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TS 7.6 runs rough
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These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
TS 7.6 runs rough // Tech Forum
Post by mikeo56 // Sep 3, 2008, 2:06pm
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mikeo56
Total Posts: 8
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Hello, I am new to True Space. Objects respond haltingly when I use it. I wonder if it can run on my PC smoothly?
Nividia GE Force 5200, XP Home, 2.5 gig RAM and Pentium 4, 2.66 Ghz.
Help is appreciated. |
Post by hultek43 // Sep 3, 2008, 2:14pm
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hultek43
Total Posts: 234
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FX 5200 here with XP Pro, 2.5 Gb's RAM, 3.0Ghz cpu, it seems to do ok.
Signed drivers version 5.6.7.3 date 4/7/2004. |
Post by transient // Sep 3, 2008, 2:39pm
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transient
Total Posts: 977
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Unfortunately, nvidia 6600 or better is the minimum spec. That's what I use and it's fine, although some real-time shadows in some of the sample scenes don't work (I get a message saying my card is too puny). |
Post by mikeo56 // Sep 3, 2008, 3:00pm
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mikeo56
Total Posts: 8
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Thanks. I hope I can upgrade. |
Post by scapino // Sep 3, 2008, 4:49pm
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scapino
Total Posts: 101
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Yes, I use a 6600GT now, and I used to have a 5200. The 5200 is the slowest of all the DX9c cards (in fact, I think its emulating some functions).
My 6600GT runs TS fine , though.
Kurt |
Post by mikeo56 // Sep 4, 2008, 12:45am
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mikeo56
Total Posts: 8
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I called Dell. They say that the only Graphics card upgrade available for the PC is "Radeon X1300". Wonder how that would do? |
Post by splinters // Sep 4, 2008, 12:51am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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6600 may be minimum for all effects but I run happily on my laptop SiS chipset with reduced visuals.
Try going to hardware settings and choosing DX7 with textures. Not as pretty but much more responsive.
Oh, and tS7.5 ran brilliantly on a Radeon 9800 Pro...:) |
Post by jayr // Sep 4, 2008, 1:00am
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jayr
Total Posts: 1074
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I called Dell. They say that the only Graphics card upgrade available for the PC is "Radeon X1300". Wonder how that would do?
\i used one till yesterday (the x1300pro) check this thread:
http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=6540 |
Post by TomG // Sep 4, 2008, 1:53am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Hmm how can Dell tell you what you can and can't upgrade your machine to? I'm a bit puzzled by that - what is it that limits the card you can choose?
The FX5 series from NVIDIA did not really support DX9, it was software emulated only so very slow. So while the box says DX9, that was a little misleading, and in fact they are DX8 cards for all intents and purposes. The 6x series, 6600 and upward from there, are fully DX9.0c compatible and so give good performance.
You might want to see about hardware shadow rendering in a recent thread about ATI versus NVIDIA card choices, and I'd be interested to know why you can't fit a 6600 or 7600 or even 8600 etc into your machine. At $90 for an 8800 these days, the power to make tS fly is very affordable!
HTH!
Tom |
Post by Nez // Sep 4, 2008, 1:58am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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As a related query (sorry for butting in) - anyone know whether a Quadro FX1000 is ok? That's what's in my work machine, and I hope to get 7.6 installed on that soon, fingers crossed...
The rest of the machine is reasonable - dual Xeons (2.6GHz), 2GB Ram, running XP (but on a network) - certainly better than my home machine...:o |
Post by TomG // Sep 4, 2008, 2:20am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Quadro cards are not good for tS. They are openGL oriented, rather than DirectX. They are also aimed primarily at the CAD market (hence the OpenGL bias), and some applications have specific driver sets for the cards. When you dont have such an application, the generic driver tends to be not so good.
I have a Quadro in this machine (not my choice ;) ), it's about $500 to buy the card, and it performs only slightly better in tS than the $30 8400 I bought as a temp card while my 8800 in my other machine got fixed. While I can't compare directly, I am pretty sure my old 7600 used to perform about 3 times better or more than this Quadro (get one for around $60 now), and my 8800 performs about 10 to 15 times better maybe more (get one for around $90 now). While it is only a low end Quadro, the price performance ratio for those cards is not good for general purpose 3D.
Given the prices, I would certainly avoid the Quadro unless you have specific applications that have those specific drivers for it and are primarily in a CAD environment - with a Quadro you can almost always expect generic DirectX applications and games to run poorly.
HTH!
Tom |
Post by Nez // Sep 4, 2008, 2:30am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Thanks Tom, that's useful to know; in theory, my machine has to run CAD (Autocad and Rhino), although this isn't often the case - would these applications 'suffer' if I managed to persuade IT to 'upgrade' me to a newer geforce type card instead? I'd rather have the TS performance....
It's a Dell workstation, can't remember the model, but I presume it's an AGP card due to its age, which presumably limits what I can replace it with... |
Post by TomG // Sep 4, 2008, 2:47am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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AutoCAD may suffer, it's possible. Not sure though, don't use it myself so can't say. That is the sort of app that a Quadro card is designed for though, and you grab the AutoCAD specific drivers for the card, to get the most out of it.
