By James Knopp
31 December 2001

Introduction

Well, just like GP2, GP3 has a very similar graphics setup screen. Most people might have found that despite all of the tweaking you've been doing, you still haven't managed to find a good balance of speed and good looking graphics. Well this guide should be useful to you all. I have a PII 400, 256MB RAM and a TNT2 Gamer Ultra with 32MB RAM. This is basically the recommended system with the exception of around 50 mhz in the processor speed :) Even though I have the requirements, GP3 tends to run slowly in some areas. There are actually a number of things you can do and this guide should help you do some of the stuff I've done to squeeze some extra speed out GP3. This can prove to be slightly difficult since GP3 has a difficult engine to speed up with the physics engine and graphics engine linked together. When one engine slows down, the other slows down with it.

The basic idea is to first get the Processor Occupancy as close to 100% as possible or below. If you are below 100% the majority of the time then you are laughing. GP3 will run like a dream. However for those who see something in the range of 150%+ then this for you. There are number of things that you can do. The first and probably the most expensive thing is to start upgrading. I'd personaly try to stay away from doing this unless you really need to. If you have a system similar to mine then you should be ok for the time being. Anything below a PII 300 then it'd be a good idea to start getting your cheque book out. The next thing is to start tweaking your graphics card. There are number of things you could do. Overclocking is one of them. It is not really the most healthy thing to do either and I cannot stress enough how important it is not to overclock your graphics card unless you really need to and as long as you don't over do it. The last thing is to start tweaking GP3 itself in the graphics options. This can squeeze a few frames out and improve the speed just a tad. So without further a-do, let's start.

Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4 Upgrading your PC »