Low FPS, how to improve it?

EDIT IS this right place for this? I've got feeling that this isn't...

First my computer:
2.7GHz (about)
512MB RAM(dunno what type, might be ddr) (Low, but i'm gonna add more when i get my mum convinced it's worth)
Radeon 9200 (old, but enough for me)

Video settings:

[Video]
DisplayWidth=1024
DisplayHeight=768
ColorDepth=32
Fullscreen=1
HardwareMouseCursor=1
Multisample=0
Brightness=50
Contrast=50
AmbientLight=20
SpecularIntensity=10
GfxForceTnL=0
GfxForceNoTexShips=0
GfxForceNoTexPlanets=0
GfxForceNoTexAnomalies=0
GfxForceNoTexResources=0
GfxForceNoTexStars=0
GfxForceNoTexDamage=0
GfxForceNoTexWeaponsDefenses=0
GfxForceNoTexRallyPoints=0
GfxForceNoBump=1
GfxForceNoPointSprites=0
GfxThrottleFrameRate=1
PlanetSurfaceVariety=75
Resolution=1
Preset=4
GfxForceNoCityLights=0
GfxForceNoTexAsteroidFields=0

Problem's that when i zoom out so that i see more than one planet and few ships fps drops to about 10. Fps is fine when i zoom out so that the simple graphics are used or when i zoom in and see only one or two ships.

I want the ships and the planets to be good looking but low fps is annoying. What i should drop so the game run faster? Point sprites? Star textures? TnL? Or is it possible to set the resolution to 800x600?

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

Disable point sprites and turn planet surface variety down all the way. Turn down nebula density too. Disable any textures you can tolerate losing. Check your ATI CCC settings and make sure that mipmaps and anisitropic filtering are set to 'high performance'.

Other than that there's not a huge amount you can do that I can think of offhand. A Radeon 9200 is a pretty weak card by today's standards, so you may not be able to get your desired performance level in mid-zoom levels no matter what you do.

Turning down the resolution can be done, but would make the game nigh-impossible to play as the interface is only designed for 1024x768 and higher. Going lower, it won't scale properly and many parts of it would overlap or go offscreen.

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A Radeon 9200 is a pretty weak card by today's standards

i play on a Radeon X300. i don't get as much performance as i'd like (i'll probably upgrade to an X1300 or X1600 - i need a low profile model), but the X300 does the trick quite well. there's one at Newegg for $40:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121538

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Is anisitropic high performance when it's at 2x or at 16x? (I don't know anything about these things =/)
Should i set 'texture preference' to high performance? Or does it matter?

Gotta convince mum to buy a new video card along with a memory card...

And how does the TnL affect the game?

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GreenReaper

Join Date 05/2001

+32

16x is "higher quality" (and so lower speed) than 2x. Dial all the numbers down.

It's probably best to keep TnL on, if your hardware supports it then you shouldn't take too much of a hit.

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Thanks for advices
And Dark Avatar, i love it.

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Played sometime now, and i see again a problem: It doesn't matter (much) how many ships there are in the screen, but how many object there are in the galaxy. Everything's fine until my scouts have explored big chunck of galaxy... And other races ships don't help at all...

I tried to disable the TnL but that did not help. Removing textures makes the game far too ugly to be playable.

Does anybody have idea how to get rid of this (or reduce it ofc) problem?

Seems like i gotta buy that memory (and a video card) quickly...

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