I imagine there must be a performance hit with generic DirectX drivers, else they wouldn't be able to charge so much for Quadro cards :)
I would think, though, that you would get good enough performance for occasional use, sounds like it is not an appplication you use for 3 hours or more every single day? If it is occasional use as it sounds, then something like an 8800 would likely be a good replacement, giving you good all-round 3D performance rather than application-specific performance. Given the pricing is $100 to $150 for low to mid range 8800s and 9800s, and around $250 for the higher end ones, this would seem a reasonable investment.
Anyone lucky enough to be using the GTX 260 and other new ranage of NVIDIAs? They seem to start around $400 to $500 and so I've not done any research on those, a bit too expensive as yet for me I always wait for tech to be established by a year or two and down to below $300 (at most, I prefer $150 or so for my graphics cards!), but would be interested in hearing some first hand stories of these new pieces of kit.
PS - Ah found you can get a 260 for $300 now, interesting. If this is work spending the money, it might be worth looking into those - anyone got impressions and opinions, either from reviews or preferably from using one with tS?
Thanks!
Tom |
Post by brotherx // Sep 4, 2008, 4:56am
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brotherx
Total Posts: 538
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Yeah, the 260 is the cheaper of the 2 next-gen cards from nvidia. From what I've read that the Radeon 4850 performs slightly slower than the 260, but is a good bit cheaper at about $200 ( I paid 155 euro for my one the week of its release) and is DX10.1 compatible. The 260 on the other hand has PhysX support.
The 280 is the top-end card and it's at least $500 mark - it is more like the Radeon 4870 which is around $300, the radeon not being as fast but for a $200 saving, pretty good if you ask me.
EDIT: actually, looking, the 260 is closer to around $400 here and the 280 is more like $600...eek. |
Post by mikeo56 // Sep 4, 2008, 7:04am
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mikeo56
Total Posts: 8
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I am a bit clueless as to how the Dell tech determined what the PC could change up to. He did mention some requirements of the motherboard and mostly kept referring to that as his basis of choice. He talked tech that was beyond me possibly confusing us both...don't know.
I go to Dell.com, enter my PC's service tag and they will tell me what my available upgrades are. Intially we discuusedd the Nvidia 8600 and eventually he did not think it would work with the motherboard.
Thaks for the help.Hmm how can Dell tell you what you can and can't upgrade your machine to? I'm a bit puzzled by that - what is it that limits the card you can choose?
The FX5 series from NVIDIA did not really support DX9, it was software emulated only so very slow. So while the box says DX9, that was a little misleading, and in fact they are DX8 cards for all intents and purposes. The 6x series, 6600 and upward from there, are fully DX9.0c compatible and so give good performance.
You might want to see about hardware shadow rendering in a recent thread about ATI versus NVIDIA card choices, and I'd be interested to know why you can't fit a 6600 or 7600 or even 8600 etc into your machine. At $90 for an 8800 these days, the power to make tS fly is very affordable!
HTH!
Tom |
Post by TomG // Sep 4, 2008, 9:10am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Hmm could be - might be an AGP board, or maybe not enough of a PSU. Seems a little odd though for a new machine to not go higher than that, an 8600 should run fine on anything from the last 2 years or so.
Better safe than sorry though, nothing worse than buying hardware and finding it doesn't work!
Thanks!
Tom |
Post by mikeo56 // Sep 4, 2008, 12:22pm
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mikeo56
Total Posts: 8
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Dell Dimension 4600, four years old, pentium IV 2.66Ghz, 1.5 G RAM, NVIDIA GEForce 5200.
Thanks. |
Post by TomG // Sep 5, 2008, 1:20am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Ah, it is possible then that the power supply doesnt have enough juice to run some of the bigger cards, or may be missing a connector to support powering the cards.
Of course you chould just replace the power supply too if so :)
It is also possible that it's an AGP motherboard and not a PCI-E board, and I'm not sure what AGP cards are still around, though I know I had a 7600 and 6600 some years back, so they might still be out there.
Unless you know about the insides of your machine though (ie are there enough connectors, is the power supply large enough, is it AGP or PCI-E) then best to avoid getting into such things.
HTH!
Tom |
Post by Steinie // Sep 5, 2008, 1:29am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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I just bought a Sapphire Radeon x1650 Pro AGP with 500megs for $65.00 using the ATI Catalyst 8.5 drivers. Runs like a champ! (Don't use the older drivers, they had problems with AGP cards.) |
Post by mikeo56 // Sep 6, 2008, 11:16am
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mikeo56
Total Posts: 8
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Ah, it is possible then that the power supply doesnt have enough juice to run some of the bigger cards, or may be missing a connector to support powering the cards.
Of course you chould just replace the power supply too if so :)
It is also possible that it's an AGP motherboard and not a PCI-E board, and I'm not sure what AGP cards are still around, though I know I had a 7600 and 6600 some years back, so they might still be out there.
Unless you know about the insides of your machine though (ie are there enough connectors, is the power supply large enough, is it AGP or PCI-E) then best to avoid getting into such things.
HTH!
Tom
I went to Dell forums. Lota info. Speaking of the GeForce7600 a couple of dell 4600 have replaced the GeForce 5200very succesfuuly to GeForce 7600. Also 2.66 processor was upgraded tp 3.4 Northrop succesfully in dell 4600.
Card choices are Visiontek XTASY Radeon x1300 512 MB and the Nvidia GeForce 7600 (don't know which-128 or 512mb GT or GS?). As you said Tom bigger card needs bigger power. |
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