) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-23-03, 02:45 AM, (37) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-23-03, 05:51 AM, (38) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-23-03, 10:59 AM, (39) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-23-03, 11:18 AM, (40) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-23-03, 02:44 PM, (41) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-23-03, 09:31 PM, (42) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-23-03, 11:05 PM, (43) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-24-03, 01:18 AM, (44) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-24-03, 03:40 AM, (45) RE: Prerender limit found!, Koziolean, May-24-03, 04:02 AM, (46) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-24-03, 05:03 AM, (47) RE: Prerender limit found!, JBP, May-24-03, 10:05 AM, (48) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-24-03, 11:15 AM, (49) RE: Prerender limit found!, JBP, May-24-03, 11:59 AM, (50) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-24-03, 12:01 PM, (51) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-24-03, 02:33 PM, (52) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-24-03, 04:39 PM, (53) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-24-03, 07:47 PM, (54) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-24-03, 08:22 PM, (56) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-24-03, 11:12 PM, (57) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-25-03, 02:03 AM, (58) RE: Prerender limit found!, probinson1974, May-25-03, 03:28 AM, (59) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-25-03, 09:49 AM, (60) RE: Prerender limit found!, niknak, May-25-03, 12:18 PM, (61) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-25-03, 02:52 PM, (62) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-25-03, 03:35 PM, (63) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-25-03, 04:28 PM, (64) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-25-03, 05:09 PM, (65) RE: Prerender limit found!, heffed, May-25-03, 06:09 PM, (66) RE: Prerender limit found!, adamw, May-25-03, 11:26 PM, (67) RE: Prerender limit found!, Bing, May-26-03, 10:24 AM, (68) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, spot99, Jun-21-03, 06:56 PM, (69) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, Jun-22-03, 06:20 PM, (70) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, adamw, Jun-24-03, 09:42 AM, (73) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, Jun-24-03, 03:53 PM, (74) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, buzzbenz, Jun-24-03, 04:54 PM, (75) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, Jun-24-03, 06:52 PM, (76) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, buzzbenz, Jun-25-03, 02:36 AM, (77) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, Jun-25-03, 03:27 AM, (78) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, JBP, Jun-26-03, 12:54 PM, (81) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Chessie System, Jun-25-03, 09:13 PM, (79) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, adamw, Jun-26-03, 01:00 AM, (80) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Chessie System, Jun-26-03, 02:19 PM, (82) RE: Frame rates, MSTS2, jerky train movements, Bing, Jun-26-03, 02:56 PM, (83)

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LAST EDITED ON May-20-03 AT 10:47 AM (EDT)

I hope they fix this problem , when msts2 is out Frame rate depend on the video Card , right ??? Pkman Mp 777.00
Jesus is Lord of Lords
& King of Kings .

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Not solely! It also depends on the way, a given program handles the graphics. I guess you could improve the performance by a sleeker design of the algorithms themselves. Look at programs like Ghost recon or Trainz. They do provide better graphics than MSTS does (IMO), however they are not as jerky.

---
Sebastian
sebastian.styrnol@gmx.de

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Yes, and Trainz is also OpenGL. Per other postings, to date I have not seen a single word on this topic. Direct3D or OpenGL - I know, I know. OpenGL for MSTS2 is about as likely as me dating Kathleen Turner. But one can dream, can't one?Bing

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Trainz uses DirectX - not OpenGL.

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Trainz does have it's problems with stuttering or jerking, and I have a pretty good machine. If they can get the stuttering down a bit, then Trainz just might gain a few more fans.

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Yes - I gave it up for that reason, along with a few others. I don't know what kind of high end machine some of those layouts were created for, it certainly wasn't my system, that much I know. OpenGL is superior to D3D, but it has to be done as well as MOHAA, RCW and others. Another reason I stopped using Trainz - this may have subsequently been straightened out - was the lack of any kind of checking of layouts posted by third parties. One of the worst crashes I have ever had in years of computing (started from the DOS command line, years before Windows) was from a Trainz fan layout. By the time it was done, there were literally hundreds of pieces of files all over the place, rather seriously corrupted game files, a mess which took me hours to clean up. Wasn't worth it. Haven't been back. I think Auran are useful if, in effect, they build a competitive fire under MS to get MSTS2 done fairly soon - hopefully done right, but with Kuju at the controls, I am not getting my hopes up. Bing

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For PKMAN frame rates don't only depend on the video card but mainly on your hard-drive and your motherboard bus speed.In my personal quest for great frame rates I have upgraded almost everything to smooth out my frame rates and now achieve between 28-30 FPS in open areas and 18-23 in populated areas with my PIII-600 CPU on an ASUS P2-99 MB. My last challenge was to add a wide SCSI card with a 68 pin 10k rpm SCSI hard drive. Boy does MSTS ever load fast and my stuttering has stopped although I still get a bit of hesitation when an AI train is approaching. This was my last upgrade until I find out what MSTS2 requires.Bob

Bob Dawes

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LAST EDITED ON May-20-03 AT 05:00 PM (EDT)

>Boy does MSTS ever load fast and
>my stuttering has stopped although I still get a bit of
>hesitation when an AI train is approaching. >
>Bob This "hesitation" or short term frame rate drop cause this annoying
vision of jerkiness in the game. I don't think there is a hardware based cure for this insufficient graphics engine. Maybe Cray Supercomputer. I have P4 3.06 GHz on Asus P4T533-C with 512 MB RAMBUS
memory and GeForce 4 Ti4600 and this hardware can't cope with MSTS.
While examining carefully the first movies of MSTS 2 taken with home video equipment,it seems to me that this time Kuju programmers achieved the goal in seriously improved graphics engine.Even the animated people are moving rather smooth, and this is from early beta version.Adam

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Adam - 1) Make sure your BIOS aperture rate is correct.
2) Turn off VSync
3) Set Frames Rendered Ahead to Zero.You might be surprised. Worth a try. Bing

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Tried that. Didn't make one bit of difference.

