T20 Graphics card - how to speed up?

[Clockface]

I wasn't sure whether to post this question in this forum, or in the Windows forum, so apologies if it's in the wrong forum

I have a T20 and it's great for wordprocessing, reading HTM files and playing games via emulators . I don't use it for PC games much, but I used to like Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 and so on - nothing too demanding, even for my 7--MHz, so I dug out my old CD's and installed the old classics.

They run fine, but when using mods (modified levels, occasionally with larger levels or better graphics etc) the frame rate of the games can fall as they sometimes have higher system requirements than the base game that they run under.

So I was wondering if there was any software to tweak the T20's graphics card? I don't even know what card it is, or it's on-board memory, so I wouldn't know what utilities to download to tweak the card.

I don't want to physically overclock the graphics card, as I don't want to risk overheating and damaging the chip, but I am hoping that there are some software tricks to maybe get some extra speed out of the system,
either from a graphics card utility or maybe altering some setting under Windows/Direct X/OpenGL etc. I know about defragging the drive, closing down background tasks (the few that Windows allows you to close, anyway...) and I also realise that the only real way to guarantee noticable performance gain is to install new hardware (or just upgrade to a faster PC), but if anyone can suggest a software method of adding a few frames per second to these games then please let me know.

By the way, does anyone know how to speed up Unreal Tournaments loading times? It's a superb game, but it takes far longer to load than any other game on my laptop.

Thanks for any answers.

Edit: Forgot to say, I'm using Windows 98 SE

[skygodtj]

other than swapping out your T20 base for a T23 with 16MB of vidram, AFAIK, there isnt a better way of improving the performance of the T20. When you play your games, do you disable/shut off all the background programs that normally run?

T20, 8MB vidram, bad
T23, 16MB vidram, good

TJ

[kyrotech]

even if you buy a T23 system board (very expensive nowadays) you wont get the performance you are looking for...

S3 = :S

[Temetka]

S3 chips aren't all that bad. The Savage4 was actually a pretty decent performer back in the day. Keep in mind this was when the Rage128 and Voodoo cards ruled the roost. It kept up with them in most games.

The problem with the S3 chips, IMO is that they don't do bump mapping or even AA. Otherwise they are pretty good chips. While I would be happy with a 16MB Rage128 Pro or Radeon in my T23, it's graphics haven't let me down yet.

[Clockface]

[quote="skygodtj"]other than swapping out your T20 base for a T23 with 16MB of vidram, AFAIK, there isnt a better way of improving the performance of the T20. When you play your games, do you disable/shut off all the background programs that normally run?

T20, 8MB vidram, bad
T23, 16MB vidram, good

TJ[/quote]

I turn off every background process I can, but Windows still has *lots* of threads running which you can't disable (and aren't listed in the task manager).

Thanks to everyone for their answers. At least Unreal Tournament runs at full speed, which is the main thing

[christopher_wolf]

If you feel like it, you can also kill explorer.exe, particularly near startup where alot of services seem to glom onto it, and save a bit more resources that way. That means, though, you will have to start UT2004 up with the Windows Task Manager. You can always restart it later

[Clockface]

[quote="christopher_wolf"]If you feel like it, you can also kill explorer.exe, particularly near startup where alot of services seem to glom onto it, and save a bit more resources that way. That means, though, you will have to start UT2004 up with the Windows Task Manager. You can always restart it later [/quote]

Just plain, original Unreal Tournament, I'm afraid. I really doubt that UT2004 would work on a P3-700MHz and 8MB GFX card

But your suggestion sounds interesting - how do I

a) (safely) disable explorer,
b) start a program (in this case, Unreal Tournament), and
c) restart explorer later on (other than by rebooting, I presume)?

Thanks.

[christopher_wolf]

OK, here are the steps

1.) Control+Alt+Delete, that brings up the Task Manager
2.) Go to the "Processes" Tab and Right-Click "explorer.exe"
3.) Click End Process and Confirm
4.) Now that the Windows Explorer Shell isn't running, go to the "Applications"
Tab; down at the bottom right-hand corner, click "New Task..."
5.) Find the Path to the Game Executable; type it in, then hit Enter or OK
6.) Enjoy
7.) After you are done with UT; bring back the Task Manager and click on the "New Tasks..." Button again
8.) Now type in "explorer" and hit Enter

That should bring back explorer.exe, and cut down on some system startup fat that tends to hang around explorer when your system first starts up.

[Clockface]

[quote="christopher_wolf"]OK, here are the steps

1.) Control+Alt+Delete, that brings up the Task Manager
2.) Go to the "Processes" Tab and Right-Click "explorer.exe"
3.) ...
[/quote]

Windows 98SE doesn't have a "Processes" tab (or any other tab) in it's task manager, so is there any other way to do the actions you suggest?

Thanks.

[skygodtj]

even if you buy a T23 system board (very expensive nowadays) you wont get the performance you are looking for...

S3 = :S

What''s expensive? T23 bases on eBay running $150-175. The only thing extra you'd have to get for it is the PC133 memory.

TJ

[skygodtj]

other than swapping out your T20 base for a T23 with 16MB of vidram, AFAIK, there isnt a better way of improving the performance of the T20. When you play your games, do you disable/shut off all the background programs that normally run?

T20, 8MB vidram, bad
T23, 16MB vidram, good

TJ

I turn off every background process I can, but Windows still has *lots* of threads running which you can't disable (and aren't listed in the task manager).

Thanks to everyone for their answers. At least Unreal Tournament runs at full speed, which is the main thing

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I think you mentioned you were running 98SE, do you know about "msconfig"? It controls the startup apps.

Click Start, Run, type in "msconfig", click Start Up tab, uncheck all the apps you dont want to start on boot up when you want to run the games. If you are running AV software, you can keep it from running, any other apps as well. Just keep a list of the apps that were checked and recheck them after you are done playing, and restart.