The M2TW hardware thread: please post all hardware queries here

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Originally Posted by Braden

Building a PC from scratch with the aim being to be able to play M2 at really decent levels. The build list I have so far is:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Socket 775 1.86GHz
Sapphire Technology Radeon X1950PRO 256MB DDR3 PCIE Dual DVI TVO
Asustek S775 Intel 945G MATX Audio Lan Graphics Motherboard
Kingston ValueRAM 2x1G 240Pin DIMM PC2-4300 Non-ECC DDR2 CL4
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB S300 internal HDD
550W PSU Gold 12cm SATA PFC
Trust 5.1 Surround Soundcard SC-5100


Does this list “fall down” anywhere obvious? Perhaps in the choice of RAM??

(note: haven't bothered to include optical drive or case info...guessing they won't make much difference)

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I was looking to put together a list for a new machine, and yours almost duplicates my own. The only thing I would switch out is the Seagate Barracuda. If you go for I believe the 7200.10 they have the perpendicular recording technology, which vastly improves performance of the hard drive.

The reason I suggest the 7200.10 is because you get WD raptor-like performance with 7200rpm spin speed (meaning less noise and heat), and the increased storage capacity (upwards of 750GB).

My friend put a 5400rpm Seagate Momentus drive with perpendicular recording into his celeron laptop and he finds it boots up faster than his desktop.

As to motherboard, I have to stick with MATX.

Regarding a soundcard, if you're planning to get Windows Vista, Vista uses a completly new model for the sound processing, that actually gives a boost to the performance of onboard. Normally you get a soundcard to take the load off the processor, though the way Vista handles audio makes a separate sound card less necessary. In particular, I read on Toms Hardware (if I recall) that you needed a utility from Creative to benefit from the hardware processing of Creative sound cards, which basically bypasses the Vista audio stack.

I planned to get the same video card because it has had a pretty good price/performance value. It's a strong card, and you're not paying a crazy amount for it.

The RAM won't necessarily matter on the Intel. AMD's are more affected by the specifications of the RAM because of the ondie memory controller, and the PC2 4300 (533Mhz) should be fine. 2 GB is a good choice.

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Originally Posted by sapi

@laconic - xp can utilise 3gb of ram if you turn the pagefile down

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I've been trying to find some details on it, but to be specific XP (32-bit) from what I've heard, is limited to addressing 3.2 GB of RAM. That's a limitation of the 32-bit operating system. I've not heard anything in regards to reducing the pagefile, but if you have the RAM available, you shouldn't need much in the way of virtual memory.

I'll throw this in here as something for the more technically savvy folks to try, since it's hardware related. I used to think defragging was mostly pointless and didn't offer too much in the way of performance increases, even on a heavily fragmented drive... until I discovered JKDefrag.

Find it here: http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/

READ THE DOCUMENTATION BEFORE YOU USE IT! THIS IS NOT FOR THE UNSKILLED OR FAINT OF HEART! It's completely free and open source. Run it with the -a 4 option and it will do a pretty damn thorough defrag and space optimization on your drive(s). Make sure you shut down as many programs and processes as you can before running it. I had a VERY noticable increase in drive/paging performance after I ran this. For those of us who don't have 10k rpm raptors or whatnaught, this will potentially work wonders for you. Viva la Norton Speeddisk! Enjoy!

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Originally Posted by Braden

What I don’t understand from those figures above is that it’s showing 96mb RAM free on the in-built graphics chip, which (sorry BlackAxe) has to mean that Oscarreave must have a 128mb graphics chip.

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Obviously he doesn't have 128mb of graphics ram because it would say so and also his dxdiag says that he has 96.

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Originally Posted by oscarreeve

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Display Devices
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Card name: Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller
Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
Chip type: Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller
DAC type: Internal
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2572&SUBSYS_01D51028&REV_02
Display Memory: 96.0 MB

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Originally Posted by Braden

Medieval 2 will not run for the following specific reasons though:

Hard Drive space – that listing states you have only 14Gb left and that will not be sufficient for you to install and run Medieval.

To be honest, you really need to remove at least another 3Gb as this is effecting your system speed generally anyway (17Gb being a good minimum of free space for XP to run nicely).

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This is not true. That is plenty of space to run m2tw. It may be cutting it close, but with at least weekly defragmentation it would run fine with low drive space. I am doing it right now as a matter of a fact.

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Originally Posted by Braden

Graphics issues – yes, your Graphics Chip (not a card, this is key to remember) is unlikely to allow you to play Medievel2. It may “run” but loading times will be appalling and you’ll get serious slowdown and even crashes mid-game.

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The game would not load slow because of the graphics card. It would load as fast as his hard drive can load it. It would run horrible(if at all) due to the onboard graphics that do not have even shader model 1 let alone anything else. It's on a 865G board limited to onboard only... no way it will run at a playable rate....ever.

