I’m having strange issue with NFSHS. This only happens with my Voodoo 3 3000 and Voodoo 5 cards (I don’t have a Voodoo 4, but I do have Voodoo 2s and several other Nvidia and ATI cards that don’t have this problem). I’ve only tested my Voodoo 5 on an Athlon 1.33GHz KT266 system. But, I have two AGP and one PCI Voodoo 3 3000 cards. The PCI card was used in a P2 450MHz 440BX system. The AGP cards have been used in a P3 933MHz system, Athlon XP 2400+ KT266A system, and an Athlon 1.2 GHz KT133 system so far. There’s quite a bit of variation there, yet this issue appears in every system.

When playing the game in 1024x768 the frame rate will appear smooth (30+ fps), but the actual speed of the game will fluctuate. The GPU will render a few frames that are as if the car is moving very slowly, and then the car will all of a sudden be in a different spot (where it should be given the speed at which it’s traveling).

It’s as if the frame rate tanks and is only about 7-8 FPS. However, in between those 7-8 frames, the GPU is still rendering frames that are just slightly different from each other as if the car is moving very slowly.

This issue is repeatable in Celtic Ruins in the S bend at the beginning and driving through the ruins. It is also repeatable in Dolphin Cove when approaching the waterfall and just before the S bend before the tunnel.

The speed of the game appearing to change while the GPU keeps rendering frames would seem to indicate a CPU issue, yet this happens on multiple CPUs that are fast enough to run this game smoothly (sometimes 60+ FPS) with other cards. Changing to 800x600 mostly smooths it out, but sometimes it happens once or twice in those sections.

It happens in both Glide and D3D, and with one or two VSAs enabled on the V5. I’m currently using the latest reference drivers, but have used older V3 reference drivers without any change.

I’ve seen a bunch of posts here about stuttering with this game on V3 cards, but those posts also have people replying saying that it runs fine on their V3 at 1024x768. None of the posts I’ve seen have a resolution, and I’m not sure the issue they’re describing is what I’m experiencing.

Has anyone else experienced this or have suggestions for a solution? Thanks!