Menu Freezes

[adamuks]

I have the US version of RCT3 with the latest patch (applied automatically) and I am having problems with the main menu. It freezes for 10 seconds in every 15 seconds. It appears to be related to the slideshow pictures, as at the end of every freeze the slideshow picture changes.

I did not have this problem before I upgraded my system.

Old PC:
Athlon 1300 Thunderbird
Asus A7V motherboard
512Mb PC133 ram
Gainward FX5700 256Mb graphics (running at 1x AGP)
Creative 1024 soundblaster

New PC:
Semperon 2400+
Asus A7N8x-x motherboard
512Mb PC2700 ram
Gainward FX5700 256Mb graphics (running at 8x AGP)
Onboard Sound Realtek AC97

Both systems run Windows 2000 SP4 fully patched
Video drivers NVidia 71.84
All other H/W is the same

I can't find out why the menus freeze as the game runs much smoother on the new system.

Any help appreciated.

Adam

[wardl895]

first try disabling your sound card... then run the game... see what happens, if it still does it, then re-enable the sound card and lower your graphics accelaration... do you know how to do this?

[adamuks]

Hi again,

I disabled the sound card - no diference.

I lowered the graphics acceleration in the display adaptor properties, also no diference at each stage.

I have disabled 8x AGP in the bios - no diference

I have found a work round though, I have renamed the slideshow folder in the instalation folder, (so the game can't find the slideshow pictures), and the main menu works fine. No lock-ups or freezes and the game runs fine, I just don't get any park pictures in the main menu. I can live with this.

I have checked the jpg files in the slideshow folder and they appear fine. A very strange problem.

Any other ideas?

Adam

[adamuks]

Further to my last post;

Today I took a snaphot of my park (F10?) and my menu freezing problem came back!:cry:

Upon starting the game the menu froze for 10 seconds, when it came back to life my snapshot was set as the background picture. Went straight to My Pictures/RCT3 folder and deleted the picture, hey presto, no freezing in the menus.

Still no other clues as to why this happens.

Adam

[Warspite]

This may not be relevant anymore BUT - didn't RCT3 have a specific problem with thunderbird core Athlons? The official release and subsequent patches are supposed t have fixed the problems, but it might be a good idea to ask the developers direct if there are any "quirks" a Thunderbird core might be expected to throw up:tup:

Ignore me -I didn't see your new PC spec. Sorry:confusedb

Semprons are annoying though - I just got one for my dad, and it was a pig, and is actually slower than the Duron 1600 I actually WANTED to buy instead! The Sempron is a 333mhz chip, and your system wil work better if the DDR ram and the processor are running at the same speed - check that your BIOS is set to run them both at 166, or reset to system defaults in the BIOS (ie 100mhz) to see if that helps.Took a while to make the sempron and ram in my dads system to settle down - the machine wouldnt work right if I jumped straight to the preferred settings for either component - had to start at BIOS defaults and increase incrementally. I SO wanted that Duron instead:sour:

[adamuks]

Hi, Thanks for replying, the funny thing is the menus ran fine on the old Thunderbird system, the game ran OK - just a bit slow. Now the game runs fine and the menus freeze with the slideshow feature.

Both the Semperon CPU and ram are running at 166MHz (333Mhz). The PC wasn't stable until I got them matched in the BIOS. The Semperon appears to be quicker than the old T'bird but then everything else in the system is running so much faster that it is hard to tell if the CPU is performing better.

For me I wanted to get the graphics card running at 8x, having it clocked down to 1x was a bit silly. The only way to do this was a motherboard/RAM/CPU upgrade, I managed to get all three bits for under £100 total. The CPU was actually the cheapest bit, as I don't intend to keep it much longer then about 8-10 months.

Adam

[Warspite]

I bought a Sempron 2200 last week -it was 5 pounds more expensive than the 1800 Duron I actually wanted, and 300MHZ SLOWER:sour: That 1800 Duron is a sweet chip - set your FSB to 200 MHz and you have a 2100 MHz processor for 25 quid! The sempron won't do it though:frownblue