MX440 faster than FX 5200?

[SajuukCor]

This thought came to me in another thread in the HW2 Demo Forums where one person was having trouble getting a steady framerate from hyperspacing ships. I, too, have this problem, but now as I test out some stuff, it might be more of a card problem than drivers... he's the comp that's having the problem:

P4 1.5 GHz
512 DDR RAM
Geforce FX 5200 - 128 DDR (45.32)

Now on this setup, the hyperspacing is VERY CHOPY, as is the openning of with Tanis. And at other times the framerate suffers during extreme close-ups. I thought maybe HW2 needed a bigger rig than I though to run correctly, but as I traveled back to my dad's, I booted up HW2 there. Here are those specs:

Althon 2200
386 DDR RAM
Geforce MX 440 - 64 DDR (45.32)

And to my amazement, the game ran well over 60 fps, even during the opening, WITH shadows on. Now with this in mind and me back on my P4 computer, I must wonder, is there a setting I'm overlooking, card issue or driver issue. I'm going to roll back to the 44.03 drivers and see what happens there, but I'm totally stumped. It has to be the card, I would guess.

Thoughts, comments and temp solutions are welcome (Just please, don't say get a ATi and that's it, I'm looking for solutions for the card I have now)

P.S. I didn't know if this was a bug or technical issue, but it deals with the HW2 Demo so I placed it here.

[Dr Bombcrater]

Rolling back to 44.03 may well help as 45.23 seems to be a bit iffy.

Even if the 44.03s do improve things, I still expect your Dad's system to be faster. At 1.5GHz the P4 is a pretty lacklustre processor and certainly no match for an Athlon XP

The MX440 is quite capable of out-running an FX5200, especially if the 5200 is one of the slower designs with a 64-bit memory bus. A GeForce 2 could pound one of those into the ground :(

[ÜberJumper]

Check this thread (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14920) as well.

[remy]

Also enabling shadows on old hardware does nothing as the hardware can not support it. That option should've just been made unselectable to reduce confusion... So the 5200 is doing extra work to render shadows while the MX isn't.

[SajuukCor]

Cool thanks Remy, no need for the extra processes to be running lol.

As for my update, the 44.03 drivers are working super well on my machine. Nice and smooth and crisp gameplay now. Thanks everyone, you're super nice

[TheCaptain]

Wow, I have a couple fx 5200's as well. Turned off shadows... holy god, my frame rate went up about 2 or 3x.