Deus Ex and Geforce 4 Ti 4200

[ahurtt]

Anybody have this game and this graphics card? I'm thinking of swinging by Best Buy and picking up the game but just curious how well I should expect it to run with this card. I have an otherwise good machine:

P4 2.53 GHz 533 FSB
1 Gig Crucial PC2700 DDR
SB Audigy 2
80 Gig Western Digital ATA 133 7200 RPM hard drive.

I'd like to try one of those Radeon 9600 or 9800's everyone is raving about but they're a little cost prohibitive right now. It's my policy to always stay about 1 step behind the "bleeding edge" if you know what I mean. Saves a lot of money.

[Radi0h3ad]

I played Deus Ex with a 64MB GF4 MX 440 and I can't remember having any problems at all, other than maybe having to run the game on lower res's & easier display options. Your Ti beats my card, so I don't think you'll find you meet too many problems. None that will ruin the gameplay for you at any rate.
I bought a Radeon 9800 and I have had to revert back to the GF as it caused my system nothing but trouble, and unfortunately it wasn't just me alone who experienced problems. This isn't related to Deus Ex, just the card. It ran games excellently and if we're just talking about it's game performance, then yeah, I'd say go for it, but when it comes to overall performance... well, let's just say I wasn't too pleased.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Deus Ex is a fairly old game so the ti4200 can handle it well enough at high detail levels eye candy and all

--Jakk:t

[ahurtt]

sorry, I meant the new Deus Ex.

[Radi0h3ad]

This thread on it's official forums here (http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?threadid=28810), states the recommended system specs for running the demo. If you think you'll run the demo just fine then I doubt the official release will be much more challenging.

[BadBadNeil]

Hell i played through Deus Ex 2 on a Ti4200 and it worked fine.

I have similar specs to your system
1GB PC3200
XP2600+
GF TI4200+ 128MB
120GB WD 1200JB

[Someone Stupid]

If your buying the card only because of this game, don't. It is the engine. Change in your default.ini's the cache usage to your apeture size (it's default is 1 in the file) and you should get smooth enough fps at lower resolutions. Even with a 9800 Pro o/c'ed, the game has some rather drastic dips. Without the ini change it is a slideshow. I've ran it on a 4200 (at 4600) and on a 9800 Pro. Without that ini change the game will run horrible on both, period. The ini change helps IMMENSELY. If you d/l the patch, you'll have to change that value again as well.

[Radi0h3ad]

I'm gonna jump in on this thread, 'cos I've bumped into a similar problem. After hearing the hype about this game and loving the original, I decided to download the demo. I'm currently using a 64MB GF 4 MX, and on running the demo, I get an error saying -

"Engine requires video with pixel shader 1.1 capabilities or greater".

Now, in the back I have a 256MB ATI Radeon 9800. Does the Radeon 9800 have the capability to run DE:IW?

[ahurtt]

I don't have the box in front of me right now (I did go buy the game. . .more on that in a moment) but I do believe I remember it saying on the system requirements on the box that NVidia MX chipset is NOT supported. I think it says NVidia 3/4/Ti are supported and specifically states MX is NOT. It also says to the best of my recollection that Radeon 9xxx is supported.

SomeoneStupid: I am not planning on buying a new card for this or any game really. My inquiry was more to try and figure out if this game would run well on my current card. Can you tell me a little more about this .ini file change I need to make? What is the name of the file and the setting I change? Can you paste an example here of what the setting should look like? Right now the game is in fact rather "slide-showish" if I jack the res up to 1024x768. Runs better on 640x480 but not as well as I would expect it to based on how my other games run. And who wants to look at 640x480 garbage? I'd have never replaced my Geforce 2 if I wanted to still play games in 640x480. . .but even that card could handle better than that for some games.

All in all, seems like a pretty decent game so far. But with this performance I can't see how it was one of the top 10 E3 show stoppers for 2003 as it claims to have been on the box.

[ahurtt]

Radiohead: Also, if you follow the link to the official forum you posted for me above about the specs for the demo, it states there that MX is NOT supported.

[BadBadNeil]

I can't beleive your getting such bad performance are your drivers updated?

I played through the entire game in 1024x768 with all options full, no FSAA. Strangely the only major slowdown in the game came when you first start off in the bedroom. Dont know why that part bogs the system but after that was smooth sailing.

[Radi0h3ad]

Originally posted by ahurtt
Radiohead: Also, if you follow the link to the official forum you posted for me above about the specs for the demo, it states there that MX is NOT supported.

d'oh :rolleyes:

[Dennis Bacon]

this game ate my system alive and crapped it out into a pile of ****.

Radeon 8500
msi kt6 delta
barton2500 @ 2.2ghz (3200)
1gb pc3200 ddr
160gb seagate barracuda
SB Live 5.1

[Someone Stupid]

Change the Default.ini's cache size number from 1 to your apeture size. Runs like it was programmed on a whole new engine.

I also found it ran the "worst" at the beginning pretty much as well.

[Radi0h3ad]

well us brits have to remember that you guys are supposedly beta testing it before it's released over here.. i suppose that's one of the benefits of getting things after everyone else and having to wait... so would it be wishful thinking maybe to hope that these performance problems will be ironed out for the european release?

[ahurtt]

Someone Stupid: When you say "aperture size" are you talking about the AGP aperture size setting from the BIOS?

[Someone Stupid]

Yes, apeture refers to your bios AGP Apeture which should be 32 megs on up to a card to it's best of it's ability.

in your system folder there is the Default.ini you need to change AFTER you download patch 1.1 (else you' have more to change).

CacheSizeMegs=1

Just use the find command, it is quicker. Change that to your apeture size. My AGP apeture is 256, so the above reads

CacheSizeMegs=256

I've tried it with lower values like 32 and 64... worked as well and they weren't my mb's apeture size. Though it shows that lower ones do work. I just use that for me as I think it ignores the apeture unless you tell it otherwise. You might as well use it since your computer has marked it off for that even if it isn't being used when the card is in 3D operations.

Also have tried a few things to smooth the frames out to stop the huge drops - this is the only thing the doesn't take quality away which does help some. Change this:

MaxTrackerHeapSize=32

to:

MaxTrackerHeapSize=128

Don't ask me how it works or why, I don't know for that one. Only do this for the one under the [Engine.MemoryManager], the other one does nothing for you, it is for the XBox.

[ahurtt]

Ok thanks for the clarification. I'll try it out. Also, what is "Bloom"? I saw it is one of the settings in the game you can turn on or off. And I saw in the 1.1 patch release notes that they defaulted bloom to off in the patch. Great! What is it?

[ahurtt]

Wow! World of difference that made. I can actually play the game very smoothly now at 1024x768. Thanks! (Still don't know what "bloom" is though).

[Beeblequix]

Bloom is a setting to smoothe out the image on the Xbox.

PC players should disable this feature. It's really not useful on the PC.

Crappy console-to-pc-ports...

ß

[Someone Stupid]

Even after the patch there are probably another 5 to 10 default.ini mods that help with performance in one way or another. Some FPS, some graphically, and some to even the FPS out, though even with it all done, it still will get those wonderful 80 to 25 FPS drops occasionally which pisses the hell out of me.