I give up! Please help---nvidea m64

bp238 · February 8th, 2002, 10:48 PM

I am trying to run nascar4 on a 500mhz K6-2 on a m599lmr MB with 164mg of ram. Getting frame rates so slow you can't play. I had a voodoo3 2000 w 16mb which I decided to update with a nvidea tnt with 32mb. Not real sure I went up! The TNT seems slower than the voodoo and to top it off, I got these faint vertical lines in my display now which I did not have with the voodoo. I have ALL the game options turned down to their lowest settings, but that's not it. It's ridiculous how slow this thing is. I got the 23.11 drivers from nvidea. I've allowed IRQ for PCI card in the bios and selected PCI for primary adapter. One thing that's weird is in the nvidea properties box it says physical memeory is 163,288KB. Shouldn't that be MB? Anyway, if I could get a few suggestions on setup I would really appreciate it. Why's this gotta be so dam hard? I just wanta race!

OuTpaTienT · February 8th, 2002, 11:13 PM

When you swapped video cards did you completely remove all traces of the Voodoo card? That would be a good start, to make sure no old video card stuff is hanging around. No parts of the V3 drivers, and no registry entries.

Oh, and I assume you mean that your new video card is a TNT2. If it's not a TNT2 but is in fact an original TNT then switch back to your Voodoo3 'cause it would be faster. I'm sure it's a TNT2 because the TNT never came with 32MB on board that I know of.

I'm not sure how well the newer drivers work with the old TNTs. If you want stable and fast drivers for the TNT2, especially for an older game like Nascar4, then I'd suggest using the nvidia Detonator drivers either version 6.32 or 6.34,

I think you'll find them here: http://www.reactorcritical.com/download.shtml#1000

Also, is it an AGP card or PCI?

hawkeye177 · February 8th, 2002, 11:31 PM

It is PCI right?
I have a M64 in my computer and i play Nascar4 with video settings on low and i get about 20-30fps. This is on a 960mhz computer. To see how many frames per second you are getting hit "F" in the game.

bp238 · February 9th, 2002, 12:39 PM

Thanks for the replies. It is a PCI card. I got the detonator drivers from nvidea but they where version 23.11. I did not see 6.23. This was the only version available. I updated the drivers via the update link in the control panel for the card. How do I check the registry for old voodoo stuff? I'll check the frames per second and see what I get tonight. Gotta go somewhere right now. Thanks for the tip on the F key...didn't know that.

Lemon[H]ead · February 9th, 2002, 02:59 PM

Quote:

One thing that's weird is in the nvidea properties box it says physical memeory is 163,288KB. Shouldn't that be MB?

No 163,228KB is 163.228MB (approximately)

AuraEdge · February 10th, 2002, 02:45 AM

The TNT2 was supposed to be a competitor to the Voodoo3 lineup. This goes way back, but I think the fuss was that the V3 2000 was slightly faster, but the TNT2 had better image quality and 32bit color.
The TNT2 M64 is slower than the TNT2, which was already slower than the Voodoo3. (Technobabble - The TNT2 had a 128bit memory bus, the TNT2 M64's has a 64bit memory bus, cutting the memory bus of the orignal TNT2 in half - not good at all)

I would also like to second Out's recommendation for older drivers. The Detonator3 and DetonatorXP family of drivers were made for Geforce cards, with support for TNT family of cards. THe Detonator 2's were developed soley for the TNT family, and run higher frames on those cards. I've tested this myself and on a freinds computer, and it indeed holds true that the Detonator2's were faster than Det3's or DetXP's for the TNT.

I believe the latest official version of the Detonator2 drivers was version 5.32, although I could be wrong about that. Those are the ones I would recommend.

http://www.reactorcritical.com/files/NVidia/W9x-532.zip

And a side note - Lemon's absolutely correct when he says its KB, and in his appoximation. If it was supposed to be 163,228MB, you would probably have more RAM than you had harddrive space.

In the world of bytes, you go from no prefix, to kilo-, to mega-, to giga- by mutiplying or dividing by 2^10, or 1024, depending on whether your going up or down.

So 163,228KB to MB would be 163,228 divided by 1024, or 160MB. He probably has a 128MB stick of ram and a 32MB stick of RAM to get this amount.

For all intents and purposes, and unless your a real stickler for numbers sometimes like me, you can just use times or divided by 1000 like Lemon did, because its about the same.

bp238 · February 10th, 2002, 09:13 PM

Thanks for the replies guys. I feel like an idiot on the KB vs MB thing....I knew that, just wasn't using my brain. I'm really disappointed I bought this card though. I want the fastest frame rates I can get and sounds like I went down instead of up. I just thought the extra onboard ram would handle the game better...that's what I get for thinking! So, my question now is, what card would you suggest and what kind of frame rates could I expect? To recount, I have a 500mhz K6-2, I will get 512MB of ram (or 512,000KB...duh), and a PCI slot. I'll just ebay this M64 and take the hit. And I guess I'm willing to go 64MB on the PCI if it will make that much of a difference, but if it won't, I'd rather save the money and buy a 32.

AuraEdge · February 11th, 2002, 04:48 AM

For the K6-2 500, I would recommend a....Voodoo3

Which you already have.

Anything faster wouldnt have the CPU muscle to back it up, and therefore wouldnt be worth the extra money, and anything slower would...be slower.

The K6-2 cant game as well as other newer chips because of the weak FPU (Floating Point Unit) present on those chips. A Duron, Athlon, Pentium2 or 3, or Celeron would all be faster, even at a bit of a slower speed. You can get a Duron 950Mhz with Board and heatsink for around $110, maybe even faster or cheaper if you look around. Check out Doc's deals here at TechIMO for hookups on deals, both for online shopping and leave-your-house shopping.

I'm pretty sure you'll have no problem using your current RAM on the new board, and everything else should work just fine. This would be the single best upgrade u can get for your money to increase framerates.

If you just got some super powerful video card, the K6-2 would choke it back.

If upgrading a motherboard and CPU seems daunting, we'll help you through it here. If you've done it before and switching out board and CPU is cake, then thats the route to go.

FreakyOCR · February 11th, 2002, 05:00 AM

If you do get a new CPU and mobo... DON'T YOU DARE fire her up WITHOUT the Heatsink on... we have had a few posts "Is my CPU fried?"

But yes... the M64 would be slower than the Voodoo.. so you SHOULD put the Voodoo back in...

bp238 · February 11th, 2002, 12:06 PM

Aargh! Playing this game is getting expensive! Thanks for the advice. I sold the voodoo already sooooo, If I get the 950mhz and MB does it use PC100 memory? And, with that board, what card would be the best for around $50? If I get that board and CPU, would the M64 be better than it is now or does it just suck in general?