Freezes up Need good cheap video card!

troopie · #1 June 23rd, 2005, 10:51 PM

I got WinSpmbt yesterday and started to play it. Now it freezes up when playing a save. So, I have scoped the problem, my onboard video card only carries 16meg of ram, shared from the 128 meg system ram. It's a PcChips M810 system board. Can anyone suggest a solution, add more system ram? Or better, a good cheap video card compatible with the M810. It's blerrie frustrating to have this game, and not to be able to play it.

System specs
Duron 1300
128 MB system ram (112 available)
16 MB SiS 630/730
Win98 SE

Dankie,

troopie

Mobhack · #2 June 23rd, 2005, 11:12 PM

Quote:

troopie said:
I got WinSpmbt yesterday and started to play it. Now it freezes up when playing a save. So, I have scoped the problem, my onboard video card only carries 16meg of ram, shared from the 128 meg system ram. It's a PcChips M810 system board. Can anyone suggest a solution, add more system ram? Or better, a good cheap video card compatible with the M810. It's blerrie frustrating to have this game, and not to be able to play it.

System specs
Duron 1300
128 MB system ram (112 available)
16 MB SiS 630/730
Win98 SE

Dankie,

troopie

Start with a real video card with 32+MB of on board video RAM. Your shared card is eating real RAM, and the shared RAM used for video is not fast, compared to on-card video RAM.

then try adding memory - windows does better the more RAM you add anyway.

You may want to try increasing the windows swap file size, but real RAM is miles better. (You will want to change it if you put more RAM in anyway, and when you do you will want to defrag the drive to ensure the new swap file is one continuous unfragmented file)

Cheers
Andy

Arralen · #3 June 24th, 2005, 04:06 AM

I have run WinSPMBT with both nVidia Fx5200 card and ATi Radeon 7000 (IIRC), both with 128MB VidRAM.

Both cards are among the cheapest you can get, and you may want to watch out for a fan-less version (as I did with both), which saves you troubles and noise with them.

Do avoid MX-cards under all circumstances, they're crap ...

Check out the M810 FAQ http://radel.inet.net.nz/m810lmr.html#vga

But do not forget to add "real" RAM .. 128MB is barely sufficient to run Win98SE and Word (but do not put graphics into your docs, or you're into trouble..), but not WinSPMBT ...
And check the [vcache] settings in ... lemme think .. system.ini it was, IIRC. There should be some entry like

Code:



[VCache]

MinFileCache=24576

MaxFileCache=24576

This will result in Win98 using a fixed-sized file cache in RAM of 24MB size. If you do not set 'MaxFileCache', the cache size will happily grow to very large size, eating up your free RAM while running an APP and doing file I/O ...

junk2drive · #4 June 24th, 2005, 10:03 AM

Check your motherboard for an AGP slot. If it does not have one you need a PCI card.

Arralen · #5 June 24th, 2005, 10:30 AM

Oh, yes, he's right.

Versions <1.6 (IIRC) of this board do not have an AGP slot.
If so, you need an PCI (not PCIe !!!) card.

I cards I mentioned above should be available as PCI cards as well. Over here, strangly, the Fx5200 PCI cards are 2x as expensive as the Radeon 7000 cards (~35Euro vs. 70+ Euro). Personally, I would go with the ATi card, especially as the whole system isn't that up-to-date as well .. anything more expensive would be wasted.

troopie · #6 June 24th, 2005, 12:11 PM

Thanks okes,

According to the documentation for this mainboard, it has an AGP 4x slot. I'll order one today and I should be in action soon. Time, of course, is the devil.

Shame! here comes the baas. Back to work

troopie

Shadowcougar · #7 June 25th, 2005, 02:43 AM

went to tiger direct and gota gforce 2 32 mb card for 19 dollars US. it on www.tigerdirect.com or I went to the Raleigh, NC store and picked it up. took longer to open the case than to replace it.

troopie · #8 June 28th, 2005, 07:47 PM

I got a radeon 7000 and installed it. The mainboard is an off brand and although it has an agp slot, it wouldn't recognise the card. So I added 256MB more system ram, upped the shared ram from 16 to 64mb and it now runs acceptably.

I'll return the video card and let that be a lesson to all, don't buy strange brand mainboards.

troopie

Shadowcougar · #9 June 29th, 2005, 02:10 AM

maybe the AGP slot was a 2x only. the 7000 is a 4x card

Arralen · #10 June 29th, 2005, 10:45 AM

It's isn't so much of a strange brand motherboard than a simply cheapo one, which is mostly sold the OEMs who assemble boxes for offices etc. . So there's no need for extended compatibility and upgrade-possiblities... .

You didn't read the FAQ for the motherboard, did you?
- I have that link posted somewhere up this thread ...

Some cards do work with this board, some don't.
Radeon 7000 should work (with a little tweak), if you have a late revision of the board and it's not some Radeon-based card from some obscure graphics card manufaturer again ..

But, good to hear the game runs at last. Have fun !