Anyone running Need for Speed Shift on a PC?

[freddy333]

I am trying to troubleshoot this game on a neighbor's PC. He is running Vista 64 with 4 gigs of ram & duo core E4600 Intel cpu with NiVidia GeForce 7100 video & all current drivers/service packs.

Basically, the game is sort of running, but it is like watching a slide show - a very slow slideshow. It runs so slow that it is completely unplayable. There is a 5 second delay from the time you accelerate until the car actually moves. But, by then, you are already into a wall, which you watch via a series of image slices. Even though the system appears to exceed the games' minimum requirements, it seems like it just requires alot more horsepower than the hardware can provide, which is why I suspect it defaults to a group of settings that require more power.

Unfortunately, we cannot find any game instructions on how to change the settings. I was able to get into the Options (painfully slowly), but it only offers color charts to set your monitor settings under 'Video' & sound levels under 'Audio'. Unlike the last NFS game I played some years ago, I cannot find anything that controls the actual video & screen resolution settings.

Is anyone familiar with this game?