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Originally Posted by sbroadbent

I've been trying to find some details on it, but to be specific XP (32-bit) from what I've heard, is limited to addressing 3.2 GB of RAM. That's a limitation of the 32-bit operating system. I've not heard anything in regards to reducing the pagefile, but if you have the RAM available, you shouldn't need much in the way of virtual memory.

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It will use pagefile regardless of how much ram you have, and as most of us know, pagefile is SLOW. If you get rid of the pagefile it forces the OS to use your massive 3GB of ram which will be much faster than pagefile.

You beat me to it blackaxe :laugh4:

What size pagefile do you recomend with 1g of ram, if any?
Or is it best just to set pagefile to the minimum?

LDC

I just leave it at default, tbh :laugh4:

:2thumbsup:
I'm sure mine is set to the max so I'll change it back tonight

Ta

LDC

@ sbroadbent,

Thanks for the comments. I’ve been considering changing the Motherboard as the one I originally chose had a built in GFX chip, which for my system is just an annoyance (as I’ll have a dedicated card from the on-set).

So, I’m trawling for a competent board but am wondering if a dedicated soundcard is worth it. I’m not really one that uses “sound” in the TW games (or my other ones), I even play many with the speakers OFF! I find that, especially in RTS games, the sound is ok at first but eventually grinds you down and gets frankly annoying (if I hear “Strappy horse” one more time!!!).

Your comments on the HDD were helpful but I don’t want or need a large capacity unit. Maybe the Seagate will be ok, but I’ll investigate the 7200.10 versions.

RAM – DDR2, pretty much a “must” these days. I’ve only had good results from Kingston ValueRAM so I’m going that route again.

GFX card – the combo of low price (sub-£120) and DDR3 RAM is a winner for me!

OS – Oh! Geez NO! not getting Vista. A OEM copy of XP will do me just fine thank you…..fangled Vista, I fear change! Get ye away from me, ye evil do’er.

@ BlackAxe,

I just took the info to mean he had 96Mb “Free”, meaning a potential nominal of 128Mb…my error.

Although, if he’ll have plenty of space to run M2 then he won’t be “cutting it fine” either?? Pedantic I know, but he either needs to free up more space for optimal performance or not.

Oh, by “loading” I mean between screens in-game (not boot-times), switching from Battle to Campaign and visa-versa. So, I think you’ll understand that I’m agreeing with you basically, now I’ve explained that bit.

With onboard graphics, just disable it in the bios, and it shouldn't be a problem. It can be a useful backup if anything should happen to your graphics card. Regarding sound, you should probably be fine with onboard, and if your integrated sound is something like Realtek or Creative, then it shouldn't affect performance. The biggest problem with onboard sound is not the quality, but the load (if any) that it may put onto the CPU.

Regarding hard drives, the 7200.10 Barracudas start at 200GB and go all the way up to 750GB. Maybe I'm just a little obsessive about my hard drives because I currently have in (or near) my system:

Maxtor 200GB SATA 150 (Internal)
Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATA 3G (External - Also known as my "ISO" drive which contains ISO images of most of my game discs... when you can install UT2004 in under 3 minutes off a regular optical disc, I'll give up my ISO's... it generally takes atleast 10 minutes off normal cds)
Maxtor 300GB SATA 3G (External - Also known as my "Star Trek" drive because it will eventually hold every episode and movie of Star Trek ever made :laugh4:)
Maxtor 160GB PATA (External - Also known as "The Internet" because it holds many hours of videos and documentaries downloaded from the internet...)

Yes, that is 980GB of HDD storage and probably less than 45-50% is free space. That is mainly because I haven't gone through the long process of ISO'ing all my game discs.

My eventual plan is to put together a RAID 5 server with 5x 750GB Seagate Barracudas for a nice 3 terrabytes of hard drive storage. So far that will cost around $2000 so it's not a top priority

I found a pretty decent set of DDR2 from Kingston for a very low price compared to other 2GB sets. In fact it's PC2-7200 (DDR900) rated at CL5. If I run it at 533, I might be able to get the latency down to CL3.

I found the same card for $239 (cdn) but I found basically the exact same card but made by Asus for only $215. The only problem is that the Asus card may use a double slot cooler.

Once drivers become better optimized and games start using DX10, Vista will be well worth switching to. Sometimes I wish I could advance time just to get to that point :laugh4:

Here is the system I'm looking to put together if anyone might be interested. My setup is "restricted" to MicroATX because of the Ultra Microfly case that I will be using, and the power supply is a modular one so I only need to use the cables that I will need, and not have any hanging around.

CPU: C2D E6300 - $231
Motherboard: ASUS P5B-VM - $158
Video: ASUS Extreme EAX1950PRO/HTDP256 - $215
RAM: Kingston 2GB PC2-7200 CL5 - $237
PSU: Enermax 500W Liberty Series (ELT500AWT) - $127

Hello Gents,

My company has graciously decided to get me a lap top at thier cost for my own home use. I have a very old system at home and it has negated my ability to run MTW2.

