Are you sure you have the correct drivers installed too?
If you have ,and still the weird things, then your videocard MAY be broken or some other such thing
CPU: Intel Dual Core Pentium 4 about 5.88 Ghz (my bros is 6 so annoying) Display: standard dell 17 inch flat panel (runs best with 1280/1024)
mouse: dell optical
Wheel: Logitech G25
GFX Card: Nvidia Ge Force 9700 256mb (run MS Flight Simulator 2004 flawless)
Ram: 1024mb
anything else? drawing a blank here?
It runs at 70fps with me alone but with more than 3 other cars its like 10fps
it seems like with my comp it should run faster.
All I can say is you guys definitely have something wrong. Because I'm smokin ya all with an onboard graphics chip and only an Athalon 64 3500. I haven't seen sub-20 FPS since my days with the Celeron 667 MHz running S1.
My max framerate is only 50, and 45 average I'd say. But I never dip down below 35 except with 20+ cars on the grid. I keep all LFS options maxed, but resolution only at 1024x768. Though I can run 1152x864 (max for the gfx chip) without dropping to gameplay affecting framerate.
well the weakest part is the Video/Graphics Card: ATI RADEON™ X300SE PCI-Express + TV-out (Composiet) 256 MB - Upgrading Soon., but even then it isnt too shabby - is HVS enabled? It should be!
you might want to actually check that, as intel never made a chip above 5 GHz
I think there are two issues here, maybe not so much your graphics card. I've been in the industry a long time and first and most important is your system memory. 512k will barely run WinXP, never mind a game on top.
As an example I play a lot of Battlefield 2. I had 1Gb of system RAM and the game was choppy. I doubled it to 2Gb and the problem went away, the WHOLE system is much better both on the desktop and in games. 512k is ludicrous these days.
I would whole-heartedly upgrade your memory FIRST. 1Gb is an absolute minimum, 2Gb is recommended despite what anyone says. You'll not regret it.
I was able to play BF2 on 512 RAM without any major problems. I have plans to upgrade my memory to 1Gb before Christmas. I'm not sure if my mobo will take 2Gb, as I had to replace it with a budget one not to long ago.
Do you have applied a dual-core patch on OS? It may be required for correct task scheduling. Are you sure about that CPU frequency? There is no such P4 clocked on 2.88GHz, just some Celerons are IIRC.
If your CPU speed is about those 3GHz, dont expect any miraculous speeds, you will be just a little faster than single-cored P4, because LFS is not multithread application.
FPS about 70 when alone are not good, make sure you have DISABLED Simple Track and ENABLED HVS in LFS Graphics options. You might also want to set Basic Sound Acceleration in "dxdiag" to check if there is no EAX conflict.
EDIT: Just quickly counted that there cant be any P4 with 2.88GHz default clock with 533MHz nor 800MHz FSB. You would always get disallowed decimal multiplier. Isnt your CPU overclocked, that you report such frequency?
The CPU has two "brains" (if its dual core) - when LFS was written it was never meant for this, it can use 1 "brain", while everything else goes on the other "brain". Writing a program to use both is bloody hard without a re-write - chances are something is set up funny and thats why Americas Army and NFS work well
VIIV is actually something completely different, and you probably WONT have the dual core patch installed
i see you have a "GFX Card: Nvidia Ge Force 9700 256mb (run MS Flight Simulator 2004 flawless)" - THere is a known imcompatibility (aparently ATi's fault) with a few versions of the ATi drivers, making LFS run VERY slowly. If you upgrade the drivers to the latest version. Download the latest drivers (or, i would recommend, the Omega's - a 3rd party "tweaked" set of drivers that perform better than the official ones)
First, uninstall the old drivers (anything starting with "ATi" in "Add/Remove Programs"), then reboot
[Optional Step!] Run driver cleaner if you have it - it just went pay only :'(
Install the new ones.
Hope it gives you a better FPS
Also, i looked up the XPS 400 (just to see what it was like - i like seeing Dells lines of "ultimate gaming machines" that are actually quite rubbish) and it said it had an nVidia 6800GT. Are you sure?
EDIT - Oh balls, i see you have a 7900! Right then, my advice still stands, it could be a corrupt driver installation, download these drivers, uninstall the old ones, reboot, run driver cleaner (if you have it), and then install these.
The most important thing to check is that "HVS" is ENABLED in LFS
In Task Manager set the affinity of LFS.exe to either CPU0 or CPU1, choose 1, just make sure they're not both ticked and see if that helps at all.
It's very strange to not get good fps with an nvidia 7900, GS or GT, they both should absolutely fly with over 100fps unless AA and AF are turned on max, even then it shouldn't chug unless you're playing at huge resolutions with 20 other cars.
Get the latest nvidia drivers 93.71 as Jak said. Nvidia finally fixed their control panel and the program profiles work again
General Lee you've gone and thrown your money in the bin, because the X300 is faster than the 9550 Grab the Omega drivers Jak posted the link to. personally I've never had a problem with the official ATi control panel and catalyst drivers.
i got the pc a while ago and i went back to their webstie for drivers adnd decided to see if i could make it again, they don't manufacture the 400 anymore, where did u get that info from?