[feldon34]

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<font face="Futura,Helvetica,Arial" size=+2><b>Framerates & Refresh Rate</b></font>
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Continued from Announcement #2...

* I have been talking with Reichart and Jim R. in the chatroom all night about this and various solutions. If they change the Limit Framerate to 58fps or add a tick mark for 60fps and on default install 'Ctrl-S' is disabled, then by default, the Aquarium will run darn near perfect without any tweaking.

At 62fps, it pushes it over the edge of needing a higher DirectX refresh. since the default DirectX refresh is 60fps, it gets hung up somehow and CPU usage jumps from 8% to 90%. So I am strongly suggesting that the default framerate be limited to 58fps or a new tickmark added for 60fps. I really wish there were tickmarks up to 70fps cause I could run it perfectly with probably only 11% CPU usage.

As it is, with the 62fps limit, you must go into DXDIAG (Start menu -> Run...) and Override your DirectX refresh to 70Hz or beyond. I already had mine set to 75Hz which is why I never saw this problem or knew how to reproduce it before.


** For even better results, run the program "DXDIAG" from your Start -> Run menu and select the "More Help" tab, then click the "Override..." button on the right. Change the Override Value to your monitor refresh in Hz (60 is default, 75 is what most monitors can handle).

Be careful that you do not put a number higher than your monitor can support at the resolution you run the Aquarium!. If you run your desktop at 800x600 85 Hz but the Aquarium runs at 1280x1024 and your monitor can only handle 75 Hz at that res, you might damage the monitor with this Override setting by putting it higher than 75!!

I hate to put all the scary warnings like that because changing this value in DXDIAG (or using vsync or other settings in programs like CoolBits) is essential for the best possible animation in any Direct3D or OpenGL