Race Starts Seem Unfair

[rllercstr7]

I have noticed that when starting a race some players seem blast off of the starting line while others accelerate slowly and get left in the dust. It seems like everyone should start out even since they are all in the same car type. Sometimes my game stops responding for a few seconds and the radio station goes into a loop. Eventually once everyone has sped off my game recovers and my car moves again. This issue has occurred in almost every race that I have played and I only have trouble with the games responsiveness if there are a lot of players. I have close all the background apps that I can and it still occurrs. I have also noticed other people mentioning this and accussing those that start out fast of cheating, although I don't think they are. Is this caused by the performance differences in each players PC?

PC Specs:

P4 - 2 Ghz

768MB RAM

Radeon 9600XT

Broadband

[><CHAIN><]

I'm not totally clear - have you not had a single successful race yet? And as for the radio looping, did you say that it's these symptoms that always occur?

To avoid lag: Make sure you join servers with a low ping - I prefer to connect to servers that show a ping below 100 (particularly if there are a lot of players i.e. more than 16. Thats what seems to work for me).

Your broadband speed, contention and provider will also play a part in this. Search online for a broadband speed test - are you getting what you should be?

[rllercstr7]

The radio looping and temporary freeze only happen in servers with a lot of players. The only time I have won a race was when everyone else died and I won by default. Usually everyone speeds ahead of me at the start and I never catch up. I tested my connection and got 4662 kbps down and 359 kbps up.

[Si|ent]

It sounds like your DVD/CD drive seek speeds may be the culprit. If you havn't done so already perform a FULL installation of SA, this will read the radio stations from your hard drive instead of the disc drive and should improve matters.

[Guest]

I used to have that problem, but I fixed it

The solution is to turn your graphics settings down. Draw distance, about half-way (at first), Screen settings 800x600 16bit (16 bit is important).

Try fiddling around a bit, but at least put the colour depth to 16bit. This will make the game run faster.

[meazle]

I used to have that problem, but I fixed it

The solution is to turn your graphics settings down. Draw distance, about half-way (at first), Screen settings 800x600 16bit (16 bit is important).

Try fiddling around a bit, but at least put the colour depth to 16bit. This will make the game run faster.

I even tried 8 bit (at least windows was 8 bit, i think gta turned back to 16bit), but as soon as there are (about) 8 or more players, i have this same issue. Freezing, having about 1 or 2 fps (i WISH i had 25) And as soon everyone is out of sight i can start.

I never had this problem, until i recently had to reinstall windows xp. And not having a legit license around i had to use this VLK (volume license key) which was marked as public. Meaning i can't update to service pack 2. It might be that.

specs

P4 2.26GHz

1GB ram

GeForce 6600GT

[meazle]

I used to have that problem, but I fixed it

The solution is to turn your graphics settings down. Draw distance, about half-way (at first), Screen settings 800x600 16bit (16 bit is important).

Try fiddling around a bit, but at least put the colour depth to 16bit. This will make the game run faster.

I even tried 8 bit (at least windows was 8 bit, i think gta turned back to 16bit), but as soon as there are (about) 8 or more players, i have this same issue. Freezing, having about 1 or 2 fps (i WISH i had 25) And as soon everyone is out of sight i can start.

I never had this problem, until i recently had to reinstall windows xp. And not having a legit license around i had to use this VLK (volume license key) which was marked as public. Meaning i can't update to service pack 2. It might be that.

specs

P4 2.26GHz

1GB ram

GeForce 6600GT

[Brophy]

remember if it lags badly, turn off AA

[Brophy]

remember if it lags badly, turn off AA

[Gamefreek]

I use to have this problem during beta testing but it has seemed to go away. Try turning down the resolution/any other quality settings to try and improve it.

[Gamefreek]

I use to have this problem during beta testing but it has seemed to go away. Try turning down the resolution/any other quality settings to try and improve it.

[Guest]

I uses to get this problem but i changed the screen resolution in game to the lowest it could be changed my skin to windows classic issabled all effects and chnged to 8-bit colouring soon fixes the problem