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Video card settings


Dman155

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I got my Geforce2 up and running and have been experimenting with the settings in the drivers and in games for a while now. The picture quality and frame rates are great, but I want to find the optimal settings for 3D shooters.

The new detonator drivers have a slew of fsaa settings for open gl and direct draw, and I'm wondering if its better to have the fsaa turned up and the resolution turned down, or vice-versa.

Also, theres a bunch of other controls in the driver properties, most of which I have no knowledge of. Any help from people with experience with the new detonator drivers would be appreciated.

I'd like to hear your opinions, what your settings are, and what sources for info you use on the net. Thanks.

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Your right, I haven't noticed much difference in Q3 or UT with fsaa all the way up or off. You have to look real close to see the improvement, and in a 3D shooter, you don't have the time to check out the scenary.

The improvement is noticeable in games like X-Wing Alliance and Descent Freespace. They look great with even lower fsaa settings.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I got a cheap Visiontek and I'm using the stock D3 drivers. Do you know of anywhere I can find out what all the extra options do?

For example, in the advanced menus for direct 3d and open GL there are check boxes for things like buffering methods, mipmaping, and stuff. What does all that crap do?

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I've been doing a lot of experimenting recently, and I've come to the conclusion that my graphics are limited by my crappy-*** comcrap and PIII 550.

In Q3A, I get the same frame rates whether the graphics are normal (640x480, 16 bit, low details all around) or highest quality (1280x1024, 32 bit, high detail textures, etc). I wish I could tell my videocard to do more and ease the strain off the rest of my system.

I'm buying a new system piece by piece now and was wondering whats so bad about my computer. I know compaqs suck, but the core stuff aint that bad (P3 550, 160 mb ram, agp, etc). Of course the HD is a 5400 rpm unit, the ram is 100 mhz (I think, maybe less) and I'm not sure but the agp slot might be 2X.

Will I see a huge performance boost with an up-to-date system built around an Athlon TBird 800 - 900, asus mboard, 256 megs pc133, and a 7200 rpm deskstar? (keeping the visontek gf2 gts or course)

Also, which os should I use? I hate win98, crashes 5 times a day. Maybe thats the compaq, I don't know.

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you've just touched a very interesting point:

how come compaqs with good specs perform like normal puter with crappy specs??

you will get a huge performance leap if you go with the new system. guaranteed.

as to the OS, Win98 may not be perfect, but it's the most compatible OS with games and other apps. what else do you want to do? go with windows millenium before all the bugs are worked out of it and you'll have to download 5 upgrades a day? Windows NT and get crappy multimedia performance and compatibility issues?

not even mentioning linux and others, can you actually play games with those? I must admit i have no experience with Linux, so i can't really say how good it is for gaming, multimedia and compatibility...

/edit/

BTW, yes it's because of the comcrap that windows crashes all the time. my gf's puter does the same, while i have only a few crashes a week.

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