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LAST EDITED ON May-21-03 AT 00:47 AM (EDT)

>Adam -
>
>1) Make sure your BIOS aperture rate is correct.
>2) Turn off VSync
>3) Set Frames Rendered Ahead to Zero.
>
>You might be surprised. Worth a try.
>
>Bing My friend,
BIOS aperture set to 256.
VSync and Frames Rendered Ahead - Where those settings are.
I don't find it in Detonator control panel.Adam

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Tweaks like this work for some, not for others. Works great for me. Totally cured the infernal stuttering.1) BIOS aperture most likely ought to come down. Play-for-blood gamers set it no higher than 128, but also try 64. I settled on 128 for my system. 256 is definitely too high, mine got that way by choosing "Top Performance" in the Gigabyte GA-7DX+ BIOS. Not a good move but didn't realize it had happened.2) You open the GeForce panel by right clicking on the desktop, choosing Properties, Settings, Advanced and you should see the GeForce tab. In the Direct3D panel you will see more buttons to click, one of them should open a panel with VSync and Frames Rendered AHead. Try VSync OFF and Frames AHead set to ZERO. Don't know what you mean by Detonator Control Panel, the panel will be GeForce - 3 or 4 - you have a Ti-4600, ought to be no problem finding VSync and Frames Rendered Ahead. If the GeForce tab doesn't show up when you open Advanced Settings, it probably means you somehow did not install RunDLL32.exe NVQTwk or equivalent - aka NVCplDaemon. If youi need to turn it on, assume you know how to use MSConfig.exe, the option ought to be in there. You have it enabled on boot for it to work. Occasionally this gets "deselected" or turned off. If the settings don't work, put'em back to where you had'em. There are no guarantees of improved performance. The above has worked extremely well for a number of users, not at all for others. Bing

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Thanks bing for that insight, I got n actual overal system performance boost. I have a Soyo P4VSA 1.8 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB of RAM,nVidia GeForce MX 420 DDR 64MB AGP Video Card, I must say the overall boost is awesome, even in most extensive areas of NEC 4.0 (Which is a Frame Rate Killer ) I see the benefits of going into the BIOS an making those Critical Revisions.
P Robinson

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Glad to hear it. The feedback is a little better than 50-50 currently. Slightly more than half who do the tweaks are getting an increase in performance. I don't think you would have done the VSync and Frames Rendered Ahead in the BIOS: I haven't heard of the BIOS yet where you do those two, though maybe Soyo really IS different. The aperture setting is definitely BIOS country, and it seems to have a lot of effect. I knew this all along, but for reasons I can't enumerate I didn't really look at the Gigabyte GA-7DX settings. Almost everyone says 256 is too high, but I'll bet sooner or later someone will come up with 256 as their best setting. Bing

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Yo:), Bing- As you suggested, have looked around on the Guru3D site and as you also said- lots to digest there! They discuss several things the MX series dont do, but so far no direct reference to frame rendering ahead. Wonder if P(above post) just changed the AGP Ap. in bios? Hope he has a moment to reply.
Thanks
Jack

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Sorry for the confusion that I caused in the earlier post, Jack I did set the AGP Ap in the BIOS, I also downloaded GeForce Tweak Utility from guru3D I am acheiving between 25-30 fps and I have to tell you guys thanks for ther insight to get a utility to unleash the power of my VGA Card.P Robinson

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Thanks for clearing that one up. As said before, Bing has done a good thing coming up with these tweeks. Still some interesting things to learn in this sim- then here comes No. 2!!
Regards
Jack

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Have been following Bing's posts here too, and am curious if you found a way to set the render ahead "off" with your GF4 MX420 card?
I have not been able to change the "render" on my MX420. Maybe you made changes in the bios only? We suspect that this function is preset on these low end MX cards but cant prove it. We were able to adjust the vsync. Thanks for any thoughts you might have.
Jack

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Bing, I'm probably being real thick here but when I select my Nvidia Ti4600 properties I can't see frames rendered ahead anywhere. Under 3D I've got fog table,mipmapdetail level, and PCI texture memory size. I found vertical sync under open GL settings and I've made that always off. Drivers are the latest 44.03. Also, any chance of a quick idiot's guide to finding the bios aperture in order to change this?Regards, Nick (UK)

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LAST EDITED ON May-21-03 AT 03:03 PM (EDT)

Re the GF4 MX420 card, though it may depend to a certain extent upon the drivers, as I understand the situation some features of the Ti-4200/4400/4600 series are not available. All you can do is try - and set up RivaTuner properly: 1) Make sure when it installs that it runs its own, propreitary system check. 2) Make sure you go to "Power User" and open the matched database for your driver. This is VERY important. 3) accessing the D3D and OGL settings are NOT from the top little triangle on the RT main interface. The top button won't allow you to do the D3D tweaks.Access from the second little triangle next to "Detonator XP detected ..." and "Customize ..". NOte: 44.03 drivers are not supported by RT Candidate 12.4, you can do the system and global tweaks which ought to include VSync and Frames Ahead, but not the fancy stuff in the presets. RT usually waits a month or two before adding new drivers, one reason I am going to stay with 43.51 for present.Nick - Consult your mobo manual. This will tell you how to access the BIOS settings page when you are booting. Mine is done by initiating a cold start and immediately holding down the Delete button. From there, I get a page that looks strangely like DOS, despite it being XP (Gasp!). There is a a list of sections to open, one of them is " Advanced Chipset Features". In this section aperture settings are found - it varies a lot by processor, mobo and who made the chip, INtel or AMD. Yours will have this capability, I know it does, you'll have to do some reading or contact the vendor. I get a wide range of aperture choices from my GigbyteGA-7DX+ and AMD XP12000+ - 256 aperture is way too high. Guru3D posters bring in settings of 128 and 64 - if you can, try both. Nick, you have got to be able to see the VSync and Frames Rendered Ahead, I don't think 44.03 drivers turned this off. I have a Visiontek Ti-4400, which is basically the same as a Ti-4600, clocked a little lower and lacking some TV / VDR inputs, otherwise it is the same card. First of all, did you push ALL the buttons? If you did and still can't find VSync and Frames Ahead, download RivaTuner from Guru3D, install it and from there you can do the tweaks. NOte: NVHardPage is an extremely useful little utility, also freeware, I ran it just once and it added several choices to the nVidia "Properties" panels. Apparently HardPage unlocks some registgry settings which are not "on" when the graphics card Tweaker is set up. Please don't ask why nVidia doesn't want us to have the ability to use these settings from the start. I cannot answer that.Bing

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Question: Would a section in the Train-Sim FAQ on the VSync, Frames Ahead, and aperture settings be helpful? We seem to be getting more activity than I thought at first. Died down a day or two, then came roaring back. Remember, the settings and tweaks are absolutely CPU, mobo, OS and graphics card / graphics driver specific. All that anyone can do is try the suggested settings. If they don't work, go back to your original settings. Nothing suggested here is going to wreck your computer: If that happens it wasn't because of a different aperture setting, or the fact you had VSync turned off and Frames Ahead set to zero. That just doesn't happen. Mess around with the registgry, don't make a backup - on in the case of WinXP a System Restore Point - and you can have a real problem. Aside from not wanting to get into the reg, strictly a personal choice, every decent Reg editor I have seen makes an automatic backup of the settings you just changed. And a full reg backup is always available, so there is protection for goofs. Sure, I've messed up the reg a couple times, but backups and System Restore quickly restored me to the conditions prior to the goof.Would a permanent section in the FAW be worthwhile?Bing

