Ok RTW upgrade

[Swoosh So]

At the moment i have an athlon 2200 with an abit nf7 mb and 512mb ram also a gf2pro (hehe) graphics card what would you think id have to upgrade for rome total war and will i need an 8mb buffer hard disk? Remember i dont want to just play single player i want the full online 4v4 experience

[Basileus]

Well your graphics card is a must, processor is decent and would do the job if you get a little more ram and a good graphics card. I would suggest ATi´s 9800pro/XT or Nvidias FX5900/Ultra in a month when the new cards are stating to come out for sale, prices will drop for those cards so it will be worth it i think. Those cards will hold their own for another 2 years.

Theres several 8mb cache HD out there preety cheap prices aswell.

[Mr Durian]

what about my Pentium 4 1.8Ghz, 256mb ram and Geforce 4 440mx 32mb.

I'm planning to upgrade my ram to 512mb ram and get an Ati radeon 9800. Its just my processor that I'm worried about.

[Knight_Yellow]

anything over a 1.5 gig processor should be ok if you get enough ram and a good video card.


500mb is dirt cheap at the moment (£48 in scotland) so realy a Gig of ram is what you should be aiming for.

and with the new Gfx cards coming out as mentioned previously the 9800's and 5950's will drop in price.

Although i wouls still recommend ATI over Nvidia.

The 9600 pro is a very cheap £100ish, that is a pretty good all round card.

for full 4Vs4 battles though im upgrading my computer to this....

2.8 gig P4 with HT *already have*
2 gig of ram *got 1 gig so far, getting more soon*
9800 XT *got a 9600 pro but im needing to upgrade for HL2 anyway so might as well*
15,000 rpm Hard drive.

[Boohugh]

We don't know what sort of computer we will need to run RTW, so there is no point upgrading now as the game won't be out for months.

By the time RTW does get released, all the current top-of-the-range hardware will be dirt cheap, replaced by newer more powerful hardware.

My advice is simply: wait. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/handball.gif

[Basileus]

Knight_Yellow an 15,000 rpm Hard drive is not needed man thats a server HD SCSI drive and is very expensive, i would suggest a fast SATA drive 7,500 rpm or if you have the cash a SATA/WD Raptor 10,000 rpm.

[Ashen]

I dont know why people advocate SATA drives. The performance increase over a normal ATA133 7200rpm hard-drive is under 10%.

if you want speed from a home computer without dipping into the SCSI section get a couple of hard-drives and set them up in RAID-0 configuration.

XP2100+
512MB DDR
Radeon 9600 Pro Fireblade (overclocked in box and a guarentee for more overclocking :D)

Getting another 512mb ram and an XP3000+ processor next month. My PC can already run every game released including far cry at a decent framerate so im not too worried about how hard Rome will be but the 3000 and more ram are mainly for Half-Life 2 when/if it (ever) comes out.

[Spino]

To be perfectly honest Swoosh So the only component you really need to upgrade is your 3D card. That GF2 Pro is ready to be put out to pasture. Your cpu and ram are fine. I don't know about your hard drive but if you already own a 7200 rpm drive you're in good shape. If you must get a new hard drive make sure to get one that runs at 7200 rpm and sports an 8 meg cache. So long as you upgrade to a Radeon 9600 Pro/XT or better 4v4 battles should run just fine. Now 4v4 with ridiculously oversized units may be an entirely different matter.

Personally my biggest concern is not whether my system can run RTW acceptably, but whether I can play it at 1024x768 with 4X Anti-Aliasing and 16X Performance Anisotropic Filtering enabled. Since I built a dedicated gaming/multimedia system last March I play virtually all my 3D games with those settings (except Far Cry, geez, what a system hog) and I've been thoroughly spoiled by the lack of jagged lines and blurred textures.

My rig:

Athlon XP 2400 (clock adjusted to run with a 333Mhz memory bus instead of the default 266Mhz)
1gig PC2700 RAM
Radeon 9700
120gig hard drive (7200rpm, 2meg cache)
Santa Cruz sound card

[Knight_Yellow]

Quote[/b] (Basileus @ April 22 2004,13:46)]Knight_Yellow an 15,000 rpm Hard drive is not needed man thats a server HD SCSI drive and is very expensive, i would suggest a fast SATA drive 7,500 rpm or if you have the cash a SATA/WD Raptor 10,000 rpm.
i need another drive anyway and im able to get a 15,000 one for £20 more than a 7,000 one.

yes connections with hard ware stores = massive discounts.

