Gothic 3 I'm really confused!

I'm bad with titles, but here goes anyways:

I have recently purchased Gothic 3 (really loved the first two plus the expansion!), and for some reason I'm forced to play on lowest settings possible.

A little more about my computer:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.2 GHz
1 Gig of RAM
GeForce 8600 GT (recently purchased, works fine with other games on high settings) 512 MB
Windows Vista

I seriously don't understand how some of you manage to run it on slower computers, but I'm getting <10 FPS on lowest settings available.

I've read up on official forums that changing fonts can help, so I did that, but still haven't received any increase in FPS.

I know my RAM is kind of low, but that doesn't seem to be the issue with most people from what I have read so far.

Is there any explanation to my unusually low FPS with my current specs?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but yes, my computer meets the yellow requirements written in the sticky above. Kind of makes up for the reason to post.

EDIT#2: Even though I have all the settings sliders set to low and everything turned off, I will attempt tweaking the .ini file tonight, but I don't think it will work since I already have all the special effects turned off. *SIGH*

I know that with that little RAM you will have issues because of the way G3 hogs memory, but there must be something else contributing. I'm not sure ...

have you tried the latest community patch? they have dealt with numerous memory & performance related issues. also updating your Vista with service pack 1 would help out in the general gaming problems.

Welcome to our forum!

I know my RAM is kind of low, but that doesn't seem to be the issue with most people from what I have read so far.

Is there any explanation to my unusually low FPS with my current specs?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but yes, my computer meets the yellow requirements written in the sticky above. Kind of makes up for the reason to post.

Click to expand...

You´ve overlooked the priority list:
1. A lot of RAM. More RAM = faster loading times.

Maybe I have condensed the sticky a bit too much. The yellow configuration is the minimum. Green was my recommendation 1.5 years ago, when RAM was more expensive.

G3 is barely playable on XP with only 1 GB RAM. I know this for sure because I´ve played it on a low end PC.
It must be even worse on Vista, because Vista consumes more RAM, which means less is available for programs. So practically your RAM falls into the "red" category.

Forget about all the minor tweaks. Nothing can replace RAM. 1 GB is completely underpowered for just about every new game. 2 GB is the minimum nowadays. Depending on your budget I would suggest to go for 4 GB right away because the RAM prices are at an all-time low. At least if your mainboard supports DDR2. If you´re stuck with the old DDR1 upgrade to 2 GB.

So, you're saying that with 2 GB of RAM I should be able to run G3 on medium/high given my current specs?

RAM has been on my wish list for a really long time now, but apparently it IS a huge upgrade...

The latest community patch is a must. It removes the CD check, fixes several hundred bugs and improves stabilit. On cost of performance ...

edit: I´ve been interrupted when I wrote my last post. I´ve edited it now.

sermatt said:

So, you're saying that with 2 GB of RAM I should be able to run G3 on medium/high given my current specs?

Click to expand...

2 GB on Vista should be similar to 1.5 GB on XP. So yes, I think you should be able to run G3 reasonably well, assuming there are no technical problems like crappy drivers or something G3 hates. You still need to do some tweaking to (a) free as much RAM as possible and (b) convince G3 to use it efficiently.
Optimal are 2 GB for G3 alone, plus the RAM Vista needs.

RAM has been on my wish list for a really long time now, but apparently it IS a huge upgrade...

Click to expand...

In financial terms? Technically speaking it´s no big deal.

sermatt said:

So, you're saying that with 2 GB of RAM I should be able to run G3 on medium/high given my current specs?

Click to expand...

if you compare our specs, mine is slightly lacking but i can run G3 on high settings without any problems. the only drawback i notice is some stuttering upon initial loading but after a while it goes away.

I'd say it's weird that with Vista as your OS, you could even play Gothic 3 with 1 GB of RAM. I played it on my old config and it was definately not playable till I added RAM up to 2GB. That's with windows XP. With windows VISTA I would even recommend 3 to 4GB of RAM. All the gothics have been memory hogs at their time, I think it's because of the way PB programs.