I\'m confused about PC gaming and graphics cards

OK, I\'ve neer been a big fan of PC gaming, but I just recently downloaded accouple of new racers (demos), namely NFS HP2 and Rallisport Challenge.

I have a P4, 2.40 GHZ with 512KB RAM. I\'m using an ASUS V9520 Magic Geforce 4 FX 5200 128 MB. I thought that my setup was pretty good, but both these games are really, really choppy. Sure, textures etc look excellent, but the framerate\'s just horrid (hurt my eyes). Is this normal? Considering I\'ve only ever really played PS2 and XBOX, and considering that my PC is more powerful, I was expecting maybe just alittle more.

Anything I can do to maybe fasten the pace?

Hmm, that does sound kinda weird. I have about the same setup, just only a Geforce 3 and all my games run smoothly. What resolution are you running them in?

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

U don\'t have a GF4 u have a GF FX. It\'s probably the way you\'ve configured the games. Sense i don\'t have the games. I can\'t tell you how to configure them.

This is your card.


By the look of it. It\'s a MX version of the fx series. So it could be your card too...  (most likely too)  Must suck to have a GF FX name, and probably the performance of a gf2.

Its a GForce 4 though isn\'t it?

I\'m running them from either 800x600 - 1200x864

The quality of the graphics is excellent, and it also does FSAA (turn it on and its really chuggy).

The card does all my 3d art renders really quick, i thought it was a really good card.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

It\'s a GF FX not GF4. It\'s a newer series card. Just the stripped down version by the look of it. Turn of all AA, Anisotropic filtering, Texture sharpening etc.  Then try the games. If they still do it. Lower ALL the settings in the games then slowly move them up. Till you get at a point where it\'s fully playable but also looks good.

So, where does the graphics card stand, like, rank wise? Similar to a GF3?

I turned AA off, quite a bit of difference.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Not sure, i haven\'t seen the benchmarks for the card to compare it. I\'d say it\'s somewhere between GF3 and GF4. Could be even between GF3 and GF2. I\'m not sure unless i see benchmarks.

maybe this is yer prob .

Originally posted by ##RaCeR##

with 512KB RAM.  

but seriously tho i think that its yer gfx card the Fx 5200 by comparision is as good as a gf2 pro (which is not that bad).

just try playing around with the options within the game, also demos are imo are not a good way to see what yer gfx card can handle, coz i downloaded the r6:raven sheild demo and it ran like crap even with a gf4ti4200, but when i installed the full version the game ran ~great even at 1280x1024 with aa @4x.

and racer try updating your drivers to this http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_44.03

Man at least you have a decent card. I have a crappy SIS 32 meg or less and a NVIDIA TNT2 16-32 meg. Bah, really nasty.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

I\'m using the 43.45 Drivers myself. They work fine and i haven\'t seen any problems yet.. great drivers.