So before i go out and buy the game i thought i would ask if these specs will run it. i appologize if this post is redundant from others, I am very non technical with pc's.

Style: Lap Top
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5200 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB)
Memory: 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHZ, 2 DIMM
Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7300 GS
Hard Drive: 80GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive

I believe these are the relevant options to determine if this game will run. Again this lap top is being given to me, I dont have the option of changing the specs however I was able to get them to put in the best graphics card possible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Odin

A very good first step would be to go to the link in the very first message of this thread. Looking at those specs though, you shouldn't have problems.

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Originally Posted by sbroadbent

A very good first step would be to go to the link in the very first message of this thread. Looking at those specs though, you shouldn't have problems.

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I did, thats how I determined my home PC couldnt run it :).

When I get the new PC I will go to that posting but I may not be online with that lap top straight away. I suspect I will be fine too but since this thread was here i thought I would post anyway see if anyone who saw it could give me a yay or nay in the hopes of boosting my spirit for getting the game.

It should be fine (that's not a great graphics card as far as desktops go, but putting a big one in a laptop kills the battery life)

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Originally Posted by sapi

It should be fine (that's not a great graphics card as far as desktops go, but putting a big one in a laptop kills the battery life)

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Thanks for the reply, I do realize that a lap top isnt ideal for gaming but given the circumstances I thought it best to get the best graphic card I could out of my company. Corporate purchase plan or something from dell, my company had some resources and got them for a few of us.

MTW2 will be the most demanding game (cpu wise) I will play on this lap top.

I've got an old laptop (2-3 years old) and have been able to run the first M2TW demo on it fine. Could I run M2TW reasonably well? I barely reach the minimum system requirements.

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Originally Posted by Warmaster Horus

I've got an old laptop (2-3 years old) and have been able to run the first M2TW demo on it fine. Could I run M2TW reasonably well? I barely reach the minimum system requirements.

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Well, if you can run the demo fine then you should be able to run the game fine as well. Maybe even a bit better, since demos often aren't optimised the way the actual game is. Expect the actual game to run slightly (maybe not even noticable...) better than the demo. Since the laptop's 2-3 years old, however, don't expect anything higher than medium, if you're able do get that with the demo at least. Don't expect any miracles.

:balloon2:

Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks for the reply.

umm..quick question. Would this laptop be suffice for MII: TW?


I want this game REALLY bad and I'm on a 1100-1200 dollar budget.

sorry. here's the website. http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Speci...cation.do#tabs

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Originally Posted by Scot's Pike General

sorry. here's the website. http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Speci...cation.do#tabs

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Don't know what the video card is, so the answer is "maybe". Why do you need a laptop? If you're going to game, you're far better off getting a desktop, you can get a far better gaming system for less than what you're going to drop on said lappie.

From Gateway's website http://www.gateway.com/retail/mt6821.php the Video is:

Video
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Up to 224MB of shared video memory

So, the question would be whether the GMA950 will be able to handle the graphics. It might be capable seeing as it is running Vista, though worst case scenario you're running on low settings. One note, the video will be using 224MB from the 2GB system memory.

I wouldn't get a built-in graphics card if you can help it; but with laptops you often dont' have much of a choice

I know its true that laptops aren't necessarily good for games, the problem is that we already have a desktop( terrible one at that) its just that we don't have enough room. I'm purchasing it with my money. As for the video card, I can't get it upgraded just because it's a laptop?:help:

When I get around to it, I'll try disabling my x1950 Pro and running off the onboard graphics to see how M2TW runs (or doesn't run). My new system has an e6300, and 2GB DDR2, so it might be an ok comparison.

It might be worth the time to check out a Dell or something where you can customize the parts to an extent. At least then you will know what you are getting for the most part(except for the brand names of the parts.)

yes, I have considered customizing a dell....

I've just bought a new computer and don't know how far I can push the game settings without it getting sluggish. For the record I have:

Intel Core 2 Processor (2.66 GHz)
2 GB of 800 MHz RAM (1.33 GB free)
NVIDIA 8800GTX graphics card
1280 x 1024 TFT monitor

Can I whack everything up to maximum, or will I have to compromise in some areas?

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Originally Posted by vastator

Intel Core 2 Processor (2.66 GHz)
2 GB of 800 MHz RAM (1.33 GB free)
NVIDIA 8800GTX graphics card
1280 x 1024 TFT monitor

Can I whack everything up to maximum, or will I have to compromise in some areas?

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I have the following, and I maxed everything out as much as it can go, so you should definately not have any problems:

C2D E6300 (1.83ghz)
2x1GB PC2-6400
Asus x1950 Pro (256MB)

Great - thanks for the quick response! I'm really looking forward to playing my first campaign.:2thumbsup: