Slow animations (slideshow effects)
 

Hi,

First of all, I would like to say what an exellent screen saver this is!

But, I have some problems with the display speed.
I tested it on 2 PC:

DESKTOP PC 1: AMD Thunderbird 700 MHZ, 128 MB RAM, ATI RAGE 3D IIC (8 MB)

LAPTOP 2: Intel Celeron 433 MHZ, 128 MB RAM, ATI RAGE LT PRO (4 MB)

With LAPTOP 2, no problemo, smooth animations..
But with PC 1, fishs aren't moving, (little step by step, like a slide show). I bought this ATI RAGE IIC, when I open the driver settings in Windows, Drivers name is :"ATI 3D RAGE IIC", but the 3D isn't accelerated ?
When I tried another 3D windows screen saver (OPENGL)
smooth and fast animation follow, but with DIRECTX3D everything runs
slooow.
Am I using a bad graphic adapter ? I used latest DIRECTX 8.0a,
and driver on WIN2000 CD SP2 as suggested by ATI. (I also tested it under
Win98 but with the same result)

Anyone has the same experience with this ATI RAGE IIC and this screensaver ?

Many thanks in advance,

Monty (monty_burns_007@yahoo.com)

Re: Slow animations (slideshow effects)
 

Monty,

We have two compuuters running the SS. Each has an ATI card. The card you are using gets 9 fps on our machine. (7 fish, 1024x768x16, v.99L, true color-32 bit, Windoze 98SE, AMD K6-2-500.) To get up to that speed from where you are, make sure you turn off v-synch.

Arnold

Re: Slow animations (slideshow effects)
 

Go to the Display Properties sheet, then Setting/Advanced/Performance. Make sure the Hardware Acceleration slider is turned all the way up to Full.

It worked
 

Thanks for the tip with the vertical sync.
FPS went from 1..2 to 9..10 fps DIRECT3D HAL.
Super,

Monty

(Still not 20fps like on my laptop which has a smaller memory range 4mb ) and slower intel processor)

Re: It worked
 

The processor makes very little difference, it's all in the video card. The Rage IIc is the bottom-most chip that will run the Aquarium.

Re: It worked
 

Our other ATI card (Rage 128 Xpert 2000, 8MB) comes in at 37 fps (7 fish, 1024x768x16, v.99L, true color-32 bit, Windoze 98SE).

Re: It worked
 

Yes, all 128-bit cards should work fine.

Speed
 

When I lower the resolution to 640x480 or 800x600, I also get 25 FPS on the ATI card which gives smoother animations

Monty

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

ive got a 800mhz duron chip 384meg 32 meg graphics card 40 gig hard disk and the fish tank runs great at 1024 but soon be moving up to a 1.4ghz athlon so no problems there

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

tF Warric UK,

The aquarium relies primarily on the video card to run well, the cpu change will have very little effect.

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

well ive got a elsa erazor 3 lt 32 meg card as for the processor im getting it for games does anyone know when the butterfly saver will be out and will i recevie a email when it gets released thankyou

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

The Butterfly Garden is months and months away.

When version 1.0 of the Aquarium is released, you will have a spot to enter your e-mail address and sign up for updates.

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

I downloaded the ss when i had XP RC1 as my OS and was getting about 50 fps. I have taken XP off and now have Win 2000. When I run the ss I get about 1fps and 'RGB Emulation 99L' when I press 's'.

My system is a 800 Celeron, NVidia Riva TNT 16MB.

I installed DX8a, no effect,
I installed the latest drivers from Nvidia (12.41 wk2), no effect,
I re-installed DX8a, no effect!

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?

I am away now to look for nvmax, whatever that is :D

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

Michael/Morgan,

Is it possible to set up a Tips-and Tricks link that would set forth, once and for all, the settings needed to bring the fps to a max? Only the two of you would have access to it. It would include such things as DirectX, v-sync settings, the order in which DirectX and video drivers should be loaded, that the newest video driver may not be best, that 300fps may not be much better than 80fps, and what the minimum video card needed is, as Jim mentioned last week.

Thanks,
Arnold

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

Ok I found nmax V3 (beta42) on thier forum. When I ran it the prog told me that I did not have the relevant detonator drivers installed. (Yet I have the latest win Nvidia drivers installed. All very frustrating!)

So I reinstalled them, nope still the same.

What is before me is that worked fine with XP and yet not with win 2000. Maybe sp2 would fix it? Worth a try, I suppose.

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

Almark,

You should not be running 12.41 or any of the 12.xx series drivers on your TnT Riva 1 or 2 card, ESPECIALLY under Windows 2000. nVidia really need to actually try out their drivers on these cards and they'll realize that TnT Riva 1+2 users need 6.47, 6.49, or 6.67 (Depending on your computer).

Please download the driver for your card I list on my help page:

www.feldoncentral.com/Sachs/help.html

Re: HARDWARE Q & A
 

Thank you I will do that straight away. I should have sen the page page, but I bookmarked to forum page. Sorry for the inconvience, I am sure you musrt answer this question over and over again.

Re: Win2K Refresh Rate Fix
 

I tried to use the win2K refreshrate fix in winXPpro but it won't work ,is there a fix for XP ?

Re: Win2K Refresh Rate Fix
 

Doraz,

In one regard, I have to say that we can't have those kind of big animations as people's signature, but once is ok I guess.

In another regard, I've tried to embed Flash before but I guess i was copying too much of the code, including the OBJECT tag. Now I know!

FireGL 2 Graphics Accelerator card
 

Downloaded .99L tried with TESTFISH got the message,

"Can't run. Resolution probably to High"

I am using the FireGL 2 Graphics Accelerator card with win2k but it only supports "True Color 32-bit" no 16 bit at all. Any support planned for 32 bit? our is all lost?

Can't change card it's at work!

Thanks.
DRM