What's wrong with my system - I want Morrowind to fly!!!!

[Citadel535]

I have the following rig what can I do to make it run Morrowind better? What's the bottleneck as FPS outside is 15-25 with closest view distance and no shadows.

1.2 GHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird
640MB PC133 SDRAM
Asus A7V133 4.37V 4in1s
Radeon 8500 64MB latest Catalyst drivers as of July 1, 2002
SoundBlaster Live! MP3+
Intel Pro/100+ Ethernet Adapter
Windows XP Professional

I was thinking of getting a GeForce4 but I figure the new video cards are going to be coming out soon so I was gonna wait for their next card. I will finally spend $300 on a graphics card but I am addicted to Morrowind!!!

Thanks!

 

[pm]

It flies on my system, but our systems have very little in common. What resolution do you run at? There's a program out there that will automatically adjusts the view distance on the fly to a fixed frames per second setting that can be useful for getting the most out of the graphics in the game without changing anything. Check Morrowind Files or a similar site.

Editting after A4All's post: I agree with Athlon4All that the most likely limiter is the CPU and/or memory. The SDRAM is the most likely cause. What kind of 3DMark's do you get?

 

[Athlon4all]

Hmmm possibly the SDRAM could be limiting you. Typically GF3/GF4/R8500's need decent CPU's with DDR in order to be effective.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Morrowind is generally slow when you have the shadows on extreme settngs and draw distance all the way up. If you turn down some stuff you will get better fps. Still...morrowind is CPU limited and even with faster GPU you won't get much increase in FPS. This type of game doesn't require extremely high fps anyhow so I wouldn't worry too much.

 

[Citadel535]

Hmm.. I don't want to get a new MB/CPU...

When I am playing though, the game seems to "think" between areas and all I do is run from say one side of Balmora to another. Takes like 15-30 secs to sometimes bring up inventory/map too.

Ok I downloaded and ran 3DMark 2001 SE. I got 7115 running the test that says benchmark button right after installing with no tweaking. Is this good?

 

[Nelmster]

Unfortunately I don't know enough to give advice, but something is definitely wrong with your system somewhere. I'm running a Duron 750@875, Radeon 7200, 512MB SRAM @ 145FSB. Walking through Balmora, there are 2 spots (I think), where the external scenes load, and it takes about 3 seconds. I'm running 1024x768. When I load maps/inventory, it's maybe 2 seconds.

Again, sorry I can't give advice, but something's wrong.

 

[Citadel535]

Hmm... Oh well.

I got the cash to get a new CPU/MB/Memory (didn't want to but my family's gonna get a much better hand me down PC hehe) but I am not sure to get a DDR333 or wait for DDR400. Will they please standardize!?!? What should I do?

 

[pm]

Ah. If it's big pauses occassionally then it may be a problem with the copy protection system that they are using. With certain CDROM models, the safedisk checker pauses the system while it checks. Search on Morrowind and Safedisk and you will likely see people complaining about it. It was so bad for a while that the official FAQ mentioned using a no-CD crack. The patch was supposed to partially alleviate the problem. OTOH, the problem with pulling up the map/inventory is not something that I have seen and it doesn't fit with the safedisk issue. So maybe this isn't it. But it might be worth a shot to try the no-CD crack, or to update with the patch.

 

[JellyBaby]

Morrowind doesn't fly, rather it levitates. Just like the spell system.

I have noticed the patch seems to slow things down just a tad. They haven't fixed all of the memory leaks yet I fear.

 

[RanDum72]

If your mobo supports Athlon XP's, you can buy a 1600+ (1.4ghz) for around $72. Your system will run cooler, supports SSE intructions, and has data pre-fetch which will speed things up a bit.

 

[Citadel535]

that's not bad and I can put that in and wait for a mb/cpu upgrade (not gonna go less than AGP 8x!)

Everyone feels that it's the cpu/mb/memory though right? not that I don't have GeForce4 hehe?

 

[Skibby9]

Citadel535--

We have nearly identical systems (see my sig). I can tell you that it takes about half of a second to bring up the inventory/map screen on my pc. And the game does seem to load scenery fairly often, but it takes maybe 1.5-2 seconds-- not too bad.

I ran Morrowind 1.0 with no-cd patch for 2 weeks, and then restored the original .exe and patched it, and then applied the no-cd "crack". Seems to work a bit better (maybe 15% improvement outside, and now absolutely perfect indoors).

I am using the latest "leaked" catalyst drivers (nearly fixed the flashing textures-- happens much less often now), have both Direct3D and OpenGL set for one notch shy of "Highest Quality", and run the game at 1024x768 with draw distance around 66%, shadows 33%, and I forget the other settings.

I do not have any plug-ins for Morrowind.

Having read many other posts about poor performance on high end machines/satisfactory performance on older machines leads me to believe that the game itself is ineffecient. I mean-- hell it crashes from time to time, and god forbid you try to minimize the game if say someone pops up in yahoo messenger, or a windows service trying to access the internet makes your firewall give an alarm...

No I don't shut everything else down when I game-- I leave NAV, Sygate Personal Firewall, popup ad filter, yahoopops and my dsl connection on at all times.

I am sorry that I don't have a solution for you. But I really don't think that any currently available new hardware is going to make this game "fly". Gotta be the program itself.