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Yo Bing! Thanks for the quick reply. Went into bios and found aperture was set at 64 so upped it to 128 and will monitor msts performance. I have 768 ram and a Ti4600 so maybe 256 might prove to be even better. I will have to download RivaTuner or similar as I really cannot find frames ahead. When I click on the videocard a list of 6 or so headings opens up on the left hand side and I've investigated every one to no avail. Needless to say I agree with your idea of a tutorial!Regards, Nick (UK)

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LAST EDITED ON May-21-03 AT 04:47 PM (EDT)

Ok, Nick. Stay with it. I doubt 256 aperture setting will improve performance. Doesn't work that way, instead it may degrade performance, which 256 was doing with my system.Something must have happened when your nVidia control panel was installed. Or, the new drivers took out the panel, but I have not yet heard of that happening. No question you ought to be seeing VSync at minimum; some card / driver combinations don't show Frames Ahead. But your card was top of the line a year ago, no skimping on features that I have heard about. Get RivaTuner - if you are using 44.03 drivers, you won't be able to open the matching database but you can use it to manage the other settings, which tend to be system or global anyway, hopefully independent of specific driver settings. Don't overlook nVHardPage -its a neat little freeware utility which just might unlock VSync setting for you. Enabling "CoolBits" might get you there. However it appears it probably won't do anything for the Frames Rendered Ahead settings.I am not really certain why some settings are available to some users and not for others, when it is the same graphics card. Per previous, the Ti-4600 is really a Ti-4400 souped up and offering additional features, which by themselves have nothing to do with game performance.We learn as we go along, let me know how it is going. Bing

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Bing & all,
As far as I know the AGP aperature should be no more than HALF of the TOTAL SYSTEM RAM. And the reason the BIOS looks alot like DOS is because it is NOT contained on the hard drive, and thus it is not operating system dependant. The BIOS is contained in ROM on the MOTHERBOARD.

Danny - Pittsburgh

There's a light at the end of every tunnel, just pray it's not a train.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" - James Bond (Die Another Day)

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>Bing & all,
>As far as I know the AGP aperature should be no more than
>HALF of the TOTAL SYSTEM RAM. Yes. In fact, if you have a lot of RAM installed. Half is generally too much.128MB (as Bing suggests) should be the highest you need to set your aperture. Too high a value usually decreases performance.Be sure sure to test your system specifically, but don't pump your aperture just because you have a lot of RAM.My system has 1.2GB of PC2100 DDR SDRAM. (cas222) Setting my aperture at 256MB costs me 50 points on my 3DMark03 score. 128MB is also the setting most vid card manufacturers suggest.>And the reason the BIOS looks
>alot like DOS is because it is NOT contained on the hard
>drive, and thus it is not operating system dependant. The
>BIOS is contained in ROM on the MOTHERBOARD. Hmm... guess I missed the post where someone was confused about this.
-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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Hi Nick
As you can see from a couple of these posts, and as Bing has said, you are not alone in not being able to find frames ahead. We will be interested to learn if Rivatuner helps in your quest. It didnt with me. My card is only a GF4 MX420, as stated above and when looking in the tabs ( from desktop right click start- not Rivatuner) have only the vsync settings- no sign of frames ahead setting. Same when Rivatuner is used (with 43.51 drivers and RT database used.) Could operating system play a part? Using XP Prof here. Hard to imagine it would impact Rivatuner but have been surprised plenty before!Bing--Sure think your FAQ or other perm. how to for this would be very helpful
Regards All
Jack

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LAST EDITED ON May-21-03 AT 06:38 PM (EDT)

>Adam -
>
>1) Make sure your BIOS aperture rate is correct.
>2) Turn off VSync
>3) Set Frames Rendered Ahead to Zero.
>
>You might be surprised. Worth a try.
>
>Bing OK, Even Aperture should be 50% of the total installed memory, I reduced to 128.
Installed Detonator 42.51 which are among the fastest.
Found VSync and changed to "Off by default"
Didn't find Frames Rendered Ahead in any place.
Running Pro Train 3 with all setting at 85%, no shadows of any kind,
1024x756x32.
Framerate: 60 with occasional dropout down to 44.
Summing up: There is significiant improvement under this set up,
It is impossible to totally eliminate the dropouts in FPS.
Waiting for a better video card and hesitating about GeForce FX 5900 Ultra.
Thank you BingAdam

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LAST EDITED ON May-21-03 AT 10:10 PM (EDT)

Adam - That's an interesting formula to determine aperture. Good place to start, however I would not be afraid to try the next lowest, which would most likely be 64 in your BIOS. I think we agree at this point that 256 is too high - for MSTs. Not, for instance, MOHAA, or even RCW. We know MSTs is different.Give RivaTuner a trial run, you should be able to set the Frames Rendered Ahead (aka "Prerendered") from the RT "Customize". Drivers aren't fast or slow, they enable certain features in graphics chipsets or they don't, the software designers can forget all kinds of things when doing drivers, there is a long history of that. I don't think I have seen a single graphics card driver for which users agreed. If you hang around the Guru3D forum you will see the exact, same process with the release of every "updated" driver: First user says its pretty good, he got better benchmarks, the next guy says it sitnks and he is going back to his former driver, the next poster says its about the same in fps but he likes the lighting better. Never fails. Try a driver. If it works for you, fine, use it, if it doesn't get rid of it via Detonator Destroyer (Win98) or roll back via winXP System Restore, or use NFR (Nasty File Remover) for WinXP. I wouldn't expect to ever get 60 fps for every minute of every route in MSTS, it just wouldn't happen. Depends upon scenery, equipment poly count, AI traffic, other factors. Repeat: It isn't the fps, its the way your system renders the graphics. 18 fps can be as smooth as silk, no jerkiness or stuttering whatsoever, I have achieved that in Marias Pass 3.1 in the problem areas with very minor exceptions. At 1600 X 1200 X 32. Decided long ago I will live or die with the best graphcis settings. Everything else maxed except a slight rolloff on Terrain Detail Error. No shadows, not specular lighting (don't like the looks of it). Otherwise, all up, all settings max. Sounds to me as if you have a very good rig right now. You can buy a better card, but it might not make MSTS run better. Your CPU, bus and the rest of it might be pushing the data at max right now. I've had that happen and realized I had to go to a better mobo, CPU, bus, the whole nine yards. Am not saying that with your rig you'll have to go to that extreme - what I am saying is don't be surprised if you lay out $300. for a great new card and MSTS1 graphics are no better than what you have now. MSTS2 we don't know about, I would wait to see.Try to get the Frames Rendered Ahead down to a setting of zero or one, see if that isn't even better. I'm pleased that you've had good results thus far. Mostly, the feedback has been postitive. We'll probably come up with something to add to the Train-Soim MSTS FAQ, it seems to be a favorite topic now. Thanks everyone for your feedback. Keep those cards and letters coming in.Bing

