A little prob....

[Bonjolo]

Ok, i have a P2 450mhz, 128mb ram, 32mb geforce2 video card, running windows98, and im having speed problems. When im in external view, my fps are about 7fps and when im in the gunner views i get around 10-15fps, i have the latest video card drivers for my card, and i can play games like, counter-strike, day of defeat, anything hl, quake 3 arena, alot of games that have better GFX fine. Is my setup crappy that i get that low fps or is something else wrong? Please let me know...
Thanks.....

Keep on tankin' boyz n girls!

[Dagger]

hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete ..and see what you have running in the back ground..and trun off everything not needed...I only need Explorer and Systrays to run to play SB
a better system wouldn't hurt. ;)

[Rockape]

Hi Bonjolo...
Welcome to SB Forums...

At first glance I would suspect your processor for the low frame rates in SB, I say this because my previous machine was an AMD K6-2 333 and I wasn't getting much better than that. What you have to realise is SB1 doesnt support Hardware acceleration, where as the other games you have mentioned do so thats why they run at a greater frame rate. Try as Dagger suggests and shut down any background tasks you don't need.

[Werewolf]

The problem isn't your video card. SB1 uses 2D graphics. The problem is your P2-450. It just doesn't have the horsepower to do all the bullets in the air, vehicle in motion, paint that tree over there calculations required to get a frame rate much better than your getting.

My P3-800 gets 25 to 30 FPS in SB1 which is proportional to what you are getting with your 450.

[9erRed]

Greetings,

A note on the lower frame rate. More Ram can never hurt. And your mother board max's out at somewhere between 384MB and 768MB depending on the manufacturer. And more Ram is cheaper than another Motherboard. The other suggestions on checking all the background programs is a very good start. And close down ICQ and any schedualed tasks before starting SB. Normally I will reboot my computer just prior to playing SB and run a RamBooster program to release all the avail. Ram. As well as closing any virus programs and etc. etc. ..... you get the picture.

Ps: you might also want to check how your sound is being produced as that can also eat some CPU resorces, depending on the type and method your soundcard uses to reproduce SB sound.

All for now ..... 9erRed ..... out

[Ssnake]

A PII-450 should be sufficient for most if not all scenarios designed for SB1, I doubt that this is the reason.
The GeForce 2 provides all the needs for SB1 as well.
There is more than enough RAM in this system.
Windows 98 is well suited to run SB.

So far, everything looks fine. Most likely trouble sources:
1) Background software, especially anti virus scanners. They should be turned off.
2) System configuration. There may be a driver issue, or a faulty DirectX installation, or a resource conflict (like all PCI slots on a single (shared) interrupt)
3) Slow RAM - Steel Beasts profits a lot from a fast memory interface. It is less a question of total amount, but how fast the system can access it. This may be related to BIOS settings, or a chipset design fault (like most AMD K6-systems suck for SB1 save for a single (but rare) chipset that somehow avoids the one bottleneck that chokes SB on all those other K6-systems)

Does the low frame rate occur even in simple missions like tutorials or the Instant action?
Your basic setup should allow for regular framerates of 20-25 or so, and not crawl around 7-10 unless in the most heavy barrage with ICM, smoke, and lots of barns and infantry around.

[Sergei]

A PII-450 should be sufficient for most if not all scenarios designed for SB1, I doubt that this is the reason.
The GeForce 2 provides all the needs for SB1 as well.
There is more than enough RAM in this system.
Windows 98 is well suited to run SB.

So far, everything looks fine. Most likely trouble sources:
1) Background software, especially anti virus scanners. They should be turned off.
2) System configuration. There may be a driver issue, or a faulty DirectX installation, or a resource conflict (like all PCI slots on a single (shared) interrupt)
3) Slow RAM - Steel Beasts profits a lot from a fast memory interface. It is less a question of total amount, but how fast the system can access it. This may be related to BIOS settings, or a chipset design fault (like most AMD K6-systems suck for SB1 save for a single (but rare) chipset that somehow avoids the one bottleneck that chokes SB on all those other K6-systems)

Does the low frame rate occur even in simple missions like tutorials or the Instant action?
Your basic setup should allow for regular framerates of 20-25 or so, and not crawl around 7-10 unless in the most heavy barrage with ICM, smoke, and lots of barns and infantry around.

At home: Celeron 500, RAM 192, 32 GeForce MX400 :-( for battle with more than some companies. BUT in memory are some translators :-) and other programs
At job :-): PIII-866, RAM 256 and SB1 has NO ONE FRAMES' PROBLEMS WITH QUANTITY of afv's, all works SUPER

[Bonjolo]

Thanks all for your replies... I have nothing running the the background, and i re-installed my sound drivers, i have the latest video drivers.. im not too sure waht the problem is.. maybe ill re-install the game and my drivers.. thanks for all ur replies...

[Bonjolo]

Ok, ive come to this conclusion...
v1.00 - FPS are fast... 15fps external 20-25+ gunner
v1.14 - FPS are a little reduced.... 13fps ext... 19-25 gunner
v1.195 - FPS are reduced even more... 11-12fps ext... 15 gunner...
v1.226 - FPS are killedd.... 7fps ext.. 9 gunner.......

It seemed everytime i upgraded i lost speed every time.....
Now another thing... after all of this i have 400MB left on my HD on that particular
HD, i have 638mb on the HD where "Windows98SE" is installed....

Could it be my HD space? Could it be my HD's speed? Could it be any of this?

Comments would be helpful! Thanks!

[kclaw]

Try the following steps to improve the performance,

1, Are you sure your system does not infected by the computer virus? Update the definition file and executes full system scanning.
2, Try to configure the virtual memory manually.
a, Do right click the My Computer icon and select properties item,
b, Click the Performance tag, then click Virtual Memory button,
c, Select Manually configure the size of virtual memory and key in 128 in the min. value box,
d, Restart your computer.

If step 1 and 2 does not get positive feedback, then re-installs Direct X 8.1 to your system.

[Ssnake]

Ok, ive come to this conclusion...
v1.00 - FPS are fast... 15fps external 20-25+ gunner
v1.14 - FPS are a little reduced.... 13fps ext... 19-25 gunner
v1.195 - FPS are reduced even more... 11-12fps ext... 15 gunner...
v1.226 - FPS are killedd.... 7fps ext.. 9 gunner.......It is true that later versions of SB are more CPU demanding since we increased the gunner's sight diameter and added a couple other things - nothing like a free lunch when adding features in a program.Could it be my HD space? Could it be my HD's speed? Could it be any of this?No, it's not the Harddisk. Steel Beasts loads everything it needs into memory and doesn't access the harddisk save for loading scenario files or writing your performance results into the PPF files.

The source of trouble must be somewhere else. :casstet: