gta san andreas and ram

NX7010 · Jul 22, 2005, 02:34 AM

Hi guys, Its me again

I m currently addicted to gta san andreas. its a very excellent game. but i have a performance issue with it.

i m currently playing it on my laptop, which is a centrino 1.6, using ati mob radeon 9200 64mb dedicated, 512mb ram. my laptop supports a max resolution of 1280 x 800. so in gta san andreas, when i play with a resolution of 1280 x 800, the game works a bit slow. its like heavy. but when i play with a resolution of 1024 x 768, the game works jsut fine. So is this a ram issue or a video card issue? cause i m planning to buy a 1024mb of ram (pc3200 ddr400). so shld i proceed with this purchase, or it is just my video card? when i was playing gta san andreas, i checked my ram, and it says only 140mb is left, out of 512. thanks guys.

Aligokalppeker · Jul 22, 2005, 03:26 AM

It seems as a video card issue,,,In higher resolutions , in higher resolution textures game needs more video card memory for gameplay.But if there is not enough video memory , excessed texture parts are allocated in system memory.Because in general system memory clocks are lower than video card memories , this event causes slowdowns in games.Are you using Cat. 5.7 , this set improves graphic memory usage of card , and so improves performance on such conditions.

mkk · Jul 22, 2005, 05:20 AM

The game uses an old OpenGL engine that is all about graphics memory speed for its performance. Set the game to low visual fx quality and no antialiasing to see if 1280x800 becomes playable then. You could try to overclock the graphics memory a little if possible. Running the game at 1280x800x16bit could possibly also help.

NX7010 · Jul 22, 2005, 07:23 AM

i m using cat 5.6. so u mean cat 5.7 makes a big diffference? and i m using a laptop, so is it safe to overclock the video memory? can u pls tell me how to do it. thank you. and so, the main question is, adding more ram (system memory) wont help?

br00ksintexas · Jul 22, 2005, 07:35 AM

As with any laptop, the most prevailing enemy is heat. With that said, overclocking a laptop's GPU isn't a seriously viable solution. Even with a coolpad on mine, I haven't overclocked it more than 5 or 10 percent. And that was for benching purposes only. The gains made through this, aren't enough to justify the higher GPU temp and the possiblity of prematurely burning out the GPU and monitor, especially since, with laptops, most GPU's aren't replacable as in their desktop relatives. Good Luck with your issue.
Kev
P.S. If your GPU has shared memory, then adding ram may not increase graphics performance completely, but it'll definitely improve multi-tasking and overall performance issues. Shared graphics should recieve some stability from added ram.

NX7010 · Jul 22, 2005, 07:55 AM

no. my vga card is not shared. its dedicated. so replacing the existing ram with 1024 will make a huge diff in gaming? such as san andreas?

NX7010 · Jul 22, 2005, 08:59 AM

hi guys,

there is this program called everest, which tells us accurately about our systems. so, under the video settings, where all the info abt my video adapter is siplayed, i got a warning says that the agp aperture is set more than half of the system memory and thismay reduce performance. so wat should i do? i went to the bios and i cant change my agp aperture. there is no option there for changing the agp aperture. pls help me guys

secondly, is it worth changing to 1024mb dd400 pc 3200 ram? i mean will it increase the fps or make the games i play smoother?

thirdly, i still dont understand abt the performace increase with 5.7. i mean it does something with our video memoery? will it make a huge diff installing it. pls explain. thanks alot guys.

really appreciate the help.

mkk · Jul 22, 2005, 03:10 PM

Adding RAM to get 1GB is a good idea for just about everything, but for this perticular game it won't make a big difference since it's not a RAM-hungry game. About the AGP aperture well if the BIOS doesn't let you adjust it then there's nothing to do really. If the setting really is a problem, wich I doubt, that too would be helped by getting more RAM. All things considered; buy that extra RAM.