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>Give RivaTuner a trial run, you should be able to set the
>Frames Rendered Ahead (aka "Prerendered") from the RT
>"Customize".
>Bing,
Many thanks, really interesting stuff.
I've installed Riva Tuner 2.0 but not find the above mentioned Frames Rendered Ahead option. Where exactly it is located.Thanks again.Cheers.Adam

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>Drivers aren't fast or slow, Yes and no.The drivers themselves aren't any quicker obviously, but if they've figured out a more efficient way to interface your system with certain processess of the vid card, they can indeed increase performance. Net effect = speed.-Jeff

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Thanks once again, Bing, for going through these tweeks. Your "aka prerender" did it for me. The Vsync tab also included a setting for "Prerender limit"(using rivatuner). Was set at 3, changed it to 0 and will report back after running trains a bit. First short run seemed improved as far as jerk/shudder/etc fun. At least we know the MX series do allow the frame ahead tweek-thank yo.
Jack

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I was attempting a joke about what the user sees on the screen when the BIOS setup is accessed. Not a great joke, I understand that, it was a poke at MS who have periodically announced the death of DOS. Adam - The Frames Rendered Ahead should be located on the same panel as the VSYnc control, maybe elsewhere. Look through ALL the panels, see if you can find it.Some setups don't show it, possibly the verison of the driver you have disabled the control. Hard to say.Yes, drivers can make a graphics card run faster and maybe better. But it is the basic chip on the card which does it, along with circuitry and memory on the card. If the design of the card is lacking in one way or another you can tweak and change drivers until the cows come home and never improve performance. What I really should have said is: Drivers sometimes make better performance possible, sometimes make it worse, sometimes do nothing new. The user has no way of predicting which it will be. I have rolled back or uninstalled more drivers than I kept. Presently using 43.51 for WinXP, Visiontek Ti-4400. They seem to be about as good as any, will not go to the 44.03 until RT issues an update which includes a database for the 44.03.
I have noticed that nVHardPage, as one example, will show VSync on my XP system, but it will not show Frames Ahead. RT does both, as does the nVidia panel in the desktop Properties utility. No idea - absolutely none - why this happens. Some MX installation - driver combinations enable the control, others simply do not. Try to locate it, is all we can do.Same applies with aperture settings. Half the systrem memory as a guide is fine, but wouldn't do anything for my Win98SE system, where the BIOS aperture settings goes to 64 and that is that. Higher is not necessarily better, try different settings. So we're running about the same: A little better than half of the users who have located Frames Rendered Ahead have reported better performance with it set to zero. Roughly the same for VSync, but it really is hard to tell without getting into monitor refresh rates, locking the refresh rate versus allowing it to go dynamic, specific applications and lots of other parameters. Again: Try these tweaks, if they don't work go back to your original settings. Bing

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Oh-Oh Never mind-back to reading and not talking for me

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Yo Bing!! Finally found the elusive frames ahead courtesy of Rivatuner. Changed it from 3 to 0 and will see how things go. BTW I've discovered that having antialias on means that if I minimise msts and then full size it again I get all kind of weird colours and black unreadable text. (This is on the screen where you choose which route etc to run.) Oh well, such is msts.Regards, Nick.

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What can I say, a big salute to you my friend.
At the beginning I was a little bit sceptic about possibility to somehow improve the problem of pausings. After using RT I take my hat off. I tried all four combinations among Prerender Limit and VSync and found that both "off" giving the smoothest ride. Of course, there are still some choppy scenes, but RT tweak reduced it by 60%.
As per new video card, I was on back order for Radeon 9800Pro, but cancelled and wait to see what will bring the final version of nVidia GeForce FX.Best regards,Adam

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I'm happy when I can help in any way possible. Been associated with gamers for over 40 years, they're mostly a fine group of people. Giving back something to gaming is important to some of us, it is what makes me happiest of all. I wouldn't count NVidia down and out, not just yet. Early reports of the new FX entry are encouraging, lots will happen in the next few months. I will probably go for a new mobo, faster Athlon and memory to match, then wait on the vid card, The Visiontek Ti-4400 has thus far taken everything the Athlon XP2000+ has thrown at it, with no signs of stress. One indicator of this is that overclocking the Ti-4400 doesn't bring much in the way of improvement, other than smoothing out the odd texture here or there, but nothing to write home about. More likely it gets me a BSOD.Overclocking the Athlon without getting into fancy coolers and such can be risky and similarily not truly productive. Does nothing to handle the lurch factor from the HD loading, with the stuttering cured there is not much to gain from CPU OC.Being seemingly at the system limits, I will go for a better Gigabyte mobo and an Athlon XP2800 (the 3000 is out of my class). But that won't be right away - Intel and AMD are gong to be throwing even more punches at each other, meaning it is possible that in a couple months the XP3000 will be financially feasible for me.Looks like it will be autumn and about the time MSTS2 is available.Bing

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Well, I came to a sad conclusion that investing in faster CPU doesn't help at all. I've upgraded from P4 2.26 to 3.06 and it didn't improve the MSTS frame rate. Of course, when I see those benchmarks of Radeon 9800 Pro and lastly GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, then
my Ti4600 is far,far behind them in every aspect and category.
My wishfull expectations are mostly connected with real improvment
of the graphics engine, other eyecandies like animated people are rather secondary. Of course I'll be very glad to have a more realistic level of simulation which will include also animated people but first of all, the smooth performance.Adam

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>Being seemingly at the system limits, I will go for a better
>Gigabyte mobo and an Athlon XP2800 (the 3000 is out of my
>class). But that won't be right away - Intel and AMD are
>gong to be throwing even more punches at each other, meaning
>it is possible that in a couple months the XP3000 will be
>financially feasible for me. Actually, if you can get your hands on a 2800+ with the throroughbred core, it actually out performs the 3200+ (supposedly the fastest processor anywhwere) with the barton core in many benchmarks. (10 out of 18 in the review at Tomshardware.com)They are hard to find because they sold out quickly, but you can still find them.-Jeff

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Jeff - Are you describing the XP2800+ processor? Or a different one at the same speed? I find lots of this CPU available, though I can't find a reference to the Thoroughbred core. Bing

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LAST EDITED ON May-23-03 AT 02:58 AM (EDT)

