Demo....frustrated

[Bulldog]

I just loaded the demo up on my home system running a P3 1.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM and a Nvidia Geforce2 MX 400 w/ 64 MB RAM.  And it doesn't run for crap....even at 640x480 res with shadows and environment mapping off.

Just venting....

Pete

[Fixer]

You've been going without playing any new games haven't you?... I bought one of those Geforce2 MX 400's for my boys computer-years ago thinking it would be decent - price-performance but truthfully it was really bad and had texture problems  in all the games they wanted to play -besides being only slightly faster than the TNT2 it was replacing. I still got the thing sitting in my desk, I was going to sell it but I doubt I could get more than 10 bucks for it on Ebay...

Now I've got 2  retired radeon 8500's just sitting around that could probably play this game...

Look's like if you want to play you got to pay

[DirtTwister]

I would expect it to play ok on that system.  You sure it's a P3 and not a celeron?   Your CPU is running almost twice what an XBox is.   I would make sure that your Bios is set to the optimized settings and not the safe ones (if you have that option).  Also make sure your AGP speed is set as high as your motherboard/card allows.

What does your memory look like in Task Manager before you start the game?   Available in upper right and Total/Peak in lower left of the performance tab

Bruce

[Bulldog]

LOL....Bob, no I havn't been playing games much lately.  Too busy and the loss of interest in MCM2 put gaming on the sidelines for me.

I would think my system would run this ok too since it ran MCM2 pretty well.  Yes, it's a P3.  I'll have to get the latest update for my system bios and see what happens.  I didn't have much time to check things out so I'll have to look at the memory usage tonight and see what's going on there.

Pete

[Fixer]

I did a test to see just how low you could go 

I fired up my 7-8 year old athlon 700 with a radeon 8500-128mb and 712MB ram. @ 800-600 the game lagged badly and I estimated it was getting around  15fps.

I turned the 2 available detail options off ( missing that lod 1-10 option right about now!)

The game ran better but still  hardly playble compared to what I was used to. I estimated it was @ least 20 fps.

The video lagged more than the game did, meaning I wasn't losing as much control as I would have in MCM2.

[Maggot#666 (A)]

i got the demo and i got P3 500 mhz, and he's working fine. I don't know how you download that but redownload it, if is doing the same thing, i can't do anything.

[VRT_JPRLisbon_ (A)]

bulldog, your geforce is onboard ? if yes i think will not work , i read that V.cards onboard dont work...!!!?

[Fixer]

I tried the old system again but switched the activity to free ride and the game played pretty good, apparently the other racers really slow it down. Try starting a race then switch the activity to freeride. At least you should be able to ride the bike around and get a feel for the bike- game. This worked  better for the national then it did the sx.

[Bulldog]

My Geforce2 MX is a seperate card.  I thought I had the latest drivers but I didn't so I downloaded the latest one's and installed them.  This helped a little bit.  Then I check my bios setings as Bruce suggested and noticed that my AGP setting was at 128 but could be bumped up to 256  So I did that and it helped a little bit also.

The biggest hit I notice is the shadows.  I think it is because it gives shadows for ALL the bikes in the game not just the players bike like MCM2 did.  I also noticed that I can run at 800x600 and get the exact same performance as I do at 640x480.  But if I go to 1024x768 it takes a bit of a hit.  But overall set at 800x600 with shadows and environment turned off it is still kind of glitchy.  And it doesn't look all that great because I had to lower the texture setting in the Nvidia setup.

As far as memory goes, right before I started the game I had about 350 MB available.  When I got done playing a race or two I checked the peak memory number and it was just above what was free when I started.  So it is probably using the paging file and causing some of this problem.  But I would guess that my biggest problem is the small 64 MB of RAM on the video card.  I may have to pick something else up if I can find something that will run in this mother board.  And unfortinately Dell doens't have any info for me so I don't know if it is a 2X, 4X or 8X.  I would guess that it isn't any more than a 4X.  Does anyone have any recommendations on a new card?

Pete

[Fixer]

I would think a Radeon 8500 would be good it's 2x-4x  but I wouldn't say so from running with a 700mhz  system. The readme "recommended" says radeon 8500 or gforce 3 or better, cpu- 2.4 mhz or better.

The radeon 8500 is a good jump up from a gforce 2 mx.

If your system is 4x you could get a 9800 that's 4x-8x but that might be overkill, the price isn't bad.

[Bulldog]

Is there a way to tell if it is a 4X without some written documentation?

Just realized that my processor is a 1.4 GHz P4....not a P3.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I said P3 because I knew it was a P4.

Wow....the min. and recommend system spec's seem pretty darn high for something that runs on an XBox.

Pete

[Bulldog]

I finally found the game and bought it.  It doesn't run any better than the demo did.  But I did find that my Symantec Anti-Virus software's auto-protect was cuasing some problems.  If I disable that it runs a little better....but not much.  It runs pretty good if I'm the only one on the track but still stutters a little when a lot of trees or other objects come on screen.  Am I seeing the objects right, that there is no LOD?  If so I'm sure that doesn't help anything.

Pete

[MDx_Wayne (A)]

Bulldog, I feel your pain.  Not everyone can have the latest gear and that includes me too.  Wanna run some MCM2?