Having some problems with smoke (In games)

[4keatimj]

Well, all is pretty good with my system *cough*awesome*cough*, running great FPS at hi-res with high detail settings, except when it comes to smoke. For example, in NFS:U2, when I do a burnout, the smoke made drops the framerate from about 30-40FPS to about 3 or 4 FPS. Why? Is there a problem with the 9600XT and smoke? Or something wrong with the driver? I haven't OC'd it, I have tweaked the settings, but to no avail. Is there anything I can do or is it a problem with the card? Or is there something I have missed somewhere?

Thanks.

 

[Un4given]

Smoke is like fog man. When that stuff starts rolling the fps are gonna drop unless you have a card that can push it. NSFU2 is hard on a video card, and while that 9600XT is a great mid-range card, don't expect to keep the fps high when smoke or fog show up.

 

[MrMitch]

yeah this is pretty normal, i have a x600pro at the moment and i play F1 Challenge, all goes great, 35 fps, till i race in the rain, then i have 12-15. Drop your res, turn of AA, all that good stuff, but i dont think anything is wrong, just not enough power.

 

[4keatimj]

OK cool, thats alright then. Its a pretty dramatic drop so I thought it would be something like a deficiency in the card or the driver. Buts thats cool, thanks.

 

[Hate_Bot]

I see you have 512 ram. Smoke is basically a texture map, but a very complex one, getting another 512 megs will vastly improve smoke-performance.