The "Would my PC be able to run M2TW?" thread (all such queries here pls)

[Patrick1191]

I know that it says you need 11 gigs of hard drive space, but i heard that it will still run with less. Is this true? if so how much less?

[astonkiller]

hi iv been playing all day on my laptop thats 2 years old 40gig hard drive got battlefield 2,rtw.btw,civ4,and now mtw2 works great ps just ceep your pc clean ie;win defender ad-ware,avg free.

[Belgolas]

I just got my new XFX 7600 gt XXX 256MB graphics card today. I installed it and bam! M2TW with max settings execpt shadows on lowest at 1280 x 1024. I can run shadows on high but I don't like the looks of the shadows. I love my new card. The only problem so far is that I had to reinstall Battlefield 2 in order to play that game. M2TW never goes below 12 FSP on any battle in the Gold demo and it has never looked so buitifull before. Average frame rate is around 27 frames per second. Game runs smooth. CS:S average frame rate 82. Thanks tiger and XFX for this great card.

[Spartanian]

Got probs in mp....cant play a 2v2 without lag..
I tires all settings but not much differenc between them.
In campain battles and custom battles (sp)the game runs smooth.

ati x1950xtx
amd5000 dc
2gig ram

[Bob the Insane]

Man I an so excited I an almost drooling into the key board...

I just ordered the following bits for my new home build:

Intel Core 2 Extreme x6800, Gigabyte MB, 2GB DDR2800, Soundblaster x-Fi card and the real killer piece... Nividia GeForce 8800GTX!! (yes 8800, not a missprint)...

Super sweet... just 3 or 4 days until it is here and as I am in the US at present thats about the same for M2TW...

Note that it is a happy co-incidence, I did not get the machine specifically for M2TW, but I am still excited...

[Motep]

i dont feel like sifting through ages of posts...but im pretty sure my geforce nividia 5800 wont cut it.
384 mbs of ram, a virtual ton of memory, and other stuff i cant find out....


p.s. way to go insane bob!

[chopa]

can someone please help me

what to upgrade to play smooth on high details?

PIV 1,4 Ghz
768 DDram
ati radeon 9600 pro 256

as im on tight budget, i planned to buy new processor cause this is realy outofdate

whats the best processor i can get for socket 478?

[hoom]

A 5800! & you actually use it?

[AlJabberwock]

Motep,

We used a GeForce FX 5500 OC to play RTW with most items on high or highest with normal sized units or many things on medium to low for large units. A 5800 will probably still only have 2 to 4 pipes and reduced width and bit compared to more robust 6th Gen. GeForce cards with up to 16 pipelines and better bitrates which seem to be around where the game is playing reasonably... Meaning, I think your card can play the game M2TW, but not much will be on "high" and you may be playing with small units to achieve 'relatively smooth' play. On the other hand, your Ram is barely enough to allow your system to work for much beyond the Windows OS itself, and there is likely an underpowered CPU lurking around there though you didn't tell us what it was. If only your card were on the low side, I might risk saying go for it and see what happens, but "its beginning to look a lot like christmas" will be neccessary (replace your sys- you need a new mobo anyway with PCI Ex interface for the modern gens of vid cards). Only good news is that many cards and system components you will need to make the game run like a dream are a lot less expensive (than when I bought them!!!) now that even newer items are out or coming soon and the dual core competition is in full swing.

Chopa,
I am really sorry, but much of what you have is really out of date, and cpus using the 478 socket will limit you considerably. Best likely to still be around are things like the Prescott single-core P-IV in the 3.0 ghz range. They will still have an L2 cache of 1 mb, and should also come with hyperthreading. Dothans are Pentium Ms, and these single cores are outmodes despite their hefty L2 caches. The Northwoods are cool with the 13 mu process, but lack hyper threading and SSE3 and a few other things. A few Prescott 3 gigs for the 478 are available at Newegg, Monarch, E bay and the like in the under $100 range. Even less if you like open box... Some of these should have hyper threading (which you want) and they will have sse 1,2,and 3 and a few other things you will want along with lower voltage requirements and some other conveniences if you are an overclocker. (I'm not but many are). That said, there is no 64 bit support and these cpus, while adequate to play M2TW, are woefully behind the curve in general since multi cores and some single AMD cores use memory controls right on the chip called Hypertransports which eliminate fsbs altogether... Uh, ok, just trust me, a lot of tech has gone by the boards in the last 18 months, and 478s are as common as top hats and spats in church on sunday.

Your vid card is probably ok but to play to the max it would have to go, and your Ram should be increased, preferably doubled. I am an NVidia enthusiast, so I will make no reccomendations for your video card if you prefer ATI other than it will have to be a little more modern to cope.

Bob the Insane-
Totally cool system dude. Hope to hear how it sings right through the pip-squeak tasks you give it! The "I swear I didn't get it to play the game" comment strikes as just a _little_ forced though don't you think...?

[Bob the Insane]

Motep,
Totally cool system dude. Hope to hear how it sings right through the pip-squeak tasks you give it! The "I swear I didn't get it to play the game" comment strikes as just a _little_ forced though don't you think...?

Thanks, I am totally geeked out over it... It has only taken a years worth of campaigning with my wife and god know how much money in shiny, jewel encrusted bribes to get her to agree...

I grant you M2TW may have re-ignited my interest in updating but the release of the 8800 was a big deal too (getting all Vista and DX10 ready)...

[AlJabberwock]

{grins knowingly}

Heh! Something like that Bob... vacation destinations for mine. (e.g. Portugal in May 07).

My personal camouflage is I always point to one of the kids (hopefully looking innocent and helpless at that moment) and say "look honey, he's going to have to do _homework_ on this thing, there's just no way he can do that with these old technologies... "

The bad thing is I have three kids AND my wife who get upgraded that way before I do so I always have the crappiest danged ramshackle left over rig...

I assume you are putting it together yourself. Let me know what the mobo and all the other component details are and how it all went together for you?
Thanks!

A uh, "g'equal"

Al Jabberwock

[Motep]

so i can run the game but with limited settings? Thats fine with me! But my cuz asked me isf his 5500 would be able to handle it, and I dont know, so naturally I must turn to this thread.

[AlJabberwock]

Motep,
That will again depend on the rest of what he has and how satisfied he will be to turn down the settings and the unit size. I may have mentioned we used a 5500 OC from BFG for RTW. A straight 5500 can run RTW for sure. Not great, but it does if you don't turn on all the eye candy (I think we also used a straight 5500 from Norwood as I can see the box balanced about ten feet above me on top of a bookshelf but that took even more patience or trade off of eye candy).

I'm not sure which forum I read it on ( I have been surfing the org, TWC, and the .com forums the last 24 hours), but somewhere I recall someone with something like a 5200 saying they had a hard time with the game. We will make a stab at the 5500 with the gold demo. I had meant to do that anyway before work took me away for a month. Nota Bene: we will be using at least a 2ghz rated Athlon or Sempron (single core) and 2gigs of DDRam. If the gold demo runs passably, the game will run better by all accounts. We will have the results probably by later this morning and post here (as it is not a full game test in that "other" thread (grin).

Al Jabberwock

[chopa]

al jabber thank you very much

I know im preety much stuck, and new socket is a must (PIV 1,4 Ghz
768 DDram
ati radeon 9600 pro 256)


could you please than advice what best new motherboard and processor can I get for considerably 200-250 euros max?

my video card and my old 768 DDram can go with no problems on new motherboard? (in next few moths new RAM will be my occupattion)

thnx once again on great help, you are the man

[Biggus Diccus]

al jabber thank you very much

I know im preety much stuck, and new socket is a must (PIV 1,4 Ghz
768 DDram
ati radeon 9600 pro 256)


could you please than advice what best new motherboard and processor can I get for considerably 200-250 euros max?

my video card and my old 768 DDram can go with no problems on new motherboard? (in next few moths new RAM will be my occupattion)

thnx once again on great help, you are the man

If you're going to upgrade your mobo and cpu, you'll most likely have to upgrade your ram to ddr2 as well. And you have to get a new graphics card, since new mobos now use PCIE and your card is AGP. I'd save up to afford new mobo/cpu/ram/graphics card if I was you.

If you go for a AMD socket 939 nforce4 system with a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 cpu you should be able to use your old ram on the mobo, but you still have to upgrade to a new PCIE graphics card; nvidia 7600 GT is good value for money.

[AlJabberwock]

I know im preety much stuck, and new socket is a must (PIV 1,4 Ghz
768 DDram
ati radeon 9600 pro 256)
could you please than advice what best new motherboard and processor can I get for considerably 200-250 euros max?
my video card and my old 768 DDram can go with no problems on new motherboard? (in next few moths new RAM will be my occupattion)...

Chopa,
"Owa fwend fwom Woam" is quite right, but first let me tell you about our test of the non over-clocked Ge Force FX5500.

Motep,
The straight 5500 Norwood ran the gold demo. Not particularly well, but it was playable with everything on minimum, shader 1.0, and no grass or shadows at all. We found we had to increase brightness a little bit and had reflections and bloom also off. No AA or AF at all. The intros were a bit jerky and so was the action, but not a full stutter/strobe effect. Camera control was poor under the laggy conditions. All the battles played about the same, with some of the effects (particularly the thundering of cannon and musketry) being still quite effective.