>Jeff - Are you describing the XP2800+ processor? Or a
>different one at the same speed? I find lots of this CPU
>available, though I can't find a reference to the
>Thoroughbred core. Yes, the XP2800+. There were two versions produced. The Thoroughbred "B" core which was fairly limited production run. The current 2800+ in production is the newer "Barton" core. In general, you will find these slighty less in price than an XP3000+, and quite a bit cheaper than the 3200+'s. The 3000+ like the 3200+ has a Barton core and can be outperformed by the 2800+ with the thoroughbred core. Some places will charge more for them because they are quickly becoming a rare breed.A search for 2800+ thoroughbred will turn up several hits on froogle.
http://froogle.google.com/Watch out though because there are some sites that haven't been updated and the processors are out of stock. But there are still some to be found.You can compare benchmark results of an extremely large cross section of CPU's at Tom's Hardware.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-22.htmlAnd here's an interesting article on the 3200+'s performance. It also mentions the 2800+ thoroughbred's performance advantage in many benchmarks. (10 out of 18 tests)
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030513/index.html
-Jeff

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Thanks for the info, Jeff. I buy from Mbx - Motherboard Express - a vendor and custom builder in Wauconda, Illinois. Their inventory, which is usually accurate, shows the XP2800+ in stock. Are you saying stocks of the XP2800+ are going to run out soon? I should get one before they are all gone, etcetera, etcetera, and so forth? AGuru3D tested this one last year, it came out quite well. Those benchmarks are interesting, seems the 2800 comes out as well or better than the XP3000. For a hundred bucks less - which makes it a genuine bargain in my book. I didn't dredge the entire collection of tests: Does the XP2800 take well to overclocking? I think maybe this one will push enough data at
the Ti-4400 to be worth considering. Am thinking I might as well pop also for a newer mobo, the Gigabyte GA-7DX+ got a rave review from the Guru3D guy, he positively drooled over it. But - newer and probably better BIOs compared to last year, I would think. There's a tweak or two I would like to do which I can't with the 7DX, so I am obviously talking myself into the deal. Probably a Gig of RAM, too. Why not, we only live once. Bing

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>Are you saying stocks of the XP2800+ are going to run out
>soon? I should get one before they are all gone, etcetera,
>etcetera, and so forth? No, there are plenty of Barton core XP2800+'s, the thoroughbred core 2800+'s are the ones disappearing quick.>I didn't dredge the entire collection of tests: Does the
>XP2800 take well to overclocking? I think maybe this one
>will push enough data at
>the Ti-4400 to be worth considering. If you're looking at overclocking, the Barton core is probably the one you want consider. Overclocking is where the barton's come into their own. This is when AMD's performance numbers actually make sense.-Jeff

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I know I confuse easily, which seems to be the case here: How do I tell the difference between the two XP2800 chips when I go to a vendor's site? Are there vendors who specialize in this sort of thing? Is there enough difference between the diffcult to find 2800 with the Thoroughbred, and the commonly available Barton, to make it worthwhile to find? Whaddya think: Would an overclocked Barton XP2800 be the equivalent of the other? Information overload, I guess. BTW: Here is the URL for the site on BIOS optimization. Of particular interest is the material on determinig the "correct" aperture setting: http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=1Best I've seen in terms of truly usable information. Bing

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>I know I confuse easily, which seems to be the case here:
>How do I tell the difference between the two XP2800 chips
>when I go to a vendor's site? Are there vendors who
>specialize in this sort of thing? Is there enough difference
>between the diffcult to find 2800 with the Thoroughbred, and
>the commonly available Barton, to make it worthwhile to
>find? Whaddya think: Would an overclocked Barton XP2800 be
>the equivalent of the other? The only way to tell the difference in the core from a vendors site is if they actually mention which type it is. Looking at it physically though, the barton core chips are rectangular, while the thoroughbreds are square.But yes if you want to overclock, I would go with the barton core. An overclocked barton can outperform a P4 that has roughly twice the clock and FSB speed. -Jeff

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So I'm really OK out of the box with a standard issue XP-2800+, is that pretty much correct? I haven't seen a single ad for the Thoroughbred. I want to continue to do business with Mbx, They have been the best for service I have ever found. Personalized service means alot when you are hundreds of miles form a big city. Bing

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>So I'm really OK out of the box with a standard issue
>XP-2800+, is that pretty much correct? I haven't seen a
>single ad for the Thoroughbred. Yes, the current 2800+'s will do just fine. Even better than the original if you overclock it. They just aren't the performer the original version was at standard clock speeds.You won't see any adds for the thoroughbred 2800+ as it's not currently available unless you dig for them. It was a limited production run, and AMD sold all their stock very quickly. This means that all retailers had limited stock on hand. This stock then depleted rapidly when people found out that it performed better than the new version. (standard clock speed)>I want to continue to do business with Mbx, They have been
>the best for service I have ever found. Personalized service
>means alot when you are hundreds of miles form a big city. Go with who you know. Also, this might be a longshot, but give them a call and see if they happen to have any thoroughbred core 2800+'s around. You never know.-Jeff

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Thanks for filling us in, Jeff. I'll give it a try when I call Mbx, though I don't expect they will have the chip. They tend to keep a tight inventory. When I ask for an item not in their current listing they have to go to a distributor. They get good service, but unusual items aren't what they feature. I will definitely try. Bing

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>Thanks for filling us in, Jeff. No problem. >I'll give it a try when I
>call Mbx, though I don't expect they will have the chip. If they don't keep a lot of inventory they probably don't, but it never hurts to ask. -Jeff

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I've got RivaTuner for use on my GeForce 2, and I'm wondering about this 'Frames Rendered Ahead'.Under the VSync tab, i see 'Prerender limit' (and I set that to zero) - but no difference was made.Is this 'prerender limit' the same as the 'Frames Rendered Ahead'?

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>I've got RivaTuner for use on my GeForce 2, and I'm
>wondering about this 'Frames Rendered Ahead'.
>
>Under the VSync tab, i see 'Prerender limit' (and I set that
>to zero) - but no difference was made.
>
>Is this 'prerender limit' the same as the 'Frames Rendered
>Ahead'? It seems to me that this is the same one.
At the beginning I was very enthusiastic with the improvment in frame rate, but the pausings and sudden dropouts in FPS returned.
I installed the latest Detonato FX 44.03 and reinstalled Detonator 43.51 with Riva Tuner, but can't overcome this annoying "feature".
There is no hardware which can cope with badly written game. On the other hand, since most of user don't complain, therefore I assume that I'm alone whitch this problem disturbing.Adam

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Adam, you are not alone with your distaste for the jerk/shudder etc.
There have been threads cussing and discussing it since MSTS release!
Bing warned that these tweeks he came up with helped some but not all. Like you, on my system it has not made much difference. I have changed the prerender limit from 30 all way down to 0 and have not seen much difference.
I am curious, when the prerender "auto' "always on" "always off" is set to "always off" maybe the limit is mute. The selection of limits seems to not matter when "always off " is selected. The way the selection box is arranged seems to support this? Guess it doesnt matter much as it isnt helping but when Bing says he almost eliminated the "judders"-as some call it- it gets folks like us attention!!
Jack

