To what virtual CPU speed should I slower my CPU?

[FSOL]

Hello!

Finally I found a Wipeout 2097 CD!
I got Windows XP and a 933 MHz processor, which means Wipeout is way too fast (in a race, it counts 60 seconds for what might be twenty seconds in real-time).
So I got hold of CPU-Killer.
To what Virtual CPU speed value should i slow down my CPU, so that 1 second in the game (race-time) corresponds with 1 second in realtime?

I can't slow it down too much, otherwise the game won't run smoothly.

Thanks for any answers and sorry for my English (I'm from Germany).

[yuusen]

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work out the time ratio that the game is running at i.e. if it runs at 3 secs for every one then the ratio is 3:1. once you have your ratio, divide that into 933 (your cpu clock speed) to get the result. not an official method, just applying a little logic.
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¥

[G'Kyl]

work out the time ratio that the game is running at i.e. if it runs at 3 secs for every one then the ratio is 3:1. once you have your ratio, divide that into 933 (your cpu clock speed) to get the result. not an official method, just applying a little logic.

Sounds logical, alright. Just how do I do any of this? ;)

[RamZes]

Greetings. I too had such problem. Its decision is very simple: it is not necessary to search anything, find in the system smoothing diagrams 3D. At me for example it is in properties of the screen, parameters Ge-force (nview), nview it is my driver of a videocard, you can have something another. At me game goes in normal rate at a degree of smoothing 2x. Try, it should turn out.

[eno]

Greetings. I too had such problem. Its decision is very simple: it is not necessary to search anything, find in the system smoothing diagrams 3D. At me for example it is in properties of the screen, parameters Ge-force (nview), nview it is my driver of a videocard, you can have something another. At me game goes in normal rate at a degree of smoothing 2x. Try, it should turn out.


I have Wipeout for PC and haven't tried it in 14months it was way to much of a pain in the ass to configure a current PC to run it correctly. IMO the only way to fix the PC version would be to find a program that could lock the framerate to 30fps. Kinda like what happens when you turn on Vsync, how it matchs the screens current refresh rate to FPS. But even running 60hz/60fps the game is now still twice as fast as its supposed to be.

My main question is , can anyone please CLEARLY explain what this guy quickly threw out. Maybe its just me but it doesn't read well or make that much sense. I looked under my card settings and saw nothing similar to what he was talking about.

[mid]

The problem with wipEout 2097 on PC is the framerate, as explained. But the framerate is far more affected by the speed of your graphics card than the CPU, and the slowdown program only affects the latter.

RamZes has just made the following rather excellent suggestion (that I've never thought of):

If you go into your display properties (right-click your desktop and choose 'properties', or go the long-way-round through the control panel), choose the 'settings' tab and then click 'advanced', you'll get a whole load of complex options.

The next step is different for different cards, but you should have something like a 'performance' tab: you can manually control the level of Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF). Stick these through the roof, and you'll not only give your graphics card a serious workout that is hopefully enough to slow it to a crawl, but get really nice images with all the jagged lines cleaned up.

Alternatively, you might just try dialling down the acceleration in 'troubleshooting'.

[G'Kyl]

Well, the problem really is that there is no direct way to make the game run at 30 FPS. You rather have to find a way of slowing both your graphics card and your CPU down considerably. Slowdown programs and setting up graphical quality to put more strain on your display adapter are more or less the only way to achieve what you need to. Furthermore, the XL engine has difficulties displaying many 2D objects, and so the game never runs at a stable framerate in the first place. For this alone, you'll have to find a way to set up your system so the game runs within a certain limit of FPS - it is most certainly not going to be as smooth as it has been on the PSX.

