What spec of machine do I need?

[Beirut]

My advise: don't upgrade for future games, by the time the games are released (sometimes after months or even years of extra delay), there is better and faster hardware for the same price and you can have better idea what you actually need.

There's a snappy piece of advice.

Upgrade for what you play now. I did that and I spent "minimum" cash and am very happy with the results. In a year, when my new flightsim (Battle of Britain), possibly running DX10, is released, then I'll see what the real world specs are, and today's hardware like the FX-57 CPU and the PCI-E X1900XTX will have come way down in price. And I'll bet dollars to donuts they'll still run next year's games very nicely.

Truth be told, many games are released that cannot be run on full settings with available hardware. So planning for the future can be risky at best. IL2-FB and Lock On, for example, were both released years ago with graphic settings that were beyond what was attainable with the hardware of the day. Even today, these games can cripple the fastest machines.

I remember when Falcon 4 was released, the company's tech-head posted that it required an 800Mhz CPU and 512 RAM to be run as it was designed. I think the hottest rigs available then were about 500Mhz.

In the end, it's a question of balance between budget and expectations.

[Dragoncrusader]

Yipee!
I think I have found my solution and it only cost me £30.
My brother has updated his graphics card and gave me his ATI Radeon 9700 Pro which brings my card up a step to 128. I had both AGP and PCI slots available in my machine so it was pretty straight forward. I spent the money on an upgrade for the RAM and went up a step to 512.

How does my RTW-BI run? Fantastic! It runs large unit size in a huge city with all the effects switched on. It runs battles at night with no odd sky effects and it will handle huge units sizes if you turn off one or two of the effects and it does not pause or freeze.

It runs all the other graphics games I play like Combat Mission, IL-2 and Lock-On and it meets the specs for Red Orchestra so I can buy that now.

So the plan is now to wait for the publication of MTW2 and Combat Mission2 at the end of this year and then buy whatever is needed to run them at decent settings.

As to the great PCIE/AGP debate - it failed to answer the question I orginally posed which was what was the MINIMUM machine I needed to do the job. I do not need the biggest baddest fastest machine as I only play 4/5 games, it is probably going to be a mid range machine and if I can get older technolgy at a better price (and it does the job) then I will take it. If PCIE is cheaper then I will take that. If it runs 40% faster then perhaps I should be looking at downsizing the card and getting that a bit cheaper?

A big thanks to everyone for their advice and help, it was all very useful and great fun. No doubt I will be back next year to see how things have changed!
cheers

[Beirut]

Excellent!

That's a great upgrade. I saw lots of improvements going from my MX440 to a Ti-4200 and then I saw another big jump when I got my 9800Pro. So you must be doing cartwheels going from an MX420 right to a 9700. Your games must be loving that extra RAM as well.

If you can stick another 512 RAM in your beast during the summer, you'll see wondrous improvements in IL2.

Glad you're having fun.

[Dragoncrusader]

Yes we did discuss that option to go straight to 1Gb RAM but as my previous post showed from the graphics effects table, RAM should not have much effect on RTW. So we decided to start small.

But the experience of running just the new graphics card and then about a week later with the addition of the extra RAM proves otherwise. The new card really upped the 'look' of the game but it was still choppy when running in a city or on huge unit size. The new RAM sorted that out immediately and on IL-2/Lock-On made a big difference. So if the new games look like they may be later and so into 2007, I very well might take your advice and go for the new RAM.

Had a look at the power supply in the DELL and it is 175w so not a huge room for improvement.

Oh and for those of you who are wondering what I am going to do with the money saved - I am going to buy a proper wood floor for the living room. The last owner of the house carpeted the entire inside with strawberry pink and it is making me suicidal!
cheers

[orangat]

.......
As to the great PCIE/AGP debate - it failed to answer the question I orginally posed which was what was the MINIMUM machine I needed to do the job. I do not need the biggest baddest fastest machine as I only play 4/5 games, it is probably going to be a mid range machine and if I can get older technolgy at a better price (and it does the job) then I will take it. If PCIE is cheaper then I will take that. If it runs 40% faster then perhaps I should be looking at downsizing the card and getting that a bit cheaper?
..........

What is your cpu? Probably anything less than 3Ghz is going to be subpar on MTW2. If you get away with just upgrading your video card, sticking with agp might make sense.

[Dragoncrusader]

Hi
CPU is Pentium (4) 2,53 Ghz on the current Dell machine and with the recent upgrade it plays the game to the standard I like.
But you are right I will need a faster more capable machine for MTW2 but that will probably be 2007 by the time people have experience of the game on which I can draw.