First post, by SpectriaForce
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hi guys,
Recently I have built and configured this pc that's now finished:
Some of its specifications:
- Soltek SL65FV+ S370 motherboard (VIA Apollo Pro 133), recapped
- Intel Pentium III 866 MHz CPU
- 512 MB PC133 RAM
- NVIDIA Quadro4 380XGL AGP graphics card
- Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card
- Windows 98 SE with SP3
- NVIDIA Detonator 43.45
I have built this pc for the purpose of playing old 2000'ish games. One of my all time favorites is NFS Porsche 2000 (Unleashed in U.S.). That has to be one of the best racing games of all time, because of the level of depth and details that it has. It really is more a simulator, like GT6, than an ordinary racing game like NFS Underground. I have spent way too many hours as a teenager playing NFS Porsche (liked cars as a kid, still do). Back in the day I got frustrated eventually, because the game failed to load the main menu after a certain amount of hours playing it. I bought another copy of the game and even that newer copy had the same problem. In the end I sold the games together with some other games. Luckily recently I got some opportunities to buy pretty much everything that I once had back 😊
So far I have figured out that NFS Porsche does not work with DirectX 9. Currently I play the game using (besides patch 3.5) the above setup, DirectX 7.0a from the original CD-ROM and NVIDIA Detonator 43.45, which seems to be the oldest one I could find that supports the Quadro4 380XGL (which I believe is a professional and slightly better Geforce4 MX440). According to Phil's computer lab old games seem to perform better with more period correct graphics cards and drivers, so there you go. My configuration works 'ok' at 1280x1024p with all details maximized. I write 'ok', because in some scenes, mainly when a lot of cars in fast moving action are on the screen, the frame rate does decrease to lower than 30fps. I now have a couple questions:
- Can upgrading to DirectX 8.2 improve the frame rate?
- Is it possible that my CPU and/or GPU is the bottleneck?
I'm planning to build more PIII pc's soon and have newer parts like a GF4 Ti4200, Ti4600, GF5 FX5900XT, GF6 6200, 6600GT and some Tualatin motherboards and CPU's over here. Any ideas about what would be optimal for this game?