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LAST EDITED ON May-24-03 AT 11:23 AM (EDT)

We have two graphics rendering problems in MSTS1 (lets hope v2 corrects this): 1) The stutters, which go on constantly, particularly in builtup areas such as near Essex in Marias Pass 3.1, where trees are close to the track. This is what we are addressing with VSync and Frames Rendered Ahead - "Prerendered" is the same from what I see.2) The Load Lurch, which occurs when TS calls for a load from the Hd, for watever reason You will see the load light on the HD flicker, action will pause - "lurch" - sometimes stopping the game for an instant.#1 can be addressed, many of us solved it. I thought setting VSync to "Always Off" would disable Frames Rendered AHead; the short of it is that it does not. I had to set Frames Ahead to zero to cure stutters / jerkiness. The stutters are gone, they do not exist, I have smooth rendering down to 17 fps, even lower, though it is not often the fps drops this far. Mostly I see minimum mid-20's and upwards of 40, with 2 X AA and Level 4 of anisotropic filtering, "Optimized" to the max. Graphics from the Ti-4400 are in a work, superb. DRivers: 43.51 (RT does not yet support the new 44.03 driver).#2 can be greatly reduced according to those who have fast hard drives (7200 rpm, though I have not heard how a 10,000 rpm HD does with this issue) - more importantly an 8 Meg HD cache. I believe #2 is also somewhat dependant upon processor speed. When I crank up (overclock) my AMD Athon XP2000+ "lurch time", the pause, is less pronounced. The fixes won't work for everyone. In addition, I will repeat the usual caveat: Don't have anything else running on your system when you run MSTS. I mean NOTHING - except required system / OS files and DLL's. ScanDisk to correct errors. I defrag once a day, more often if I have installed / uninstalled anything. Diskeeper 7 regularly reports 5,000 to 6,000 fragments / nonexistent files after doing something as basic as installing a route. A few of those, you can imagine what will happen to system performance. The registry can be directly defragged in WinXP, MS RegClean (still around) can be used with Win98. Check XP "Services": About two dozen can be turned off safely, improving the overhead system load.Just like your car. You can't just pump gas into it and over a period of time expect it will still be running. Computer operating systems are worse, I think, requiring some form of daily maintenance, especially if the system is used for Internet. My daily maintenance routine runs to thirty minutes, I feel it is a small price to pay. some of it could be done on a scheduling basis, though I have the time and prefer to do it "live".Bing

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Once again, Bing, you take time to discuss this issue and it is appreciated. I certainly agree with your maint. comments and especially the hope this will not be an issue in MSTS2.
Just ran a test near Essex in Marias and did see maybe a couple better FPS with Vsync always off and prerender at 0. Of course the main thing we were looking for was the #1 stutters you described and in my case, no noticable change. (other data point was vsync always on and prerender at 30)(just to make it "lots" different than the "off" data point.) Aside-Am retired Flight Test Data person so kind of have the habit of looking at lots of data.
Do have the 7200rpm 8meg cache HD which did help the #2 "load lurch".
Its all fun and enjoy it all- hope everyone does too! But still like to try for better things. Good luck with your quest for the new proc.
Jack

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One think I can't take of you. You are a real GURU.
I really appreciate your readiness to help and help and more help.
I must say that I've learned few new things reading your threads.
As I wrote before,I'm usually a bit sceptic about all various tweaking, but I give a try. Also, this time I"ll install Disk Keeper 7.0 and run it. I've already a new WD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache - Special Edition Series but I'll install it with upgrading to new video card when be available.Cheers,Adam

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YoU can always use the defragger in WinXP, if that it your OS. Redmond got smart on this one and went to Executive Software for their proprietary defragger - they of course are the publisher of Diskeeper 7. I don't wonder the MS elves decided to do this, believe I've said it before: My Win98 machine MS defragger corrupted a file, I learned this was not unusual. Although the basic frame of D7 is indeed furnished with the WinXP package, there are features I like to use. Since I already had D7, the choice was easy. I believe there is a demo? Worth checking it out if there is. I get periodic newsletters from ExeSoft, which are always informative. Last one reported the results of a interesting study they did. Seems you can defrag, go back to your Explorer and the OS starts fragmenting files. You don't have to install / uninstall anything. The elves do it for you, the fragmenting starts right away. I tried it and sure enough, there were fragmented files from just Explorer tasks. Let alone the Internet. I just got through reinstalling Marias Pass 3.1 to a clean TS - very clean. 6,000 fragments / nonexisting folder refs. I don't have an HD with an 8 Meg cache. Both my 7200 rpm HD's are the lower cache. Why don't you install it and report back? Sniper says it helps reduce the lurch load factor. He says to almost nothing. I am also going to run some tests with an OC Athlon XP2000, it seems to help a little.Jack - I'm a retired special risks underwriter. I did regression analysis before, during and after lunch. I don't say anything when the complaints roll in about the variation in predicted speeds via track monitor. They are reading it wrong; I use the trended line, it just runs on auto in the old tired brain - wouldn't be without it, it works and works extremely well IF the user interprets the data stream correctly. No, I can't tell anyone how I do this. I just do it.Are we agreed that investing in a 7200 rpm 98 Meg cache HD is worth the expense and effort to get up and running? Anyone have a SCSI 10,000 rpm HD? SCSI controllers continue to be something of a ripoff, I think. Others won't agree, but they are too pricey for me. Serial ATA anyone?Bing

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Bing,
I'm running Disk Keeper 7.0 on my 60 GB drive and it seems to be a never ending story. I watching right now at Eurovision Song Contest from Ryga,Latvia and keep a watchful eye on the computer. It's 1.5 h
and it's only 13% defragmented. With this speed it will take all night long.
Anyhow, I'm going sleep now. The results of Eurovision I will know tomorrow.Adam

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HeHe...The larger your drive is, the longer it will take to defrag. Especially if it has a lot on it. Simple fact of life. You can speed up the process a little bit by specifying that the free space shouldn't be defragmented. Of course, this isn't recommended. Basically defraggers work by deciding which files to put near the top of the disk, (quicker to access) deciding how much contiguous space a particular file will need, then moving whatever files may be currently residing in that space to a temporary position on the drive before putting the moved file in it's new home.Lots of drive "schlepping" going on here. If you have several gigs of data on your disk, this can take quite some time regardless of how fast your drive is. For example, a typical install of MSTS is what, 1.5GB? Not including all your downloaded content. If the defrag software decides you use train sim a lot and wants to put it at the front of the drive, it needs to clear over a gig worth of space. Then it moves MSTS to it's new home. This means that to move MSTS, it needs to transfer roughly double the amount of information to do this.-Jeff