[Basileus]

Quote[/b] (Knight_Yellow @ April 23 2004,07:05)]
Quote[/b] (Basileus @ April 22 2004,13:46)]Knight_Yellow an 15,000 rpm Hard drive is not needed man thats a server HD SCSI drive and is very expensive, i would suggest a fast SATA drive 7,500 rpm or if you have the cash a SATA/WD Raptor 10,000 rpm.
i need another drive anyway and im able to get a 15,000 one for £20 more than a 7,000 one.

yes connections with hard ware stores = massive discounts.
get 2 for me aswell then http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[The_Emperor]

Intel P4 1.8 GH (only upgradable to 2 GH with current mainboard)
512 MB RAM
GeForce FX5600 256mb
Soundblaster Audigy soundcard.

When I upgrade I am going to buy a new case, and a motherboard/processor/ram bundle... When I'm done I should have close to 3GH in processing power and a Gig of ram... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

I must experience Rome in all its glory

[CBR]

Getting a new graphics card and a 8 mb buffer harddisk..some more ram too I guess. Then your pc would be fine Swoosh.

But RTW comes out in 5+ months so lots of time. No need to worry too much about upgrades right now.


CBR

[Rosacrux]

Just partly upgraded my puter. I got

- An Athlon 3200+ XP
- A kick-ass Gigabyte MB
- 1 Gig of PC3200 DDR RAM

Now I need to upgrade my HDD (got two 2year old 40 GB WDs, gonna get a 120 G. SATA WD) and my video card (got an old GeForce 2 Ti, getting an ATI 9800, if they fall a bit in May, as predicted, or a Geforce 5700 U if they don't).

I assume I'll be OK when RTW comes out... a bit more than OK I hope.

[Ashen]

haha you just called gigabyte good \o/

sorry I couldn't resist that.

unless gigabyte have adopted the nforce chips, they pretty much suck for AMD cpu's, especially with their fetish for using those woeful damned SiS chipsets.

put it in perspective.

my pc with my old Gigabyte on a SiS745 chipset - 10200 3Dmarks (exact hardware config is above somewhere)

switched to an MSI delta K7N mobo (nforce 2) - 13029 3Dmarks. with just a motherboard switch. Soooooooo I dont like gigabytes anymore :)

[hoom]

Due to near or complete absence of shaders, this is quite probably a game where geforce 5s will beat radeon 9 cards.
That doesn't mean it won't be amazing on radeons too though.

I would sure love to see CA putting per pixel bump & specular on all those soldiers http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-speechless.gif

Maybe for 'Post Rome:Total War' whatever it be? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-toff.gif

[Rosacrux]

LOL, Ashen, my Gigabyte does indeed has the Nforce 2 U. chipset. So it ain't that crap, right? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I'd rather get a Radeon as vid card, but the decent 9800 builds at 350-450 euro apiece right now, are a far cry from being a bargain. If I get one for less than 300, I might get it though.

If not, I'll settle for a 5700 U

[Brighdaasa]

Quote[/b] (Rosacrux @ April 26 2004,01:24)]but the decent 9800 builds at 350-450 euro apiece right now, are a far cry from being a bargain. If I get one for less than 300, I might get it though.
well, in Belgium there's Saphire Radeon 9800 pro 128 MB available for €230, even 210 for a 'bulk' one (without the software like Cyberdvd and stuff), in The Netherlands even as cheap as €190

well imo that's very close to the 9800 XT u're probable referring to, but at half the price

dutch page, but let the numbers do the talking (http://www.tweakers.be/pricewatch/cat/49?Sortering=Prijs&Query=9800&Action=&Landfilter=Euro)

[Rosacrux]

Damned, Greece is more expensive than the Netherlands... yeah, it's that we are sooo darn rich here http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif

Well, the cheapest builds for Pro are at 310 euros here,the decent brands w/ some sw and stuff got from 370 to 430. XTs are not coming under 400... and you can barely find an SE here.

Or maybe the price reduction hasn't reached Greece yet? We do have a delay in such cases.

[Ashen]

My mates 9800SE preforms worse than my 9600Pro in my system so I wouldn't get one.

The 5700Ultra isnt a bad card but you can still pick up a 9600XT 256mb for cheaper and get similar performance out of it if you stick to Sapphire/Hercules/Gigabye so I would take that over the GeForce.

[Brighdaasa]

Rosacrux: you can always email the stores shown in that link in english asking if they ship to other EU states like Greece, if some do it'll still be cheaper than buying the item in Greece

[Swoosh So]

Ashen SE stands for standard edition not special edition everyone knows they are crap were talking about the pro cards.

[Rosacrux]

Quote[/b] (Brighdaasa @ April 26 2004,10:26)]Rosacrux: you can always email the stores shown in that link in english asking if they ship to other EU states like Greece, if some do it'll still be cheaper than buying the item in Greece
Dunno mate, shipping and handling even for inside EU must be pretty steep... the price difference is pretty large, but not that large. Oh, well, maybe I'll wait another month and get a 9800 Pro anyway - got to buy new garden furniture this month, or ms Ubik shall crucify me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif