nVidia GeForce2 MX400 -> Inadequate for GTAIII?

[bruincal]

I have a Pentium 4 2.0A GHz with 256 MB RDRAM and a nVidia GeForce2 MX400 (AGP). I play a lot of games, and most games play fine, such as Oni, Quake 3, Medal of Honor, Max Payne, SOF2, Unreal Tournament, and others. Most of them are pretty smooth, and I get frame rates about ~30 - 40 fps.

However, there's two problems that I keep encountering. In Medal of Honor, there is a constant tearing of the graphics if the motion is slightly fast. And in GTAIII, its practically unplayable at a smooth frame rate. At first, I set it to 800 x 600 in 16 bit color, but the game is so choppy, its unbearable. I set it to 640 x 480 in 16 bit, and it was only slightly better. In some high detail scenes in the game, the frame rate is so low its ver annoying.

Is there a setting I'm missing? like a tweak for GTAIII? Is there some way to lower the graphic detail of my card to compensate for higher frame rates? I already lowered the draw distance in GTAIII by a lot, but it only helps very little.
Or is it simply the GeForce2 MX400 is inadequate for GTAIII?

Thanks! =]

 

[Mk1980]

Thats correct I think choppy on this card on many systems with GTA3, I can play it in 1280x1024 smooth on Athlon C1333 256sdram, I think you have far more better comp, so let`s do upgrade to something better, I was upgrading on this system from Voodoo3 and it`s not comparable, all games at 1600x1200 smoooooooth on Gainward Geforce4Ti4200 128MB overclocked to 305\565(able 310 580and up),,, ok I think that better you buy for now Geforce3 Ti 200 and what I have seen about NV30 you better got to upgrade on NV30 after half a year or quite later,, but if you dont like to 128Mb ti4200 is best for now, Gainward best in 2d also. good luck,
P.S. GTA3 is really great looking , colours faaaaaaaaaaaar more better like Geforce2,,, effects incredible, not comparable with cards from friends

 

[Lonyo]

The GF 2 MXis a poor card in comparison to the GTS/Pro version, which is probably the minimum you need for GTA 3 as it is a pusher on the system and needs a very good set of hardware, since the people who ported it don't seem to care if it can be played or not. It's a little choppy on my XP 1900+, 1gig PC2100 ram and geforce 4 Ti 4400, so I think it really is the card that needs an upgrade. (this is running in 800*600 16 bit, but it used to be fine 1024*768 16 bit, not sure what's changed, it's just a poor game really to run on computers)

 

[Confused]

GTA3 is a pretty weird game. on low(ish) spec machines it could run fine, but then on some faster computers it could run worse.

It's just a weird engine and you can never really tell how it will run on a system.


Tho sayin that my GF2MX400 on a Athlon 1.0@1.467 doesn't run very well (~20fps at 800x600 )

Confused

 

[Rand]

First thing I would do is find a no-cd path for GTAIII and apply it. GTAIII seems to access the CDROM drive excessively and repeatedly to ensure the game is in the drive.

Just by applying the no-CD patch on GTA3 I went from being slightly choppy at 800x60016bpp medium details to completely smooth and fluent at 1024x768x32bpp w/max details.

 

[John]

bruincal, you videocard is the problem. At the office I have a XP1800+ rig w/ GF2 MX400 64MB and 640x480 sux goat toes, not to mention anything higher and it's like a slideshow.

 

[Blurry]

Another vote for the no cd patch. Since GTA III is designed for the PS2 which accesses the DVD drive all the time, it has some wierd "side effects" when the game is run on PC.
On my Geforce 3 Ti 500, without the No CD patch I get choppy on 1280*1024 32, but with the No Cd Patch, its very smooth at that resolution.

 

[shurato]

I believe their is a patch for the actual game that updated the game so it would stop constantly accessing the cd-rom drive.
but yeah...a no-cd patch would also do...but I don't think thats the reason why its running crappy. You have a nice system but a pretty shit-e card to match it. Don't worry, i have a radeon 32 ddr which is comparable to your card I think and its not any better on my amd 1.33@1.51.