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Adam - HOw often do you defrag? I expect it might take a long time if I didn't make a daily routine of it. When you finish this defrag, run D7 every day and see if it doesn't get a lot faster. If you don't want to spend time waiting, you can schedule a defrag session during the period you are not using the system.I wouldn't want to run TS without a daily defrag. To each his own.Bing

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Frankly speaking, I've never defragmentized any one of my 3 hard disks.
I hope next time it will be shorter session. I left it to work overnight.The disk is also my backup archive which mean only 13% left free of 55 GB.Cheers,Adam

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>The disk is also my backup archive which mean
>only 13% left free of 55 GB. Urk! No wonder it's taking it's time. That doesn't give it much "storage" space while defragging.-Jeff

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thats true heffed P Robinson

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Adam - 1) YOu're lucky the HD works at all. Defrag at minimum once a week. Every day will do you better.2) Find some way to free up a few more gigs, I would shoot for 25% free space. What I do is go into apps which I want to leave on the Hd, but don't use often. I Zip the entire main folder of the APP, which can save as much as 80% - a few of those adds up. Or ...Buy a lot of blank CD's and move a lot of dead weight to them to free up space.3) After you clean up, defrag. After every major installation of software or uninstall, defrag (particularly the latter). Per above, installing a TS route can leave 5,000+ fragments and nonexisting folder refs. Ive seen as many as 8,000 total.Per the old TV commercial for automobile oil filters: "Pay me now ... or pay me later." Pay the price of maintenance and cleanup, or one time when you push the button your HD will not respond. I have heard of HD's which became totally unusable - could not be derfragged they were in such bad condition. Required a reformat, start over from scratch. You've been lucky up to now. The advice is: Don't push your luck.Bing

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Hear hear Bing. I use Diskeeper lite which defrags in a very short time and is free.Regards Nick (UK)

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>3) After you clean up, defrag. After every major
>installation of software or uninstall, defrag (particularly
>the latter). Per above, installing a TS route can leave
>5,000+ fragments and nonexisting folder refs. Ive seen as
>many as 8,000 total. You forgot to mention defragging before an install as well.
This can help speed up the install, as well as improve performance the first time you run the application you just installed.-Jeff

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Interestingly, there is a question that I afraid to ask:
How do I claim a free space after deleting some stuff.
I have a big folder with AVIs of 2.7 GB. Deleted, emptied recycle bin but I don't see the new disk size.Adam

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You don't claim the space. Reboot and see if the free space goes up. It should. Your OS thinks the files are still in there. I assume you are running WinXP, however I couldn't determine that from the above posts. I might have missed it, lets say you are indeed running WinXP.There could be lots of reasons, but you could start with a simple one: Did you run "Refresh"? That doesn't always work, especially in XP, but did you then close Explorer, open it again and see if the update took place? Sometimes that's all you can do in XP. It is flat out bad at updating certain types of data. If none of the above work, and you have rebooted three times with no update, the cause lies elsewhere. Try the above first.Bing

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No, all of the above mentioned methods didn't brought the expected result. Running under Windows XP Pro SP1 this is my disk # 2 55GB with 1.5 GB free. The disk is super full since I've copied the whole content of my E:/ drive (#3)before I remove it and install a new WD 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache. As I mentioned before, the only issue retarding the whole operation of formating drives C: and D: is waiting for a new video card. Then I'll clean install 3 different operating systems ie. ME, XP Hebrew Enabled and XP German Enabled.
A lot of work.Cheers.Adam

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Have you tried the "disk cleanup" feature in the OS? -Jeff

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>Have you tried the "disk cleanup" feature in the OS? No, but I found that I overlooked the Norton Protected bin, which
finally released the required space. Also on this disk I have 13% free of 55 GB available.Thank you very much.Adam

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Again, as always, what you do with your computer is your business. That which suits me won't necessarily suit anyone else. However ... I would want MINIMUM 25% free HD space. I would not expect certain features to work properly if I didn't have that, including some installation routines.Now, 25% of a 200 Gig HD might be a bit much. I understand that. Common sense also recommended. With the speed of today's processors, I find it easy to uninstall large apps not currently in use. MOHAA is off the big rig, when I feel the urge to replay it installs in a few minutes (don't think the urge will be there for some time). Ditto RCW. Large savings in HD space- for a 40 Gig disc.Bing

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Thanks for the help Bing,I had some bits and pieces left over from various upgrades my sons have done and thought I'd cobble together another "spare" computer for MSTS.Basic specs were celeron 1.4G, 512MB PC133, GA-6VTXE and a Ti4200 - results were a disaster - quite unplayable even though it managed a mediocre 8000 3D marks - so I shoved it in a corner and forgot about it until I read your posts.Have now loaded detonator drivers and riva tuner (took a while to work out the cool bits thingy) and set it as per your recommendation. Performance is now not just acceptable, but really quite good with 25-40 smooth fps. Not bad for such a budget machine.An occassional small stutter during disk loads is present - will look into what can be done about this next.Thanks again,Spot

spot99

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Glad it helped you, Spot.Regarding "Lurch Loading" as I dubbed it, you can read a number of threads here which cover the subject. The only way we know for certain to reduce or (hopefully) eliminate the problem is not just a 7200rpm HD, it is one which has an 8 Meg cache buffer, rather than the standard 2 Megs. I think there might be something in the mobo cache, but that would involve upgrading, which you aren't going to be doing. I think to truly do the job, we will need a better mobo, one capable of handling Serial ATA, then the 8 Meg cache buffer (goes under slightly diffrent names, per different vendors). I've heard SCSI and RAID are helpful, however I am not going to be buying a controller card for SCSI which ought to be built into the HD to begin with, and RAID is beyond what most home users will be getting into. Not impossible, I know, there are users posting here who use RAID. Am beginning to feel like Carroll Shelby, if you remember him from the days of the Shelby Cobra and the Ford GT-40 which finally won the 24 HOurs of Les Mans for the US. It was said of Shelby he could heal sick engines by laying his hands on them. Bing

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>I've heard SCSI and RAID are helpful, however I am not going
>to be buying a controller card for SCSI which ought to be
>built into the HD to begin with, and RAID is beyond what
>most home users will be getting into. Not impossible, I
>know, there are users posting here who use RAID.
>
>BingBarney (of Crotrainz.com) mentioned once on the subject of RAID.
I was contemplating concerning this issue,but got very discurraging
replay from Adaptec and Promise technical departments when ask them how useful would be RAID for gaming.
I've decided to change my luck and switch to ATI. I've ordered ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB and hope to have it shortly.
But my real hope is connected with Kuju programmers, which hopefully will succes in improve their graphics engine in MSTS 2.
The bottom line: there is a limit (in my opinion)how much I would spend for one game.Adam

