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Gotta love GTA3

Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Martin said:
It being a port from PS2 hardly helps with speed, does it? :)
Click to expand...

Actually the PC version is supposedly better than the PS2 version. It has increased textures, 32bit color, skinnable characters, and 3D audio. In reality, it runs too slow with all of that turned on.
 
OP
AlphaWolf

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
I am not sure how to answer that one, I am running a 1ghz pentium 3, 256mb of ram, and a geforce2 go (which is roughly between a regular gf2 and a gf2 mx200)

I have the video detail settings and sound settings (would you believe you can get true surround sound on this game?) maxxed out and I run 640x480x32. Sometimes it will get slow, but thats only like when its raining, and my wanted level is 5 with blown up cars littering the street.

The only setting I have turned off is trails b/c they kinda make the game have this trippy feeling.
 
T

Trotterwatch

Active member
640x480x16 to get it to run smooth, I've got a Geforce 3 for christ's sake!!! Not to mention 1000Mhz CPU and 320mb of ram. Any ideas here?
Click to expand...

There is absoloutely no way that a system such as yours should get any less than 30FPS near enough constant at 1024x768 32bit, max details.

A few general things to try:

Changing the sound settings to Direct Sound Hardware Acceleration

Ensure Frame Sync, and Frame Limiter are on
Put the res up to 1024x768 32bit, max draw distance
Ensure Antialiasing is on 2x max (preferably off, obvious I know)
Copy all of your Audio to the HD, and obtain a No CD crack

There isn't really a lot more to tweak, unless you want to get into editing the data files from the game; but this definately shouldn't be needed.

This has got to be one of the oddest games ever, how can it run so differently on systems that are so similar? For me, I can safely say it is not only fast, but it's very stable also (no crashes).


I've just did a test on this game, running at 640x480 16bit, and the game not only looked much worse (obviously) but the frame rate was lower. With frame limiter off, it was running at around 36-40 FPS (rapidly moving between the two figures).

At 1024x768 32bit, tested at the exact same location, the frame rate with limiter off went up to a 46-50 fps average.

The 1st instance tested my CPU more I guess, the 2nd the graphics card took the load.
 
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
OK, I found a no-cd crack and copied the audio, and it seems to speed things up, cept when it rains. Do you think EAX would work instead of D3D since EAX is an advanced version of D3D ( I have a SBLive Value obviously)
 
OP
AlphaWolf

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
You know what might be helping me some? I don't even use GTA3 on an actual CD, not only that but I don't even use a crack. All of my CDs I have .ISO'ed or .BIN'ed on my linux SMB server (even warez ISO downloads should work, after all its when they actualy get burned to the cd that the copy protection information becomes corrupt, not before.), and I use daemon tools to mount it as an actual cdrom drive.

That gives two factors for a speedup:

1. A 100Mb network is much faster than any modern cdrom drive in all aspects (especialy access time)

2. The cracks often have bugs, some of which slow down the game.

Daemon tools flawlessly emulate an actual cdrom drive using an image you have sitting anywhere accessable by windows. Go check it out. I am even using a very old version and GTA3 doesn't notice a thing.
 
adi

adi

get out of my house
how did you guys get screenshots? and you know what speeds it up. go to gtaforums.com and theres an installation order of things to do after you format and install xp. it works great now at 800X600X32 even with a geforce2mx.
 
T

Trotterwatch

Active member
Eagle, you'd be best off advised trying to figure out exactly why your system is underperforming so much with this game (and I'm not blaming a system setup problem here). This game should however run perfectly on your system; I really don't understand why it isn't - nor do the many other people with similar systems also having problems. I know it is the games problem though, for being too damn picky about which systems/hardware it will run on properly.

As for your EAX question, I would advise you to try it and see. I have found no performance difference either way, but then again the sound quality doesn't tend to improve much either, so it's down to personal preference on that one.

This may sound a daft question, but as you are using Win98 (I believe) Eagle, have you added the conservativeswapfileusage=1 tweak into your system.ini? I just ask this, as I forgot to add it once just after reformatting Win98, thus causing a slight system degradation effect because of it.
 
T

Trotterwatch

Active member
Quoted from http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/quickspeed/

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 - This setting has different meanings depending on which version of Win9x you are using. It wasn't even introduced as a setting until Windows 98 came out, so don't bother with this one if you are still running Win95. If you are running Win98 or 98SE, this setting will force the computer to use the swap file in a "conservative" way, which in other words is the same way as Windows 95 did. If you are running on Windows Me (this is one of the big speed tweaks for WinMe, particularly if you have more than 128 Mb of RAM), this setting will tell Windows not to use the swapfile at all until all of the RAM is used. After all of the RAM is used, the computer will push off the most infrequently used data to the swap file. This setting goes under the [386Enh] section.
Click to expand...

LOL! Just noticed your edit!
 
adi

adi

get out of my house
sorry if my last post was unclear, it just worked for me because of the fact my drivers were messed up before. it is a badly coded engine and does anyone know if rockstar are bringing out a patch?
 
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
The likelyhood of them bringing out a patch that replaces the graphics engine is slim to none.
 
DuDe

DuDe

Emu64 Staff
Uhmmm, REPLACING the graphics engine? That`s not even possible, it will require a full rewriting of the game code, so a "patch" would be about 400 megs size...
A patch that would do some dynamic culling, now that sounds nice to me. You can judge by Martin`s screenshot that the engine does no culling AT ALL, which is horrible for older video cards that do not have this option in hardware. For god sakes, the first Quake had dynamic culling, why can`t they have it in newer games too?
 
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adi

adi

get out of my house
OK one other solution, download 3danalyse from somewhere and force software T&l. i now get around 20-30fps even when being chased by cops and the fbi and tanks etc, well you get my point
 
DuDe

DuDe

Emu64 Staff
I don`t see how it can help, maybe it helps with cards that don`t have a T&L support... Anyway, I tried it, it sucks for me...
 
adi

adi

get out of my house
nope mines a geforce2 mx400 which supports hardware t&l. i think its just because of bad coding that it works better in software mode with my card
 
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Well, I just don't get it. My brother and I have (for all intents and purposes) evenly matched computers and on his it runs perfect.

Mine
Intel Pentium III 1000Mhz CPU
Asus P3V133 (Via Chipset) Motherboard
PNY Verto Geforce 3 Ti200
256MB PC133 RAM
64MB PC100 RAM (overclocked)
13gig 5400RPM western digital hard drive
8/4/32 Plextor PlexWriter CD-RW drive
Soundblaster Live Value!
Thrustmaster Dual Power Gamepad
3 month old installation Windows 98SE

His
AMD Athlon 1200Mhz CPU
Asus A7A266 (Ali Chipset) Motherboard
Eagle Geforce 2 MX400
256MB PC2100 DDR RAM
18gig 7200RPM western digital hard drive
8/4/32 Plextor PlexWriter CD-RW drive
Soundblaster Live Value!
Thrustmaster Dual Power Gamepad
One week old installation Windows 98SE

My conclusions:

1. It could be a reaction to the Via chipset (I doubt it)
2. It could be something wrong with my installation of Windows (I doubt it)
3. Intel vs. AMD (I still doubt it)
4. Memory Speed (very likely)
5. Hard drive speed (very likely)

I pretty sure its not the graphics card. I used riva tuner and disabled all the settings on my card that my brothers didn't have (ie. bump mapping, high anitaliasing, some of the DX8 textures, lossless Z buffer compression, etc.) I even tried underclocking my GPU and Video Memory to equal his... no change in preformance.

I doubt its the processor speed as well. Lets face it, with this game on processors 1Ghz+, I doubt 200Mhz is going to affect anything.
 
OP
AlphaWolf

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
I would consider that athlon about on par with a pentium 3 1.33 to 1.4ghz. Also windows 98 tends to be buggy and slow in my tests. If you want a good, solid, fast OS, get windows 2000 (xp is slower and buggier than 2k, only use that if you need legacy app compatibility).

If I had to pick between your two systems, I would much prefer his, with the exception of the video card.

Hard drive speed will mostly cause your game to freeze completely every few seconds or so if its too slow (audio would be choppy as well as the frame rate, and it would be very specific intervals rather than how much activity is on the screen). My laptop uses a 4500rpm (NOT 5400) and its plenty fast for GTA3, so thats not an issue.

The main advantage he has over you is his CPU and his memory. Its just a fact that this day in age intel is more of a marketing scheme than a good CPU, take that from somebody who currently owns and uses a P3.
 
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