Unplayably low frame rate

[bluefusion]

I've set all the graphics settings on the game to off or low.. but I still have to wait for the mouse to move. It seems to take 2 seconds or so for the cursor to update on the screen. The CPU is maxed out the whole time i have the game on


Is there anything i can do to make this at least playable on my system? Its on its last legs, but there seems to be something holding DefCon back from playing acceptably at the lowest levels.

I have a very low end system: 700mhz p3, 8mb integrated agp graphics with 1 GB memory, motherboard is an ECS P6SET-ML with an Sis 620 chipset Im running xubuntu 8.10... and ive tried Ubuntu 8.10 with the same result.

Help!

[xander]

Despite the very simple looking graphics, Defcon is actually quite graphically intensive. My guess is that your system is too, as you put it, low end to cope.

xander

[Rogviler]

I'm barely able to play on my "everyday" laptop that has a 1.3Ghz Celeron, built-in graphics, and 512MB RAM, but do so because I always have it with me and it's easy to whip out for a game...

Honestly about the only thing that could be suggested is getting a graphics card for it (assuming it's a desktop, you didn't say), as even the cheapest add-on card will take a chunk of the burden away from the CPU (though the game uses the CPU quite a bit anyway, apparently). I would say you should be able to play it at least as well as I can if you do that.

-Rog

EDIT: It probably goes without saying, but make sure you get a card that has good Linux drivers written for it. I had a heck of a time a few years ago with an older ATI card.

[sfericz]

I'm not sure about Linux, but in the Windows build you can close out the "Score" and "Chat" window to recover some of the lag you receive. That might help for a temporary fix until you either update graphics card or ram.

You also might want to check to see if your graphic drivers are up to date.

[bluefusion]

Thank you for all your replies. Unfortunately, my computer has only one PCI slot, which is occupied by an ethernet card. The AGP intetgrated graphics unfortunately mean that i dont have an actual AGP slot (integrated AGP does seem to be an oxymoron). That means, I can only upgrade with a PCI graphics card and only if i give up my ethernet card.

If I could find an Elite DAVICOM 9102 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (the option that this board doesnt happen to have) it would free up the PCI slot.

This computer was a low end machine from the start, so upgrade options were always limited. I'll keep looking for a better graphics driver for now, but I think i'll just start putting a new machine together soon....

Thanks for your help..