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My fix on this is, Kuju won't be doing anything to relieve the "Lurch Loading" problem, I expect it will be worse for a given machine because Kuju will be piling a lot of extras on, such as animatged 3D people. Your graphics card will not fix Lurch Loading either, it is a Hard Drive issue. I've heard that a HD with a 8 Meg cache (different vendors call it different things, for standard ATA it comes in 2 and 8 Meg flavors, that's it).A new motherboard - without mobo capability you are going to spend upwards of $100 for a SCSI controller - which has SATA (serial ATA) capability might cure Lurch Load entirely, I don't know for certain. The newer mobos have SATA built in. I think I am going to try a second HD with an 8 Meg cache, if it works its a lot less money than an entire new mobo, processor, different memory, all that.Bing

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A 7200RPM HD with an 8MB cache DOES reduce the occurence of stutter, but does NOT eliminate it. I have a Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM drive with the 8MB cache (WD800JB, if memory serves). There is less HD chopping, but it is not completely eliminated. Even with the 8MB cache, i think the real issue is that the timing and how MSTS makes its calls to the HD is somewhat screwed up. Lack of read-ahead on the part of the game engine perhaps?------ BUZZ ------

-- Power For You --

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Yes, I think so. Other 3D games, such as MOHAA, do a lot of loading of scenery and do it quickly, smoothly and without Lurch Loading - which per this thread is NOT the same thing as stutter - that can be elminated on many machines by making VSync = OFF and Frames Rendered Ahead = zero. Sure, the other games are using OpenGL, but unless I am way out in left field, I don't think that is where the problem lies. Lack of setting up read ahead is certainly part of the problem. There are D3D flight sims which load a LOT of scenery and obviously do it pretty fast when the aircraft is doing, say, 700 knots. No one has ever been able to explain why MS picked Kuju, when there are at minimum a dozen shops which could have done a better job. A dozen? Maybe a hundred, some of them in eastern European countries, the Czechs are pretty good as I recall. But, Redmond chose Kuju, knowing full well no matter how good or bad the coding, the sim would sell. Important to remember this: Quality per se doesn't matter.John Dvorak recently wrote an article on this: His contention - I agree - is that MS is not now, never has been an innovative software publisher, and almost certainly never will be one. What they do very well is marketing. They can sell anything. When Win98 was first released, people were buying it who did not own or even use a computer, just so they would be "cool" when asked if they had Win98. Any firm that can sell USB can sell refrigerators to eskimos. Don't hold your breath on this issue for MSTS2. For now, I think trying a HD with an 8 Meg cache would be worthwhile. Prices for 60 and 80 Gig HD's are as about as low as they are going to get, I imagine. It's that, or go the separate controller card and SCSI or SATA, which I don't think my mobo would handle anyway. Worth a try.Bing

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I hear that!Yeah, like i said, the 8MB cache DOES help SOME... Plus, i have a feeling that 8MB cache is heading rapidly toward becoming the norm. Saw that even my local CompUSA is carrying them, for a VERY competitive price after rebates, and also noticed that 5400RPM drives weren't even there anymore... Gotta love the PC idustry!------ BUZZ ------

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I can get a WD 80 Gig UDMA-100 7200 rpm drive with 8 Meg cache at Mbx (Motherboard Express) for $99. Add ten bucks for cables. Believe mounting brackets and misc hardware are included, since the package is not specified as "bare", which some really cheapo priced HD's certainly are. But ya know, it still doesn't give the user the horsepower, and boy does that count in MSTS. I'm thinking of using the HD money towards a new system, maybe an Alienware rig. Their prices are pretty good. With my current mobo I can't use SATA anyway - so there isn't all that much to be gained from just the 8 Meg cache. I have a prety good Seagate Barracuda on the XP rig, with a Athlon XP2000+ CPU, the real drawback I believe is in the L2 cache. To really get some gains, I have to go to a better mobo and CPU, preferably XP3000. So it looks like a new rig. Maybe.Bing

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Hi Bing
As usual, sure agree with your take on the HD vs new MB. As we talked earlier, went the WD 80Ghz 8Mhz cache route and have the same results as Buzz reports- a bit better but didnt stop the load lurch. Am thinking about the SATA HD too but remember what Ottodad said about his putting "mini routes" on a flash drive and still having some lurchs. Back to analsys- maybe some regreesion type
Regards
Jack

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It mostly your computer....and not the game ( MOST OF THE TIME )
Becuse if u have a 1990 computer than it would not even run or if u had a 1995 it would run very slow and jerky...but if u were running ot on a super computer than i think that it would run smoothly and preform nicely....PEACE OUT

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>It mostly your computer....and not the game ( MOST OF THE
>TIME )
>Becuse if u have a 1990 computer than it would not even run
>or if u had a 1995 it would run very slow and jerky...but if
>u were running ot on a super computer than i think that it
>would run smoothly and preform nicely....
>
>PEACE OUT Unfortunately, you are completely wrong.
Badly written, unsufficient graphics engine will kill even super computer. Read carefully Bang's posts and you will understand that he is talking about the latest features in hardware. I've Pentium 4 3.06 GHz with 512 MB RDRAM (Rambus) and GeForce 4 Ti4600, but this configuration is unable to give me a smooth play in MSTS 1.0Adam

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YES i know that but what im saying even with a good graphics engine or card u still need a pretty good computer for it to handle the RAM and Pentium 4 3.06 GHz..... But what u r were saying is the computer has nothen to do with it...

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I don't think Adam is saying that at all. If you have a good graphics card, you will have a good mobo, otherwise you would not be able to run the card at all, or the results might be worse than a card with lesser capability. In other words, the graphcs card and mobo have to match, there has to be plenty of system RAM, and unfortunately we hardly ever talk about one of the most important components: The monitor. If it is not up to the rest of the system, you won't get much in the way of graphics, you may be stuck with a refresh rate far below that which modern 3D apps require to run well.If you have the RAM and Pentium 4 3.06 GHz setup don't you already have a pretty good computer? I don't truly understand the reference. The more capable the system, the more important setings become, very much the same as we faced years ago when we started buying separate audio system ("hi-fi") components. The way it is now, with my Sony STR-DE945 receiver, without much effort I can make the sound truly awful. Getting a particular CD or cassette tape to sound good, reasonably close to what I believe took place at the recording venue, can take hours of testing. Pretty much the same here: If you aren't taking advantage of the ability to adjust graphics driver settings, you might not be getting the best graphics your system can produce. Default settings, turn it on and let'er rip sometimes works. Then again, sometimes it doesn't.Bing

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