You could try some overclocking tool like RadClocker or ATI Tray Tools and see if they can help you overclock the graphics memory a little. If it does then try just a little and don't overclock the core as that increases heat much more than just overclocking the graphics memory. The core isn't what's limiting the performance in GTA:SA either.

Aligokalppeker · Jul 23, 2005, 11:29 AM

Increasing RAM to 1024 MB may make game run faster in case of game needs more than 512 RAM.But if it's not there will be no difference in performance.Datas on memories(also in Video Memories) are allocated dynamically, this means game allocates memory blocks with different sizes during gameplay and this also causes some fragmentation(similiar to HD fragmentation),This problem is solved with some algorithms , but solution doesn't avoid fragmentation %100,so increasing efficiency of this algorithm or allocation policy can increase performance....

NX7010 · Jul 23, 2005, 12:11 PM

so how to increase the efficiency of the algorithm or allocation policy? thanks so much for the reply.

another problem is, in my bios, there is no option to change the agp aperature whihc is currently set in 256mb, and this, according to me, is not giving performance boost. so is there any other way to reduce it to 64 or 128?

lastly, will the cat 5.7 help in games that uses alot of video memory? meaning, if i play san andreas in the highest resolution with AA on, it becomes slow. so does 5.7 resolves this issue?

Thanks alot guys. really appreciate it.

Aligokalppeker · Jul 24, 2005, 12:00 PM

Accelerating or optimizing a hardware with a software doesn't create miracles(except some situations).So you can expect some performance increase in games,but this increase will not be too high.May be between %5-%20,so it depends on your card.You can force it but without overclocking your card , it can run at most as fast as it can

NX7010 · Jul 25, 2005, 03:02 AM

hi again guys. first of all i would like to thank all of you'll for the replies.

I m really confused now, of whether i shld get an xbox or upgrade my ram to 1024mb. i m more into gaming.

my specs are, intel pentium centrino 1.6 ghz
512mb of ram
ati radeon 9200 64mb
L2 cache

so, which one shld i get, upgrade to 1024mb ram and get good gaming performance or get an xbox. thanks so much

redsolar · Jul 25, 2005, 01:33 PM

You should definitely give 5.7s a spin. Also, try setting Texture Quality to Medium in game options, instead of High. Reduce drawing distance a little bit. By sacrificing a little quality you may sometimes get a lot of speed bosst, especially on slower hardware, such as 9200 Mobility. 16 bits as mkk suggested above may also bring you that magic FPS level

.

PS. mkk, the game is Direct3D, not openGL

NX7010 · Jul 26, 2005, 12:07 AM

so basically, upgradding my ram to pc2700 2 x 512mb of ram 333mhz will improve my overall gaming performance in san adnreas? and how about in other games?

And currently my ram is pc2700 2 x 256mb 133mhz. is it a good one? i mean the difference in 333mhz and 133mhz. does that really make a diff in gaming?

Thanks alot guys.

redsolar · Jul 26, 2005, 01:40 PM

333 Mhz is DDR rate, while 133 is SDR rate (likely true rate is 266 in your case, as you have DDR ram in your laptop).

I would not rush and tell you that 1GB will improve anything over 512 MB. GTA is not that memory hungry. Try other suggestions first, disable any unnecessary applications. Worst comes worse - reinstall the OS, and see if that helps (sounds a little over the edge, but if you want to exhaust all potential issues - why not doing it before spending $$?)

NX7010 · Jul 27, 2005, 05:10 AM

i downloaded the cat 5.7 already, and installed it after modding it with patje's great tool. after that, after installing, the screen becomes black. that means the windows is still on, but the screen is black. why is that so?

redsolar · Jul 27, 2005, 03:26 PM

Need to delete one file from your profile - I ran into the same issue.

Delete file called gta_sa.set from your "GTA San Andreas User Files" folder in "My Documents". It seems like GTA does not like to switch drivers, at least not 5.6 to 5.7.

This will not delete your saved games, but you will have to change all your settings (keys, resolution, etc) since this is the file that stores them (along with some adapter information).