Getting the Most Out of Modded BC

[moed]

This only works for those of us that are still using older AGP cards.

One way to increase graphics memory to help with higher res textures is to increase the AGP aperture size in the BIOS. If of course your BIOS is advanced enough to have that setting available.

Go into your BIOS and look for "AGP aperture size" or something similar to that and increase that to 128mb or if you have at least 1gb of RAM installed, bump up the AGP aperture size to 256mb. This RAM will be exclusively used to supplement the amount of graphics RAM on your video card and really help out with frame rates in BC as that extra memory will hold that many more textures.

My sons system has a pretty powerful AGP card and I increased the AGP aperture to the max amount allowed (usually 256mb) and now his BC is running much more smoothly with everything on high settings at 1280x1024 running on an older Athlon XP 2800+

I have a PCIx Crossfire setup so, I'm fortunate to have everything run pretty smoothly also. 

[King Class Scout]

odd.  I remember being told not to ever touch anything having to do with the BIOS because of insta-kill motherboard.

Edit: R-Team, a combination of Geek-speak and english as a second language makes that almost completely incomprehensible.  besides, I'm the old fogey around here, i'd need setting instructions in "for Dummies" format!

[Nebula]

odd.  I remember being told not to ever touch anything having to do with the BIOS because of insta-kill motherboard.

That's only to stop people who don't know what they are doing in there... non of the options will really kill the motherboard (if you don't overclock the damn thing over its thermal limit) if it ever did encounter an issue it just won't boot to windows and you have to reset it to stock.

This only works for those of us that are still using older AGP cards.

uhh kinda standard now... they have similar options that work for PCI-E cards as well... it is system shared memory.

[Morgan]

R-Team, a combination of Geek-speak and english as a second language makes that almost completely incomprehensible.  besides, I'm the old fogey around here, i'd need setting instructions in "for Dummies" format!

Seconded, not trying to get on your case R-Team, I just like to be able to understand posts! 

Anyways I'm not going to add BIOS information to the first post, mainly because this thread is about adjusting BC settings to get the best performance, not going into the deep, dark depths of the PC itself. The BIOS suggestions are welcome none the less in case someone DOES want to risk playing with them, but I'm just gonna leave them in their original authors posts as-is.

In any case there has been a lot of helpful ideas here please continue to post anything you have. Thanks for the help guys.

[moed]

odd.  I remember being told not to ever touch anything having to do with the BIOS because of insta-kill motherboard.

Edit: R-Team, a combination of Geek-speak and english as a second language makes that almost completely incomprehensible.  besides, I'm the old fogey around here, i'd need setting instructions in "for Dummies" format!

How "old" are you King Class Scout? I might give you a run for your money 

Cookie for Nero for starting this valuable thread.

[Lionus]

he's somewhere between "mature" and "ancient" 

[Morgan]

Added a note to the first post about the option/necessity to adjust GPU settings. I didn't go into details on how to do this (since it varies from card to card), only a referral to the GPU manufacturers website/instruction manual, since that goes outside BC but is an obvious step.

[Bones]

he's somewhere between "mature" and "ancient"  

how ancient ? Master Windu ancient or Master Yoda ancient ?  

[R-TEAM]

Hi,

he,he - yes - my english is "suboptimal" ;)
To clarify :
The main important thing, that the GraKa only operate at full speed IF all data in the
GraKa memory is clear i hope.
(and even setting the "Apertue Size" from AGP give the graka only more motherboard (MoBo), and so slow, RAM as buffer)
With MipMap is mean the technic to store txture data in different detail and size levels
in RAM (better in GraKa ram).So that if the object at long distant, not musst rendered
from the GraphicProcessor (GPU) with a highres texture who even no one will see the nice details.
The AA is AntisotropischeFilter (here i should better writen AF - sorry ;) ), it correct the texture, by non planar view on here, to look even good.So if you like to show the side of a spaceship from all angles look good and sharp you need a high AF.The drawback is that the GraKa musst (or shold) store all the more finer calculatet pictures in here RAM - and as you see on my example this cost the most of the RAM.

Regards
R-TEAM

[Morgan]

Hi,

he,he - yes - my english is "suboptimal" ;)
To clarify :
The main important thing, that the GraKa only operate at full speed IF all data in the
GraKa memory is clear i hope.
(and even setting the "Apertue Size" from AGP give the graka only more motherboard (MoBo), and so slow, RAM as buffer)
With MipMap is mean the technic to store txture data in different detail and size levels
in RAM (better in GraKa ram).So that if the object at long distant, not musst rendered
from the GraphicProcessor (GPU) with a highres texture who even no one will see the nice details.
The AA is AntisotropischeFilter (here i should better writen AF - sorry ;) ), it correct the texture, by non planar view on here, to look even good.So if you like to show the side of a spaceship from all angles look good and sharp you need a high AF.The drawback is that the GraKa musst (or shold) store all the more finer calculatet pictures in here RAM - and as you see on my example this cost the most of the RAM.

Regards
R-TEAM

Ok I think I get what you're saying but I'm not 100% so bear with me and I apologize if I misunderstand you. I'm assuming "GraKa" is "Graphics Card" and your explaining memory usage a bit (please correct me if I'm wrong). MipMaps has been addressed already. Anisotropic Filtering isn't something I've gone into detail over but I know it's something that can't be adjusted from BC, you have to adjust the settings from your GPU software directly. Since ways (in some rare, crappy, cases IF you're able) to do this vary depending on your hardware and/or software you'd have to get that info from your GPU manufacturer.

Anyways I hope I'm not discouraging you from offering further imput, I'm just trying to make sure I'm clear on what you're saying. Anything you have to contribute is welcome.

[Vladko1]

The last thing I read in the NET about T&L was that T&L has complex pipelines, which ones accelarate the graphics performance.

[Morgan]

Updated the first post with some additional ways to speed up BC through DS9FX, though nothing major.

[El]

A quick note on VOX files.

If you delete VOX files due to ships not damaging properly, the next time that ship is used it will lag BC somewhat while the VOX file is rebuilt.

Obviously for battles with multiple ships where you have deleted the vox files this will cause a lot more lag.

Suggest after deleteing the vox files you play each ship one at a time to rebuild the Vox files before trying big fleet battles.

[Morgan]

*Added to first post*

Very good to know El.

[King Class Scout]

got a tip for MAKING them?  i have some older mods that were made sans VOXes.

[Nebula]

you don't make the vox files....

[086gf]

Yeah the game creates them along with any needed pyc's and the options.cfg. ;)

[Morgan]

*updated the DS9FX section of the first post to correspond with Xtended's new features and systems.*

[Morgan]

*Finally got around to porting this page to the BC Wiki*

[Lurok91]

Good work  *cookie*