Tunning my GF4 TI on WinXP

[Guest FS_freak]

Following advise on this forum I finally got my ABIT Siluro GF4 TI4200 128MB 8X card to replace a Voodoo 3500. The choice was made over a 64MB Radeon 8500 AIW that was selling at the same price. Following further investigation in this forum I installed the GF4 with 44.03 drivers, according to some the absolute "panacea". I used Rivatuner to set 2X AF, -.5 LOD and 2X AA. Sure enough I got a bunch of weird things happening with the menu bar and popup menus in FS2K2 on full screen, which did not come up in windowed mode. Some more research on this forum led me to switch to 4X AA which in fact made the full screen menu and window problems go away, albeit with a big frame hit. However I have not seen anyone comment on a weird thing that happens when I try to select files on my explorer. Any movement of the cursor will scroll the window up or down making it hard to select an icon. This came up after installing the card and the 44.03 drivers. I updated my mouse drivers to no avail.So off I went to do more research (Can't say I post without searching other threads). Well I just found a post follow up that suggests the 44.03 drivers are for the FX cards only. Fact is the drivers at these settings give me great AA, practically no jagged edges at all. Default scenery and aircraft yield a 10-20% increment in framerates as compared to the old 16MB Voodo3500 (up to 16-20fps - frankly I was expecting more). Performance in medium detailed airports with addon a/c (FFX DC10) is badly hampered going down to 8 - 10fps plus a lot of stuttering. I am also getting quite a bit of terrain texture shimmering and some aircraft texture blurriness.I read that the 43.51 drivers have solved the AA problems allowing lower AA settings. Don't know if it will solve my window scrolling issue. The 44.67 drivers have better 3DMark scores (Nvidia scheme?). The 30.82 drivers (stability) are not compatible with 8X GF4s. The 44.90 are the latest "beta" (arghhhh) drivers. Which should I try? Do I need to use Det Destroyer? I read it is not necessary and doesn't work anyways with WinXP Pro. On another note, is it normal for Rivatuner to say it does not recognize the 44.03 drivers and suggest donwloading a newer version of the tuner? I think I have the latest: RivaTuner 2.0 + SoftR9x00 + SoftFireGL.Lastly and following another post, I was using FreeRam XP on my 256MB system. It always said that after a fresh WinXP boot I only had 50-55% of ram available. Disabling Mcafee and Messenger (only visible programs in the background) didn't improve things. When I tried to free some RAM it would only free 5-10Mb. Does WinXP really take 100-120MB of Ram just to idle?? That leaves very little for FS.OK guys, sorry for extending myself but I did the research and these are the questions pending. I appreciate any help.MauricioASUS K7VM + Athlon 650Mhz, 256MB PC133 RAM, 128MB TI4200, FS2K2 with all sliders set to the middle (mesh complexity low), screen res 1024x768x32 on a 17" Viewsonic E773 .25 monitor.

[Guest kilo_sierra17]

Well about your graphics card, All the drivers that you have can give you a massive headache, I went to guru3d.com and I downloaded the 43.00, I then used "Atuner", 4xs AA, -.5 LOD and Aggressive Optimiaztion, these settings gave me the best quailty and performance, I am not sure about your RivaTuner if it says you need a new version get one, and about RAM, XP eats RAM, that's why if you want good perforamce out of your system, 512 is the minumum, more is better! Hope that answered some questions

[Guest FS_freak]

Thanks Kurt,I see we are alone in the small processor, mid range card segment of this harware race. Too bad the guys who recommended the TI4200 (Bobby and FPS_Freak) won't come forth with some advise as to how to tweak the new card. I'm beginning to worry if the ATI8500 wouldn't have been a better buy, seeing the GF4 doesn't improve frame rates over the old Voodoo 3500 and the ATI card is supposed to deliver much better image quality...I tried the 44.67 drivers which let me set 2X or 4X AA without full screen menu flashing. However I still get a lot of texture flickering: ground as well as aircraft. My frame rates with 2XAA are still pretty much the same as the Voodoo card, never mind 4XAA. I'll try the 43.00 drivers tonight. Never did run Detonator Destroyer on Win XP. Should I? Where do you get "Atuner" or a newer version of "Rivatuner"? Is there really a newer version of Rivatuner than the one I mentioned on my original post?WinXP pro needs 120MB RAM to idle? I really don't think so. You would need 512MB to run anything else, not just Flight Simulator. Do you know of an XP compatible "enditall" or a similar program?Thanks again,Mauricio

[Guest FPSFREAK]

Sorry it's taken a little while to get back to everybody but a 3 month old, 65 hours a week at work and time is TIGHT !! :). As far as settings and drivers go following the advice of the ajority of the people on here will help. A really helpful tool right in front of you is the forums search function. Especially the tips and tweaks section and the archive of hardware forum. If it was an ATI card I could really help you get setup.There in lies the weakness of the 4XXX series from Nvidia. They really can't handle anything over 2XAA.As far as an enditall program you have one built right into Windows. Go to Start > Run and type MSCONFIG. Click on the startup tab and, being careful not to stop anything OS oriented you can prevent programs from starting up right from there.Bobby

[Guest]

Go to www.guru3d.com and get everything you need for that G4. I have a G4 TI4400. Decent frame rates and did alot of trial and error to obtain a balance. Keep working at it. ALso. Nvidia says that they will have new drivers coming out on the 30th. I noticed that most of the major high end graphic card companies have new drivers with in the last week. I wonder if it's because of COF????IGO

[Guest FS_freak]

Thanks guys,Hey Bobby, congrats on that 3 month old. Sorry I distracted you from your diaper chores. IGO, I am currently using the BETA version of Nvidias latest drivers, the 44.67 which are supposed to give the best 3Dmark scores although there is a lot of chatter about the fact that they are optimized to do exactly that and don't really deliver better FS performance. I have tweaked them and I find that T&L actually improves framerates while turning antialias off in FS and setting Rivatuner to force it on 3D applications also improves framerates. I am currently running 4XAA (the menu problems and WinXP crashing came up with these drivers when using 2XAA) with half decent framerates. All in all I guess this is a matter of continued tweaking and driver experimentation.Anybody want to shed a light as to whether I am supposed to use Detonator Destroyer between drivers on WinXP and if there really is a newer version of Rivatuner that recognizes the most recent drivers?Thanks,Mauricio

[Bert Pieke]

I too have a Ti4200-128 and am very happy with it!Either the 43.51 or 44.03 drivers will work fine.Keep it simple.. forget about Rivatuner and enable 2xAA and 4xAF in the display properties for best visual quality. In FS2002, uncheck AA..What you really need, I am afraid to say, is more memory and processor power to get the best out of FS2002.. 512Meg and a 2+Gig processor will allow you to fly with 1280x960x32 resolution and FPS locked at 25.

[Guest SteveJ]

As an additional data point, I have an AMD-1800+ system and my Ti4200(64) runs fine with the 44.03 drivers (also WinXP Home and DX 9.0a).