Framerate Problems?

I just got a new video card which is a ATI Radeon 9200 128 mb.

But although the detail is good, the framrate is off. It just goes slow and choppy. THe movement around is ok but everything moves for a second and stops and just keeps doing that and it's sorta annoying. The settings are on low too!

Any Ideas?

Choppy at what resolution and color depth?
And what speed is your CPU?

I'm trying to figure out what speed my CPU is, I can't seem to find out where to find it.

The color depth is pretty high I think, and the resolution is 800X600.

Do you think it would help if I changed those?

The 9200 isn't exactly state-of-the-art these days, but it's my observation that the game is heavily CPU-bound.

Yea it is sorta irritating me...may just have to wait and play it on my brother and dad's new $2,000 dell we just customized! :)

These are our specs for our comp.

Amd Athlon XP 2600+

512md ddr 2700

Ati radeon 9200se

Game runs smooth and chop free until we have a fairly large park, then it runs just slightly less than acceptable.

It may be a cheaper card but still runs fairly well.

I have a 9200se as well with a P4 2.8 HT and see no slowdowns until it's a fairly large park as well. At that point, everything gets really choppy. The fireworks show seems to slow things really down when the park is large.

Kip, my system runs the game really well and you have a better card then I do. (I have the 7000) So something is amiss. Unless your processor is really slow. (Mine is 2.53Ghz)

Did you go to the ATI site and download the latest drivers? If not you should. That may help.

Good luck!

Thanks for the tips guys. My processor is 1.28 Ghz

Is that bad? I truly believe that's my problem.

Coasterbuf, what motherboard and processor do you have, I have the ati radeon 7000 and a 1800 Duron (1.8 GHz) soon to be upgraded to 2400 XP 2.2GHz. How well does it run with big parks?

DC2Beltz3:

Motherboard is an Intel board by Aopen. Aopen isn't a very well known company but they make very reliable and fast motherboards. I'm running on a 2.53Ght P4 chip. I don't overclock anything so everything is straight out of the box.

As for how RCT3 runs on it, so far so good. The game defaulted to the low setting of course. But I have turned up the ride detail about halfway up to get better textures. I have filled half of the sandbox map up full of coasters and flat rides with about 1000 peeps and I am perhaps just starting to notice a slight slow down now. The camera zooms and moves MUCH faster then the demos. So fast that I find myself overshooting the park a lot of times...lol. Not such a bad thing. I rather have that then something crawling. So my old 7000 handles it a lot better then I ever thought it would. That being said, I have already got a new Nvidia 6800 that I will install next week so the graphics can be better.

Kip...yeah that processor is kind of slow by today's standards. Less then half the speed of the latest ones which are over 3 Ghz now. In addition to downloading the latest drivers for your grahpics card, you might also want to make sure your hard drive is defragged. Every little bit helps. :)

I also bought the ATI Radeon 9200 and I am having frame rate problems and I lose the signal to my Monitor in the middle of the game. It acts like it goes to sleep. Anyone else have this problem?

ah, thanks Coasterbuff, I think I've heard of that motherboard once or twice, my computer seems to handle most of the demo nicley with a little bit of buggy framerate issues using the coaster cam. other than that i can max out all my graphics with the demo and still operate nicly. One tip for those of you with 2.9Ghz and slower processors, optimize XP to run for programs, I think you can even optimize 98, 98 SE, and up for programs (that will definatly speed up any game, defrag, check for errors, and check for adware, spyware-those sometimes trip games and istallations!)

What do you mean Optimize XP for programs? How do you do that?)

for XP users:

Ah, thats simple here I'll give you guys the hint to a faster pc, ok go to start control panel or start settings control panel if you arn't already switch to classic view (that option is on the left hand side of the window) then click the system icon, click the advanced tab and there is a performance button the top of 3 choices, click settings use the visual effects and advanced to give your pc the boost you need, I'd do 98 soon, got to go back and see how its done, lol! *** Edited 10/31/2004 12:22:09 AM UTC by DC2Beltz3***

I don't know if anyone saw this, but there's a strange bug in the game where if you switch to the smaller resolution and back to the higher resolution, it significantly boosts the framerate. That's f'd up. Someone on the Atari forum found this.

That seems really messed up!