So I had bought Grand Theft Auto 3 just before making my own machine. I tried (just for the hell of it) to run it on my barely-minimum-requirements Dell, and as I expected, it sucked. I was running the game at 640x480 (16) and it looked like the roads were missing huge chunks

I said, "what the heck, I'll just wait until my new PC is built and then I'll be kickin' ass".

Well, now it's built and while it's definitely faster, I can't seem to get great performance out of it. I first tried maxing out the display size at 1600xwhatever, but that was so slow and choppy. I then worked my way down to something like 1024x768, and it was still choppy, although not as much so.

I just don't see why I'm only going to be able to move up to 800x600 after this huge upgrade to a processor that's about 4 times as fast, and 4 times the amount of RAM.

So I'm guessing it's my video card. It's a bit annoying that this is the bottleneck that's preventing this game from working its best. It is only an ATI AIW Radeon (the first one, not the 7000 or 8000 series), and I believe is 32MB.

Do you think my video card is the only thing holding it back, or is there something else? I realize I'm running Win2K, particularly known for it's gaming (;)), but there must be something i can do.

Thanks for your help!

For reference I am running a P4 1.7GHz, 512MB (RAMBUS), GeForce 4 64MB and I am only able to get 800X600 on that game. I think it has something to do with the game itself and not the system. Just my opinion.

I think it is a little system dependent also. I have Athlon XP 1800+, 256Mb DDR, and ATI 8500 DV running smoothly at 800x600 with 32 bit color. I'm sure with a newer vid card I could get 1024x768.
My only problem seems to be my inability to bang hookers...
So I take out my sexual frustration by killing them.

Whoa..you can bang hookers? I always beat them to death with the bat!

Yeah, just pull up next to one in the Red Light district. She'll wander over to the car and chat to you through the window. When you've haggled a price (just wait), she'll climb in. Drive to somewhere secluded and park up.

The guy at the games shop I talked to awhile ago when I was thinking of buying GTA3 said that they've had a huge number of returns for it. It just either doesn't play at all or is really choppy and this is with GF4 cards so it's not due to lack of power. It does seem very hit & miss if it runs on a particular system.

Good game though. Played it on a friends PS2 and we had great fun with the jumping car cheat turned on after we completed the game It was a who-could-do-the-most-impressive-stunt-before-blowing-up competition.

- Trevor

It ran like treacle on my Athlon 900 (GeForce 2MX). Apparently, trying a different bit-depth can make quite a difference. I've yet to try it, though.

Jumping car cheat?

If you're feeling particularly cheap then you can actually kill her afterwards and get your money back...

- Trevor

Yes, it's a horrible port of the game that dosen't run well on anything I have seen it on yet. I run it at 800x600x32 on my Radeon 8500/PIII 800 system.

General video card recommendations though, get a faster card sometime soon. Pairing a fast CPU and video card works well. If you like the features of the AiW ATI card, the new cards from them should be out soon. They are going to be releasing 2 different cores, the R250 (a faster version of the core on the 8500 cards, NVidia style innovation here), and the R300 (ArtX influenced core, ArtX is the team that left SGI a while back.) The R300 based cards will be 100% Direct X 9 compliant, and the R250 will still be Direct X 8.1 like the 8500.

The problem with the AiW cards in a primary gaming system is the cost of upgrades. To get around this, I was pairing an ATI video card with a TV Wonder PCI board. This way I got the same TV features. While the SP/DIF out on the newer AiW cards is nice, I just use the SP/DIF out on my sound card instead to avoid runing multiple cables to the receiver.

I'm just hoping that the R300 is out before I go to Quakecon this year.

Yeah, I had heard about people having trouble getting it to run, but I thought those buggy problems like error messages and the like. Since I was able to get the game to run fine, I thought I was fine. I wonder what system those crackheads were running that gave them the ability to run it at 1600x1200 and 32bit. I'm suprised they even include it.

Man, that sucks. The only computer game I've bought in 2 years, and it sucks in the performance area. That bites. Oh well, when I get home I'll try it at 800x600 and see how I like it. Damn.

And yeah, cheats are definitely fun. I actually bought the game for quite a different reason than most people. I use video games as short diversions. I liked the idea of taking out about 10-15 to kill a bunch of people, then get back to web programming frustrations or school work So I basically bought it for the cheats.

Worms Armageddon was the same way

Dammit Roger...had to go to Websters.com to lookup "treacle"!

