hi,whene i launch the game and i click career mode and GO! the game LAG! i'm using windows 8.1 PRO

I have the same issue. :( (even in software mode.)

my config:
AMD FX-6300
Radeon HD7770
Windows Embedded 8
8 GB DDR3 RAM

You are lucky career even works, keep in mind this is a old game so new PCs may have compatibility issues.

AdamK47, a user on these forums, posted a fix for Windows 8 that helps a lot.

I have started to work on a more complete tutorial on my website but all credit still goes to Adam.

http://www.swat3lastresort.info/index.php/fix-framerate-problems

EDIT: updated the link

Good Job Adam!

This one was a tough one for me to figure out back when I first got windows 8. I never thought there would be such a big fuss about it to post it on my website.

(-window) mode command line argument
-Reduced Color Mode to 16 bit color
-compatibility with Windows XP Service Pack 3

In Last Resort of these setting will be applied to the appropriate Resolution exe.

Window mode sucks I know, but it covers the majority of my screen with no problems.

Hello again Copy Cat, you mad Swat 3 scientist.

My crappy laptop doesn't actually give me the option to switch to 16 bit colour. I can only stay in 32 bit colour with the Dell official driver so I can't test the -windows mode in 8.1 of Windows.

In a perfect world it would be great if someone could do a frames per second test with Swat 3 with AdamK47's compatibility fix and then also test it with the -window command line. Is there a frames per second increase with both workarounds?

Swat3 Straight out of the box
Game will not launch because of the DirectX error DDER_GENERIC (the game's movies), -nointro command line added to the game's exe properties under Target.
2d menus are chopping in some screens but smooth in others
3d portion of the game runs at 4 fps

Adam's Fix
Game will not launch because of the DirectX error DDER_GENERIC (the game's movies), -nointro command line added to the game's exe properties under Target.
2d Menus are all smooth with no lag
3d portion of the game runs at around 8 fps.

Running the game in a window with the -window command line parameter
Game runs at 800x600
Game will not launch because of the DirectX error DDER_GENERIC (the game's movies), -nointro command line added to the game's exe properties under Target.
Game will not lauch because it requires 16 bit color. Reduce color mode to 16bit in exe's properties
2d menus are all smooth with no lag
3d portion of the game runs at around 35fps

Sofware mode
Running the game in software mode means going into the game's options menu and setting your 3d adapter to Sofware. Setting this to software will cause the game not to launch anymore. The only way to get it working again is to manually modify the Swat.cfg and changing the adapter=software to adapter=primary.
2d menus no change
3d portion of the game runs at 8bit color 30fps.

Windowed Mode + 32 Bit Compatibility on the .exe file used seem to be the only fix that worked for me when it came to Windows 8.

The window will use the resolution the game has set once its out of the menus so playing in 1920x1080 works fine, Last Resort works for getting a larger window at the Menus depending on the resolution .exe file used.

Right now I'm having my own problems with the game on Windows 7, 2D Menus are choppy :(

Try dgVoodoo, it's a wrapper for old directx (and glide) games to work well in modern OS. To try it you'll need to copy paste 3 of the included files in the main SWAT 3 directory, dgVoodooSetup.exe, D3Dlmm.dll and DDraw.dll then run dgVoodooSetup.exe, choose the desired settings (general and D3D tab in this case) and run the game as usual. The in game resolution settings will no longer affect anything as long as you keep the dgVoodoo files in there but the rest settings will work as always. It's simple and nearly guaranteed to work for tons of old games like this.

http://dege.freeweb.hu

And yes I'm going through all the relevant questions and posting this fix because it's so easy, reliable, and isn't stickied anywhere sadly.

this is so annoying buying a game that lags on a gaming PC

Intel I7 core

ACER Predator

2TB of memmory

I really badely want this fixed

dgVoodoo is your answer.

http://www.swat3lastresort.info/index.php/fix-framerate-problems

The majority of problems is because of Windows.