My lovely wife has just bought me a new Dell XPS 420 as a present!!

Its a Quad Core Q6600 2.4
3gb ram
512mb 8800 GT gpu

Runnning Vista Premium

So far so good!!

ATM the driver is the default one shipped from DELL

However, my problem is adjusting the settings within the nvidia software. No matter which setting Eg Performance or Quality, I still get the same fps (start line of SO1 at the back of grid with 20 FBMW its 33.3!) I therefore dont know whether AA or AS is on or not etc.... I was hoping that if I selected Performance the FPS would be significantly better, but there is no difference!!

Any ideas

BTW is there any point in downloading the latest official Nvidia driver. I was also considering nHance or whatever its called to change the driver settings that way

Andrew

Even if you set the drivers to "High Quality" AA will NOT be enabled. You have to do this manually. Your PC should be chucking out WAY more than 33.3 FPS though.

I'd install the the proper nVidia drivers (if it were me i'd completely ditch the Dell drivers and install the latest 169.28's) and nHancer.

I do find it ironic how you live in Evesham and bought from Dell though :P

Quote from Jakg :

Even if you set the drivers to "High Quality" AA will NOT be enabled. You have to do this manually. Your PC should be chucking out WAY more than 33.3 FPS though.

I'd install the the proper nVidia drivers (if it were me i'd completely ditch the Dell drivers and install the latest 169.28's) and nHancer.

I do find it ironic how you live in Evesham and bought from Dell though :P

Are you talking about Evesham.com...?
Wouldn't touch them with yours....hehehe

If you use the quality slider in "Adjust image settings with preview" I think it should enable AA if it is maxed (see the rotating nVidia logo). But if you have games wich give very different loads to the gpu you should make game dependant settings.

How I set mine: If you have the normal nvidia driver settings:
- Adjust image settings with preview: Use advanced image settings.
- Manage 3D settings: Live for Speed. Then set the the AA and AF etc settings as needed. AA is easy to spot e.g. if you look at the wind screen wipers in a tin top car.

I think with AI players it is more dependant on the CPU. I have E6750, 8800GTS 512MB (169.21 drivers) and I noticed that the gfx card is not really the slowing component. Changing the gfx card options doesn't have so much effect on the fps count. Especially because I have only 1280x1024 screen the card can handle it fine.

Yeah exactly. 30 fps is pretty good at the back of a full AI grid (cpu limited).

I still get 50-60 FPS on the back of the grid with 20AI with a roughly similar system, although slightly faster through OCing.

E6750 @ 3.2 Ghz
2 Gigs of Corsair PC6400
8800GT (OC version by BFG)

This is at 1600x1200 with AA and AF enabled in the NVidia configuration, so I really doubt that 30fps pretty good at the back of the pack. I would install the latest drivers, but as people already said: the game is quite CPU dependent when running with stupid amounts of AI drivers, and I don't really know what the Q6600 is like in LFS.

Quote from DaveWS :

Yeah exactly. 30 fps is pretty good at the back of a full AI grid (cpu limited).

Thanks, it turns out ive maxed the graphics settings on the card and it makes diddly squat difference, so i'm certain that the single core thats running LFS is struggling to get anymore than 33.3 fps!
Still shouldnt grumble..

BTW it doesn't seem like a stuttery 33 fps once we are off the grid its still very playable!!