If you turn on better driver skills (Don't go here if you haven't finished the game yet!. It's for the PS2 sorry...) the cars have hydraulics and you can make them jump up in the air when pushing down on the stick. Only cars which don't already have special abilities can jump though, so don't get any ideas about jumping a tank

You can end up doing really bizarre stunts because you can hit a proper ramp and use the jump cheat at the same time and end up going really far.

- Trevor

In case anyone's interested :

trea·cle Pronunciation Key (trkl)
n.
Cloying speech or sentiment.
Chiefly British. Molasses.
A medicinal compound formerly used as an antidote for poison.


At least, that's what dictionary.com turned up

Thanks for the info Drakino! I forget, do you work for ATI or was that someone else?

I really liked my current card, but as you observed, it's getting old.

I cannot do without the AIW cards, as I do a large amount of video importing/encoding, which was the main reason for the entire upgrade, actually. I never use the TV feature at all, so that's not a factor.

When I have more money, I think I'll spring for a better card, but I'd like more info on those you mentioned. Any links for me?

I don't think even the programmers have a system that can run it at the maximum resolution and quality. Most games are designed to anticipate newer and faster hardware by having modes that use stupidly high amounts of processing power which don't exist at the time they were designed.

I also mainly play games as a short diversion. I try to finish them first properly but I usually end up playing a for a bit, getting bored and turning on the cheats.

I've yet to actually finish FF7 on the PS1! I got the buggy and then got really bored of the continual random attacks and haven't touched it since...

- Trevor

That's OK -- I've already got the PS2 version. That's why I'm not too fussed about the speed on my PC.

I still think it's ridiculous that I have a near top end system and I can't play the thing. That doesn't make sense for any game manufacturer.

Oh well. It's just frustrating that I've flushed 50 bucks down the drain for a game I was really looking forward to. Sigh.

You really should finish FF7. it's a good game. Not my favorite, and that damn gold chocobo wasn't freaking worth it, but it's a good game. FFII/IV is my favorite game of all time

do you work for ATI or was that someone else?

I'm thinking I do at this point for all the free marketing I do for them . But no, I work for a different company with no specific interest in ATI.

I cannot do without the AIW cards, as I do a large amount of video importing/encoding, which was the main reason for the entire upgrade, actually. I never use the TV feature at all, so that's not a factor.

Ahh, ok. Mine was always used for my media system, never did much importing.

When I have more money, I think I'll spring for a better card, but I'd like more info on those you mentioned. Any links for me?

Let me try to dig some up when I get done with this task.

hmmm...I'm thinking about buying a game. This one sounds fun, but I have 500mhz and 192 ram. Would you still recommend it even though it runs slow?

I had a 550 MHz with 256MB of RAM. I couldn't run it at the minimum 640x480 16bit. Well, it would run, but it wasn't very good

Speaking of ATI, anybody know what happened to hybrid8? Haven't seen him around here in ages...

The Pinnacle video editing cards are supposed to be quite good but pricey. Will definately be more than a AIW though as you'll still need a video card.

If you want to do anything in Linux then get an ATI card. The nVidia drivers all rely on a closed source kernel module to work properly.

- Trevor

Yes! That was the guy. You're right, he hasn't been around in a long while...

Who knows, I might go that route with a seperate vid card for each purpose.

Basically, I'm taking input from sources like a 10 year old camera or a VCR, but my ATI card hasn't let me do so at a great bitrates or resolutions.

So I don't know, a better ATI card will probably good for me. As long as I can get decent quality and good graphics acceleration, I'll be happy.

If you're feeling particularly cheap then you can actually kill her afterwards and get your money back...

Men

OTT Just out of pure curiosity, how many femail subscribers are there on this board? It seems like the empeg community is primarily men, as far as I can tell at least.....

how many femail subscribers are there on this board?

There are a few, but only two active ones at the moment as far as I know. Laura, of course, and Sally Crewe who's got an empeg in a restored MGB. Can't seem to find the link to Sally's web site which documents the restoration and the install, though...

only two active ones at the moment as far as I know.

Ummm... what about bxgurl? She's still active.

tanstaafl.

ARGH, sorry! I forgot!!!!

Yeah, BXGurl is a salesperson at a VW dealership. How could I forget?

Hrmm.. Im running it at 1600x1200 32bit... etc. etc.. and Only see a glitch or two every so often. The only probem I had was that with my nvidia card and XP the menu was unreadable but was fixed with: http://www.take2games.com/index.php?p=support&id=867&product=121,3,Grand%20Theft%20Auto%203,PC,Rockstar_Games,gta3&section=issues

-Greg

But I am the only female addict. <sigh> Shows you how much of a life I have.