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DOSBox 0.61 on ATI Radeon cards

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First post, by Ludomeister

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Hi all,

Minor problem with my VisionTek Xtasy 9200 with 256 Megs of DDR memory (it uses the ATI Radeon 9200 chipset) when I run DOSBox: when in window mode DOSBox 0.61 pulls 100% of my CPU usage, making running games impossible. However, when I either put another window (and it can be *any* window, for example notepad, or the DOSBox console window) *in front* of DOSBox running the game in window mode, or *maximize* the window to full screen mode, my CPU usage immediately goes down to normal and I can run the game.

I actually have *2* video cards on my machine (Dell 2300 desktop with a 2 gig Pentium IV, 256 mb of system RAM): the "card" that came with it, which is called an "Intel Integrated Video card" (it's actually a very cheap nVidia card), and the VisionTek-ATI card. When I run the machine on the Intel card, I *don't* have this problem at all. So I know it's the VisionTek card's problem. I of course prefer the VisionTek card, because it has so much more memory (and also has VESA support, which the cheapie nVidia card that came with the computer does *not*).

Any ideas as to a work-around to this problem?

Thanks,

Ludomeister

Reply 1 of 7, by Qbix

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try the latest version of sdl.dll (libsdl.org)
and upgrading videocard drivers might help.

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 2 of 7, by Ludomeister

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I downloaded the latest ATI drivers (ATI calls 'em "Catalysts"), but it didn't seem to help. Didn't think about the SDL.dll library, however, so just downloaded their latest version (dated 2/21/04) and will give it a try this evening. Thanks, Qbix! 😁

Reply 4 of 7, by Ludomeister

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Well, I figured out how to drop the CPU usage below 100. I had to modify the .conf file so that the render method wasn't surface, but rather overlay. Once I did that Bingo! the windowed version of DOSBox (without a game running in it) went from 100% to about 88%. That was enough for me to load the game, whereupon the load went down to about 20%!!! Then I could just use CTRL-F12 to up the cycles to the point that it was running smoothly (I like to hit about 93 or 94).

Any idea why I needed to do this with my 256 mb ATI card, and not with the skinny Integrated Intel Video (which is really just a cheapie nVidia card)?

Thanks,

Ludo

Reply 7 of 7, by Ludomeister

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i guess your old card has windows desktop set to 16-bit while ati has 32-bit

so set your desktop with ati to 16-bit too

Thanks, Robertmo, that was it. All I had to do was set the desktop to 16-bit and console mode now worked okay.

Cheers!

Ludo

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