Windows Colin McRae 4 problems (Radeon 9800 Pro)??

I've been having serious problems with the frame rate (lag?) when playing Colin McRae 4.

Here are my PC's basic specs:

OS: Win98SE (with all critical updates).
AMD Athlon XP2800+ Barton @ 2.08Ghz.
1 x 516Mb Corsair XMS Pro PC3200 DDR RAM.
Chaintech 7NJS Zenith Ultra.
Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb RAM) @ default settings (Catalyst 4.3 drivers).
2 large Deskstar ATA HDs (60Gb & 120Gb) both partitioned.

1st disk has 2 logical partions, one for the OS and one big one for games, the 2nd disk has 3 partitions, one of which is a seperate logical partition for a 2Gb Swap drive (where the Swap files goes). I would have 2 x 516 PC3200 DDR RAM, but Win98SE doesn't seemto like 1Gb of RAM or DDR RAM for that matter (time to buy Win XP soon I guess ).

My graphics card settings are 1200x960 resolution 2xAA 4xAF. The in-game CM4 settings are all set to high except for: Z-buffer at 16, Draw Distance at 7, and FSAA is off (what is FSAA?). I have played Max Payne 2 with super smooth frame rate at 1200x960 2xAA 4xAF with no problems what so ever.

NOW, the problems I'm having with Colin McRae 4 is that the game starts to show some lag after 1 single rally stage (doesn't matter which one). After 2-3 single stages the lag gets noticeably worse. After 4-6 single stages the lag is so awefull you spend more time off the track than on it and the frame rate eventually grinds to a halt. When that happens the game freezes up. This problem happens at any resolution, higher or lower.

Also it is worth noting that I had a lot of trouble installing this game. I have Autorun disabled, so I used the setup.exe from disc 1. The first 2 installations froze up after asking for disc 3 to be inserted. The third installation froze whilst disc 1 was loading. The fourth went fine, but I did have to write over the previous installations each time because there was no sure fire way of removing the last ones.

Does anybody know what the problem might be?

 

Not sure - is heatsink on gfx card seated okay?

btw, fsaa = full screen anti aliasing. Smooths off jaggies.

 

Sounds like Driver Issues, i would consider upgrading to XP or 2000.

 

I did accidentally touch the HSF on the Radeon whilst install the card, and it did seem a little loose.

Guess it's time to install that ICEQ HSF and do a proper job unlike Sapphire did.

 

It could be, ther may be some bad coding in the game for Win98SE. I forgot to mention that Colin McRae 2 installs fine, but performs an "illegal operation" when the game tries to start. I did not have this problem when my PC was still a PII 450Mhz, 516Mb bog standard RAM, Asus mobo, and a Mattrox Millenium G400 (memory smaller than squirrel's nuts). Could be Codemasters' way of coding.

I'm going to update all the NForce 2 Ultra drivers on my motherboard as well as the BIOS and then see if that changes anything. I may have re-install the whole OS from scratch again.

Also, I think the gross lag I'm getting in CMR4 my be due to the memory not purging itself. If I play 6 single rally stage it hangs (no replays veiwed). If I play 3-4 single stages plus veiw the replays after each stage it hangs.

On an off-topic note. When I did have my PC in it's old PII 450Mhz setup one the games I had, Mobile Rally Championship, suddenly started throw up a "Rally: Guru Meditation" dialogue box and the game refused to open. Loads of numbers and letters and something about a "code violation" in the dialogue box. Re-installing the game and then opening it straight away gets the game to start. BUT after closing the game or re-starting the PC and then re-opening the game brings up the "Rally: Guru Meditation" dialogue box and no game. This also happpens on my new AMD setup mentioned earlier in this thread. It's like WTF I can only play Mobile Rally if I re-install it each time. Any ideas on that?

 

Which version of Nvidia's NForce drivers are you using? If you are using 3.13, I'd recommend rolling back the IDE drivers so that it's using the MS ones.

 

do you know anyone with a copy of the game? it could be your CD's as you get so many errors

 

Could be the CD's as I did accidentally sneeze all over disc 3 as I checked it for scratches. But I carefully cleaned it. Doesn't explain why disc 1 caused problems during installation.

I have also found that there are some old ATI Catalyst drivers in the ATI directory on my C: drive along with the directory with the current 4.3 Catalyst drivers. Perhaps this could be causing some of my problems with CMR 4? In which case I will un-install all the ATI drivers, delete any left over directories and do a fresh install of 4.3.

Another thing I have noticed within the game itself is some very bad clipping errors. There is some clipping errors on the hood of the cars, as if the engine block is trying to pop through. And some distant objects like bins by houses (particularly on the Spanish stages) have some very bad clipping making the textures appear very wierd.

I might just for the hell of it return the CD's for another copy, but that would mean loosing all my save game data.