Hi everyone, i have been experiencing really bad fps over the last few weeks or so. On the grid, 9fps, clear of all other traffic 20-25fps. bunched up with a lot of other cars, 2fps or worse! The other day, i was coming upto a hairpin (blackwood) when the fps suddenly plunged, i lost all control as the whole display froze for about 3 seconds and the next thing i see i am the other side of the hairpin in the gravel with massive damage and everyone in the host yelling at me for wrecking their race. I have all non vital processes disabled when racing online, including antivirus and firewall.

I have a suspiscion my graphics card is my main problem, although it is still ok on other games i play. here are the specs of my pc as it is now.


Mainboard : NEC COMPUTERS INTERNATIONAL SiS651
Chipset : SiS 651
Processor : Intel Pentium 4 @ 2533 MHz
Physical Memory : 1024 MB; 2x512mb ddr ram (motherboard max)
Video Card : Nvidia Corp GeForce4 MX 440 [NV17.2]
Hard Disk : ST380022A (80 GB)
DVD-Rom Drive : HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8161B
CD-Rom Drive : HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8240B
Monitor Type : NEC CI A727 - 16 inches
Network Card : Realtek Semiconductor RT8139 (A/B/C/810x/813x/C+) Fast Ethernet Adapter
Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.01.2600 Service Pack 3
DirectX : Version 9.0c (May 2008)


This is the card i am thinking of upgrading to......

Nvidia Geforce 7300GT

Chipset GPU : Geforce 7300GT; Memory : 512MB DDR2; Memory Bus : 128 Bits
Core Speed (MHz) : 350 MHz; Memory Speed (MHz) : 700 MHz; RAMDAC : 400 MHz;Interface : AGP 8X
Direct X Support : DirectX 9 OpenGL OpenGL® 2.0; Output Ports : D-SUB & DVI & S-Video Out

Would this be a decent replacement for the mx440 without being too pricey> Thanks in advance!

mx 440 does not support hardware dx8 so yes it is normal having so low fps.

with the 7300GT you are going to see decent results. (try an 7600GS if it comes at a close price) I hope you know that you are looking for AGP vertions of those cards.

But keep in mind that with that CPU you are not going to have over 20 fps in full grid anyway so you have to be carefull at the race starts.

Thanks for the fast reply. I was thinking about either of those 2 cards, and after that, a bigger CPU. The only thing is that i dont think there is a processor that is much better to fit my motherboard, i think the quickest pentium4 is 3.1ghz or something. plus i am unable to find any bios updates for my machine, something i hear i will need to get the clock speeds right if i do upgrade the cpu. If all else fails, i may have a go at building myself a pc as this one is pretty much standard apart from the 1gb ram upgrade (256mb standard) The last pc i built was an old pentium 333mhz and that was back in 1999 so i may be well out of touch with it!

Indeed there are not many things you can do for the cpu.
A cheap agp vga is enough to give some life to that macine but after that you sould not spend anymore money on that and start building a new one.
Decent mid range parts are cheap enough these days so you can build a decent-fast pc for less than 400Quid in total.

also I recommend getting the 3850 agp model, although a fresh computer would be the best choice. My computer is worse than yours yet I experience similar problems.

Pentium 4 1.6GHz
512 RAM
GeForce 2 MX200 AGP 4x

Highest - 50 fps, aerial view, singleplayer
Average - 15 fps, third person
Grid - 5 fps (1 fps if in cockpit)

Nope no noway no no no!

Not a ~100pound AGP card on such an old pc.
It's going to be completely wasted by the cpu bottlenecking the hole PC performance at any game.

Building a pc would be the way to go. I don't know if it's in your budget but with a 4ghz e8500 and a 9800gtx I get over 300fps Very playable!

Quote from southamptonfc :

Building a pc would be the way to go. I don't know if it's in your budget but with a 4ghz e8500 and a 9800gtx I get over 300fps Very playable!

Might get myself that chip in the next few months, would go very nice with my rig... same Gfx card as you

I remember my old MX440. It was nice when I got it, but for the money you'd be best missing out the 7300 and picking up something like the HD2600 XT. A little more expensive, but could be worth it in the long term.