Ben

EDIT An idea, that only just occured to me: Are there any tweak programs (I'm not really into this sort of tools) that allow you to set a stable framerate display for your graphics card? If so, maybe this could work. Or maybe it just sets the framerate but lets games run faster anyway, of course... ;)

[RamZes]

There can be I of something have not understood from read as I do not own in perfection English, but I shall tell the following: do not touch CPU since to each appendix allocates processor time. It will be very hard to pick up the necessary frequency. It is better to try graphic adjustments. :wink:

[cloon02]

Hi all

Complete newbie here (read, hoping to make it to the next checkpoint in time and lots of scratchmarks on the craft!). I'm trying to run Wipeout 2097 on a 2.8 GHz PC, Windows XP, XGI Volari XP5 card. Problem familiar, I guess: runs way too fast (2-3 second in the game is equal to 1 second in real life). I've gone through this forum and also trawled through various other places on the internet. I've seen various solutions being proposed, but also seen reports that these solutions (such as CPU slowdowns) don''t actually work. Also, I must admit feeling a bit uncomfortable running something on my computer that reaches into the heart ot it in such a way (but maybe I'm being paranoid). As to the suggestion of maximising the FSAA and AF settings, I checked with XGI and that is not possible.

So .... is there anyone out there who has actually succeeded in running 2097 at normal speed on a fast machine?

[FoxZero]

if you check your graphics card documentation there might be something to limit your framerate in there, for example nivida cards have the enviroment variable __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK which when not set to 0 enables vertical sync and from my understanding would slow down the game a lot. in any case if you could set one of those variables and THEN run the processing slowdown you could do it, because since the graphics cards are so powerful now you could run the game on a really slow processor and handle the game flawless, not to mention the demo game runs perfect on a 166 in SOFTWARE meaning its easly run simply by the processor. voodoo2 cards might want to mess with SSTV2_FT_CLKDEL or SSTV2_GRXCLK but i have no idea what to set these to either and i have the impression if you messed with them too bad you could break something.. then again, what else are you going to do voodoo2 card hehe.

[gbit]

At one point in time I used to have a p3 450Mhz pc with a Radeon 8500 and 192MB ram. If I set the anisotropic filtering level to 16x and FSAA to 6x, Wipeout 2097 would go from running at 70+ fps to 37fps, which made it perfectly playable as well as looking really nice.

This is one solution, but only 2nd generation cards like the Radeon 8500 can be stressed merely by turning the FSAA and AA all the way to the maximum setting. Modern cards will be able to handle extremely high FSAA and AA settings without any problem when running a Direct 6/7 ( I think, it could be DX5) game like w'o" 2097.

Another solution is for those who have a nVidia card and two monitors. Set one of the display's refresh rate to 33Hz, and turn on vertical sync. The display set to 33Hz will switch off, since it can't handle 33Hz, and WO will run on the main display v'synced to 33fps. Problem solved.

Then there are the usual suspects: The cpu slow down utilities. As has been mentioned, just the cpu is affected, leaving (up to a point) the gfx card to run at full speed, causing WO to run fast as usual.

What really sucks is that having written a 3D engine myself, and seeing HOW EASY it is to implement a time based system to maintain a fixed speed at any framerate, I keep wondering why psygnosis didn't implement such a system.

Good Luck!

ps. The final solution that will work regardless is to get the PSX version, and either run that in an emulator on the pc, or on a real psx (and since I now have a new pc, which is impervious to any slow down tricks, I am looking to find a psx copy of WO 2097).

[RamZes]

8O too much problems, to slow down the game :D :D :D

[cloon02]

Hi all

I contacted Sony who passed my e-mail on to someone dealing with the Psygnosis titles, but as you might expect, they can't offer any patch or something as Psygnosis doesn't exist any more as such. XGI, the maker of my graphics card, would look into the issue and might get back to me with something. In the mean time, I guess I'll just consider the 'seconds' as arbitrary 'end of the 21st century' time units and get used to simply steering the craft. My lap times (only Talon's Reach for now) are coming down during the time trials and I ended up 6th in the first race I entered, so it's not that it's going way too fast to play at all.