Vista Basic, Nvidia 6100 graphics and Zuma Deluxe

[RalfG]

Setting up a new PC here (eMachines H5270) and installed Zuma Deluxe. The
game is playable but the motion becomes quite jerky whenever the on screen
action becomes more intense. Also the mouse leaves droppings when Zuma's
custom cursors option is enabled. The processor is a 2700Mhz Athlon and the
graphics chipset is years newer than the ATI card in the PC this one
replaces.

Has anyone else experienced these symptoms with Zuma? Is there a way to fix
this or am I seeing an incompatibility problem between this game and
something in hardware?

 

[Paul Smith]

The GeForce 6100 is a very low-end card. It wouldn't surprise me that it
doesn't have enough horsepower to keep the framerates up.

Basically when looking at graphics card the thousand digit refers to the
generation, in this case 6th generation, and the following numbers refer to
the performance. For example a 6100 is slower than a 6600, with 6800 being
the fastest. 7100 would be comparable to the 6100 - possibly a bit faster,
but not necessarily so.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Desktop Experience.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

 

[RalfG]

Interesting information Paul, thanks.

I hadn't bothered to run my usual benchmark comparison on this PC because of
it's relatively okay Windows Experience rating of 3.0 for graphics (also the
base score). The owner of this computer isn't a gamer and I didn't consider
Zuma would be particularly challenging for the hardware, considering the
hardware in the machine it was already being played on. I'm puzzling over
that now, having just run a benchmark (3dMark2001SE) and the result (3919)
was only 500 points higher than I got for a 933Mhz P3 with a Radeon 7500
card in it. The game plays perfectly well on the P3 machine, which is the
one being replaced. I'm wondering now just what use the Vista Performance
information is when it gives me a difference of 3.8 for the HD2400 gaming
graphics versus 3.0 for this Nvidia 6100 yet the graphics benchmark scores
differ by almost 10,000 points.

I think the computer only has a 250 watt power supply in it so I suppose the
next question would be what PCIe video card could I put in there that
wouldn't stress the existing PSU.

 

[Chuck]

The E Machines site (H5270) shows
NVIDIA® GeForce® 6100 integrated graphics
Up to 128MB of shared video memory (Believe this may be part of the problem)
PCI Express (x8) slot available for upgrade

Most "integrated" video systems are not really "optimized" for gaming.
You may be able to look at the running services, and temporarily disable
those that are not needed as a means to improve things a bit. I currently
have an HP laptop running Vista ultimate, that uses an Nvidia chpset and a
1.5ghz intel dual processor. It's win score is ~ 4.5. It was much lower
(3.4) with the older video driver versions. The graphics preformance is
just enough to be able to play Crysis in low end mode. This is more or less
equal to an older desktop running XP with a 2ghz single core mobile
processor, and 133mhz memory buss speed. On the older (AGP) system, the
graphics card is a fairly high end Nvidia card for an AGP card.

 

[RalfG]

I was afraid the shared memory might be at the root of the problem. Turning
off 3d acceleration in the game solves the jerkiness issue but the game
loses its visual appeal as the balls slide rather than roll. This chipset
actually lost a decimal point or two off the graphics index when I updated
the video driver. It's beginning to look like an add-in graphics card will
have to be the solution to the issue.
Thanks.