Quote from Dajmin :

I remember my old MX440. It was nice when I got it, but for the money you'd be best missing out the 7300 and picking up something like the HD2600 XT. A little more expensive, but could be worth it in the long term.

That would do very nicely.. for that money its great!

It claims Dx10 and Shader 4.0 support, but how well it'll perform compared to PCIe slots is anyone's guess

Quote from Dajmin :

It claims Dx10 and Shader 4.0 support, but how well it'll perform compared to PCIe slots is anyone's guess

My last card was an AGP x1950 pro 512mb and it was on a system nearly identical to the OP, that ran great for me, LFS will work great, just AI or a full grid might start to choke up a wee bit..

Quote from Dajmin :

I remember my old MX440. It was nice when I got it, but for the money you'd be best missing out the 7300 and picking up something like the HD2600 XT. A little more expensive, but could be worth it in the long term.

There is no Long term with that old of pc config.
Also 2600XT is not any better than 7300GT 7600GS...
DX10 support is just typical... there is nothing DX10 that this card could run.
The only think that worths at that card is HD acceleration.
X1950XT is a way faster card than 2600XT, that would allso be bottlenecked by P4's speed.
(you are going to see enormous difference from the MX400 card whatever card you choose to use)


Just spend the least possible amount of money. (still taking a capable card for LFS... 7300 is the lower limit for todays LFS standards)
If you are not able to build a new pc right now, a cheap AGP 7300 6800 7600 etc will be enough to give you some months of ok game play with your PC

There's going to be a bottleneck on the P4, absoltuely. But at least getting something newer means less to upgrade the next time round. Or at least a longer time between. That's one good thing about graphic chip updates not happening super-fast compared to CPU advances.

I've had my 7900GSE for over 18 months and it still runs things at fairly decent settings. Was high-end when I got it, but it's lasted well. It's starting to need replaced now, but it'll hold on for another few months.

Believe it or not but a 7600GS would last exactly the same as an 7900GS in a pc of that age

As for the 2600XT vs 7300GT 7600GS etc well check some reviews to see how an 2600 performs :P it is not about AGP or PCIx it’s just the card’s core not realy designed for gaming performance

Because of the cpu, preformance difference between 7600 & 3850 (or any other better card) will be minimal in any game and completely unnoticeable in LFS

Quote from Dajmin :

But at least getting something newer means less to upgrade the next time round.

it wont change a thing because hes stuck with agp

Well, thanks a lot for all the advice guys, it has been much appreciated! Just out of interest, do you think this card would be worth considering, as its a bit more in my price-range at the moment, plus i dont want a really fantastic card that i cant utilise most of because of the slow pentium 4. This is the card i have seen
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-256M ... p;_trksid=p3286.m14.l1318

erm you have gone far to low, your processor can utilitize a card around GF 6800.
The NV 5series where not that successful… everything apart the 5800 5900 models is not worth mentioning.

OMG I just saw the e-bay link
This card is seriously overpriced! Go away! (ok 20pounds is almost nothing but that card is a bit less than nothink :P )

Ati cards are a lot quicker in lfs. That 5500 is bad card, this one is probably 10X faster:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RADEON-X ... p;_trksid=p3286.m14.l1318

that's quite a statement to make. but meh, you probs didn't even know you linked a PCI card........

Indeed ati cards of that time (NV5 series) where faster.
The only think is that the card you link there is PCIe

Try to search for NV 7600 GS / GT NV 6800 GT U / Ati X800
And for realy low prices NV 6600GT / Ατι 9800pro / xt

I think that a normal price for a 7600GS/GT at ebay is arround 10-15p (or 25p from "buy it now" sellers)

There are a lot cards starting at 0.99p but I think that these are not from serious sellers...

ooops, forgot they did those in pcie...

I had a geforce 5500, ati 9800 pro and x800 xl agp cards. Trust me, the x800 is soooooooooo much faster than the 5500, when using AA+AF, 10X faster is not out of the question.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sapphire ... p;_trksid=p3286.m14.l1318

Ati X800 is a competitor of the NV6800 models so yeah it's normal to be 10X faster than a low mid range card of the 5series

Quote from southamptonfc :

ooops, forgot they did those in PCI...

not PCI-E but PCI. two totally different cards m8.

I'm sure they never made them in pci, only pcie