I have recently upgraded from a gf2pro to a gf3 ti200 and have found that it actually performs worse in some games than the gf2. I have tried the standard trouble-shooting that I know of and am hoping that as this board seems to have a high number of people with knowledge of how GPUs actually work that someone here might be able to explain why this is happening and possibly fix it.
The game I am having most problems with is Rowan's Battle of Britain, which is a wwII flight simulator. This game is renowned for stutter problems. By stutter I mean that it runs ok for a fraction of a second then seems to pause and then jump forward again. It is not merely low average fps. I first tried the game on a KyroII card and despite exhaustive tweaking of game settings and different drivers I could never get rid of the stutter and assumed that it was incompatible with the kyro. I then upgraded to a gf2 pro which played the game without stutter. Shortly after that I got a creative gf3 ti200 and on the gf3 the stutter has come back again. I had assumed that the gf3 should be able to handle the game at least as well as the gf2 and cannot understand why it doesn't.
Nothing else had changed on my system other than the graphics card. I simply uninstalled the old drivers and installed the new ones for the gf3. I have noticed very slight stuttering in Ghost Recon as well despite fraps showing framerates of 50-60. Other than this all other games that I have tried work fine and I am getting the sort of 3dmark 2001 scores that I should (approximatly 6400) so I don't think there is any thing basically wrong with the card or the installation. All my chipset drivers are up to date and I have tried the latest Creative drivers and two sets of dets, 28.32 and 23.12. The card is not overclocked at all. The rest of my system is: chaintech 7kjd mb (amd761) running with onboard c-media 8738 sound, 512Mb crucial ddr2100, xp1700, maxtor 30Gb 7200 hd. Although I stress again that absolutely nothing had changed on my system other than the gfx card.
The obvious conclusion is that the gf3 is simply not handling the game as well as the gf2 which I find very difficult to understand.
I have posted the problem on a bob board and someone else reported exactly the same experience going from a gf2 to a gf3 but others with gf3s didn't have the problem. Nobody has managed to get the game working well on a Kyro and people using radeons, both original and 8500s, don't seem to have the problem as bad.
I have tried a version of the game .exe which has a debug feature which generates a file showing frametimes. The stutter I see onscreen is not reflected in the frametimes shown in this file which are low and reasonably consistant. This only makes it more difficult for me to understand. There is a group that is working with source code and they are looking into the relation between file loading and stutter. However, this would not explain why I have found the difference between the two geforce cards and the debug output shows that there are no files loading when I am experiencing stutter. The stutter occurs when I am turning the aircraft and the scenery textures are moving across the screen. It is worst when there are features such as buildings in view.
I am reaonably competant at installing drivers etc but completely ignorant about how gfx cards actually work so I am hoping that some of the more techniccally advanced posters to this board might be able to identify what the problem is.
Please help if you can as I, and others, are desperate to solve this problem.
Many thanks
The game I am having most problems with is Rowan's Battle of Britain, which is a wwII flight simulator. This game is renowned for stutter problems. By stutter I mean that it runs ok for a fraction of a second then seems to pause and then jump forward again. It is not merely low average fps. I first tried the game on a KyroII card and despite exhaustive tweaking of game settings and different drivers I could never get rid of the stutter and assumed that it was incompatible with the kyro. I then upgraded to a gf2 pro which played the game without stutter. Shortly after that I got a creative gf3 ti200 and on the gf3 the stutter has come back again. I had assumed that the gf3 should be able to handle the game at least as well as the gf2 and cannot understand why it doesn't.
Nothing else had changed on my system other than the graphics card. I simply uninstalled the old drivers and installed the new ones for the gf3. I have noticed very slight stuttering in Ghost Recon as well despite fraps showing framerates of 50-60. Other than this all other games that I have tried work fine and I am getting the sort of 3dmark 2001 scores that I should (approximatly 6400) so I don't think there is any thing basically wrong with the card or the installation. All my chipset drivers are up to date and I have tried the latest Creative drivers and two sets of dets, 28.32 and 23.12. The card is not overclocked at all. The rest of my system is: chaintech 7kjd mb (amd761) running with onboard c-media 8738 sound, 512Mb crucial ddr2100, xp1700, maxtor 30Gb 7200 hd. Although I stress again that absolutely nothing had changed on my system other than the gfx card.
The obvious conclusion is that the gf3 is simply not handling the game as well as the gf2 which I find very difficult to understand.
I have posted the problem on a bob board and someone else reported exactly the same experience going from a gf2 to a gf3 but others with gf3s didn't have the problem. Nobody has managed to get the game working well on a Kyro and people using radeons, both original and 8500s, don't seem to have the problem as bad.
I have tried a version of the game .exe which has a debug feature which generates a file showing frametimes. The stutter I see onscreen is not reflected in the frametimes shown in this file which are low and reasonably consistant. This only makes it more difficult for me to understand. There is a group that is working with source code and they are looking into the relation between file loading and stutter. However, this would not explain why I have found the difference between the two geforce cards and the debug output shows that there are no files loading when I am experiencing stutter. The stutter occurs when I am turning the aircraft and the scenery textures are moving across the screen. It is worst when there are features such as buildings in view.
I am reaonably competant at installing drivers etc but completely ignorant about how gfx cards actually work so I am hoping that some of the more techniccally advanced posters to this board might be able to identify what the problem is.
Please help if you can as I, and others, are desperate to solve this problem.
Many thanks
have you tried newer games ? like wolfenstien and jedi knight 2 , i mean if the geforce 3 is better with these games does it really matter if the older games are a bit slower ? i mean that is why you upgrade isn't it , to play newer and soon to be released games faster , not the old games that already play fast enough ?