BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

[Rohan]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

>
>I feel quite envious of Rohan when he says …
>
>“With my GeForce 6600GT, I get 45FPS+ most of the time in
>BVE4, rarely drops below 30FPS. The same (if not higher) with
>my Radeon 9800 Pro card and the Radeon Mobility 9700 on my
>laptop (which has only 256mb of RAM and only 1.6Ghz processor,
>yet the framerates are still as high).”
>
>I can’t imagine seeing any version of BVE running at 45 fps.
>It must be like watching a driver’s eye view video on the
>tele. No, far better of course, because I would be in total
>control.
>
>Neil (in Cambridge)
>
>
>:-)

Well 45FPS + most of the time was a bit over, I checked again today. Most of the time I get around 35FPS on the Birmingham X-City South route. On some other routes, I've seen much higher, but none of those match the detail of X-City South

Anyway, those FPS comparisons are quite interesting. You might want to have a look at this Japanese route
[Link Expired]

and see what framerates you can achieve from it.

[lankylancaster]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

I thought 256 mb on a memory card was absolutely ample for BVE, i mean i can run large 3d games such as unreal tournament 2003, which are much more demanding than BVE. It's just rather annoying when you spent a lot of money only to find it doesnt help at all! If anyone know anything I can do, I'd be so apprecitive! My BVE4 is running at 800x600 with 32 bit colour I believe, 600m distance.

[Rohan]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

With graphics cards, as far as I know, it's the power of the card (ie. the card's processor or chip) that determines the performance, not the card's memory.

A Radeon 9250 with 256MB of RAM will outperform a Radeon 9250 with 128MB, but a Radeon 9500 (the next model up) with only 128Mb of memory will outperform both.

To put the Radeon 9250 card on a scale of modern graphics card performance, from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), the 9250 would score about 2 or 3.

Hopefully that makes sense . I can understand why you are annoyed though. The reason (I believe anyway) why BVE seems to require very powerful systems to run acceptably is its graphics engine, which is inefficient. More detailed games such as UT2003, like you said run better, but they have more efficient engines.

Route creators who use X objects in routes (instead of .csv or .b3d) seems to produce higher performance, probably because they require BVE's graphical engine to do less work, so you get higher framerates.

[leezer3]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Lankylancaster: I expect you haven't remembered to disable the integrated graphics in the BIOS
That would certainly cause the problems you describe, and this was the case with my second system (The one with the Radeon 9200, as this originally had a Intel gfx chipset in)

Cheers

Chris Lees

(Sorry, site down again; Give me two days!)

[lankylancaster]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Lol, yep I'm pretty sure I have, as it says I've got 768mb of ram, rather than 704mb if the integrated graphics wasn't disabled. Oh well, I would have thought a 256 mb card would make more of a difference than 64 of integrated, even if it's not the rolls royce of graphics cards.... :-(

[TomBeevers2000]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

"pretty sure" why not check?

--
Tom Beevers
http://brj.rr.nu - Picc v5.2 *released*!

[lankylancaster]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Umm, lol yeh I will do, but I'm exactly sure how to see for definate if it's disabled? A friend did all these upgrade for me you see.

[leezer3]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Hiya once again,
I've just run a check in BNS- You should be getting more like 20 odd FPS. (With my 128mb Radeon 9200SE, 512 RAM, 2.6ghz Celeron)
To check, go into the BIOS, and see what is listed under something like Graphics preferences. This should be set to something along the lines of AGP, as opposed to integrated.
A second thought- Try installing the Radeon drivers (I would reccomend those from www.omegadrivers.net ), and see if this helps- Default Windoze GFX drivers would definitely cause your probs.

Cheers

Chris Lees

[lankylancaster]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Just been in and checked, the integrated graphics are definitely disabled, external AGP is enabled. Just tryed Maybank too and on that I get about 8fps, worse than X-City South!

[Simon_G]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Definitely try to get a recent driver for your card, Neil.

[Boxcars]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

>Definitely try to get a recent driver for your card, Neil.

Hi Simon,

I haven't bought a new graphics card yet. It's lankylancaster who's got the problem. He has upgraded his memory and graphics card already but it seems that even I am getting better performance on X-City South than he is. I will buy more memory and a new card in the future but I'd like to know why it hasn't improved lanylancaster's performance before I do. Thanks anyway.

Neil ;-)

[Rohan]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

>Just been in and checked, the integrated graphics are
>definitely disabled, external AGP is enabled. Just tryed
>Maybank too and on that I get about 8fps, worse than X-City
>South!

I would definitely suggest reinstalling your graphics driver (even if you already have the latest). If you're using Windows XP, go to http://ati.com and click the download link at the bottom left.

Use the "Catalyst Uninstaller" from that page first to remove your current drivers. Then reboot (cancel any "New Hardware Found" boxes; your screen might look slightly distorted while using the default driver), go back to the download page and I'd go with the driver that includes "Catalyst Control Center" (that should be the second one).

If you're not using XP, the link is here:

http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

[lankylancaster]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Just tryed Rohan's advice, to no avail, frame rates are still low. Perhaps this graphics card can only give me 10fps....! I don't know what else to try, unless it's something on my motherboard thats stopping the graphics card from working to it's full potential? That's the only thing I can think of now!

[leezer3]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Hiya once again,
I'm afraid this will involve some BIOS fiddling, DONT DO ANYTHING IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY!
Go into your BIOS, and find the AGP Aparture value. Make a note of what it was set to before (In case you need to change it back ), and set this to 1/4 of the size of your RAM. (IE. 192mb)
Next, see if there is a value that says something along the lines of AGP Speed- Turn this up as high as it will go if it is not already.
Finally, go into Windoze, and open up display properties. Go to the advanced section, and on the tab 'troubleshoot' set the hardware acceleration to max if it is not already.
If none of these help, then I'm stumped

Chris Lees

Site will be back as soon as the new domain & hosting provider comes through!!

[lankylancaster]

RE: BVE 4 versus BVE 2 (performance issues again)

Thanks for the idea, but unfortunately upon searching through my BIOS, there was no option whatsoever to change either the AGP Aperture value or the AGP speed value, or not from what I could see. I looked in the display properties and that slider is already set at max. I presume I am in the right place by pressing F2 just after switching on my computer?