What D3D dll is the best to use with UT?

[Frankfurt]

Well Hedspaz, my system uses the VIA chipset and although i should expect fairly poor performance in UT with my config, i feel im doing ok for the system i have (like 35 fps, in 800x600 with 32 bit eveything and all high). I only play UT in win2000 and my only noticable problem (probably the dll is causing it) is the damn shadows, i cant even take a screenshot of it because the shadows look fine in the screenshot! I suppose i should probably change to the 4.06 driver and see if that helps, anyways...hope that helps.

BTW i am using the first VIA AGP driver that was released for win2k

Frankfurt

[Sisyfos]

HedsSpaz - The switch is /p i

[Alec]

Look, everybody calm down.

UT runs better than always in speed and regarding the z-buffer glitch with 4.20 patch in this system:

Celeron 433@459Mhz
Intel Atlanta 440LX motherboard @70.7 FSB (Bios 14) - not a VIA...
Soundblaster PCI 128 rev.2 drivers
128 Mb SDRAM 100 Mhz
Matrox G200 8Mb SDRAM AGP @103/137Mhz (Bios 2.7.20)
4.3 Gb Western Digital Caviar EIDE
Iomega internal 100Mb Zip drive
Sony HMD-A200 17" Trinitron

Windows 98 + Service pack 1 + Y2K Patch
DirectX 7a
AGP aperture size 256
16-bit Z-buffer
Powerdesk 6.01 beta rev. 2

My 2 cents, it may help somehow.

------------------
Remember folks:
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers"
Pablo Picasso

****DRINK COKE****

[HedsSpaz]

Hmmm, I geuss I didn't make things quite clear.

I am not having a performance problem at the moment.

I am having a problem simply PLAYING the game.

I start UT, and without fail, my computer hard locks within 5 minutes. This is under both Win2000 and Win98. The problem by all indications is driver related. The trick is figureing out which driver is causing the problem, and either remove or replace it.

I know that it's not an IRQ conflict, well, not under Win98 anyway. Under Win2000 it shouldn't be an IRQ conflict, ACPI and all that. I won't rule it out though. It also may be the rather notorious Creative LiveWare drivers and software. Although the hard locks were occuring before I installed LiveWare, I didn't actually get around to doing that until Saturday morning, which was several hours after I began this mess. I had been using Win2000's default drivers. The last option as I pointed out above is heat. I don't really think this is it either, but I will try some slightly more aggressive cooling methods when I get home tonight.

Ian

[Alec]

Let your computer cool down for a few hours, un-overclock it (everything) and see... you never now...

I assume it´s overclocked, isn´t it?

[HedsSpaz]

Actually no, it isn't overclocked, I tried that for about an hour and quickly decided that it might be causing the stability problem. So I dropped it back down to default and it's been there ever since.

You see, unlike a number of people that I have noticed, I'm willing to admit that OCing is often one of the culprits no matter how much one might protest otherwise. As such I have no problem with jumping back to default, even though people vehemently proclaim that "itsbeenrunningrockstableforthepastmonthreallyitha s". I personally don't believe that "rock stable" means jack sh*t. If something is crashing then it's obviously not "rock stable" is it now?

Anyway, thats all irrelevant and long winded. It is in fact at home and off right now though, although I won't have time to test anything until later tonight, I'm going to look at a car after work, so we'll see just how much time I actually end up having.

[This message has been edited by HedsSpaz (edited 01 August 2000).]

[dZeus]

in my opinion 'Rock Stable' means 'being able to run delta force for one hour straight'.

[HedsSpaz]

WEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! I FIXED IT!!!! YAHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As it turns out, after all that bitching and moaning about VIA, I was wrong. I admit it, I will stand up and say it like a man, I was wrong. I wrongly accused VIA and I will take back most of what I said about them( I still think their driver could use some work though ).

So, as it runs out the problem was the AGP aperature. It wasn't because I didn't have it set to 256, it was because I DID have it set to 256. I dropped it back to 128 and everything ran fine. Well, fine in a relative sense. Nothing crashed anyway, performance however was noticabley degraded. Which is inconvenient in the extreme. Now before I go wildly slinging accusations around I actually have evidence to back my claim up this time.

The problem is with my EPoX mobo. When EPoX initially release the 7KXA it didn't have 256 as an option for AGP aperature. They added it in the 4/25 BIOS update. I'm running the 5/22 bios, but just the same, it would seem that they did not implement the 256 aperature properly. So, I'm going to email them and let them know(politely ) that there is a problem and if they are aware of it and if it will be fixed in an upcoming update.

So, at long last <deep sigh of relief> I can finally get down to doing what I started this thread for, eeking a higher fps out of UT!

So, I will now proceed to start doing that!

Thanks everyone for the help! I'll be back on the MGI server sooner than later after a little tweaking!

Ian

What a great day! I bought a car last night, my financing was approved today, I got my G400 working today, and tommorow is my birthday! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!