The sys we used featured a 1.8 ghz socket-A Athlon CPU (at stock) juiced to just about 2.0 ghz, 1.5 gigs of DDR (but not very fast being 266) with the Norwood 5500 running at factory settings. It was much more attractive than MTW, but way LESS attractive than anyone deserves to see the game at. Sort of a MTW in 3-d with better unit detail. The degrading of the colors and detail beauty as well as some of the more interesting effects on armor and so forth was high and it was clearly laggy, but the full game is likely to play slightly better.

Hope that answers your question Motep... Since there are more modern systems in my house, only in grave desperation might I play the game on that sys, but your cousin might mind less if he has no other option. Your 5800 will play it a bit better but not much. Truly is the 5th Gen. NVidia scraping the lower bound of being able to appreciate the game.

Chopa,

Aye Chiwawa... I don't want to steer you wrong but if you make me give you an opinion on what to do with your budget, I can only advise you that if you are limited to about $400 (I can't think in pounds being a 'colonial') you do not have adequate funds to meet the needs you will have by upgrading to a new system that a modern Mobo will require.

As Biggus stated (and I think I did also) the new generation of mobo will have PCI-ex interfaces for graphic cards, will probably incorporate dual core sockets which obviate front side buses (using HT technology instead-light years ahead) and in many cases not even having a northbridge if you are using AMD. There is also the DDR2 memory you would have to buy (the "2" standing for two-channel, where the data streams on alternating channels for theoretically up to twice the speed; although this is hardly true in practice it _is_ faster by an easily perceptable margin). You would also have to have the new vertical-storage, SATA drives if you didn't want your HD to be a bad bad bottleneck, AND you would need a significantly more beastly power source since all of these things suck in energy like the government does your income.

Lets look at what you have now:
Your card is good enough to play the game, though hardly at max settings. Since you can't change mobo's with your cash constraint, keep the card for the moment and upgrade the CPU within the limits of a socket 478 as I mentioned above. Probably a 3 gig Pentium 4 Prescott so you can get the Hyperthreading... It seems to me that components look a bit more costly on your side of the pond, but still you should be able to score the CPU for $100 or thereabouts. If it is a bit more, pay it if you have no chance of shortly saving up a few hundred more to replace the entire system. Now this should leave you a bit more than $200 US to muck about with your memory. You need to find out what rate and speed it is (SD or DD, AND 266, 333, 600, 800, etc), is it buffered or unbuffered, is registered or unregistered, and if you can, its CL or latency. Whenever I can I exactly duplicate the existing memory unless I am going to remove it altogether down to and especially, the manufacturer. If you don't know how to get these, drop me a message through the board or PM me. Once we know what kind of mem you have we will look to see what kind of sticks you already have in your board, how many slots for memory your mobo has, and what the best way is to increase what you have is... This way we eliminate most of the constraints at the CPU and memory, and the limits will be all about your graphic card. Alternatively, you could go ahead and buy that NVidia 7600 mentioned elsewhere, but it would be limited by the AGP interface your mobo has AND the very bad bottleneck represented by your CPU and probably your Ram.

There, I've said it. Have you trie dthe gold demo with the sys you have right now? Would you and tell me about it?

Al Jabberwock

[chopa]

about the demo first

i put first auto detect option:

battle with aztecs was unplayable, other 2 battle playable but with big laggynes

then i tried with manual options:
shader 1
1024/768
no AA, no vysnc
unit med
building low
effects med
grass none
texture highest

prebattle movie was at 15-20 FPS, battle with aztecs 5-10 FPS (fraps), other 2 battles were better, but also some camera stuttering when flying over battlefield

then about my system

done some researching and came to similiar conclusion as you, to buy ONLY new CPU but seems my mbo doesnt support 3 gig Pentium 4 Prescott (cause is presscot, i dont know why, but that is no official news, as some bloke told me that on other forum, maybe you know better...)

but than again I find some other CPus that should fit like:
PIV northwood 533 mhz, 2,8 Ghz
PIV 2,4 Ghz, 533 mhz FSB
PIV 3,0 Ghz, 800 mhz FSB (that is my favourite after Prescott)

my mbo is p4pe-x asus

my memory rams
my mbo allows 3 sticks, and I have 3 x 256 DDRam (pc2100)
done some research with CPU-Z freeware and this is info:
FSB:DRAM 3:4
CAS#Latency 2,5 clocks
frequency 134,9 Mhz
registered NO
buffered NO

DDrams are Hyundai and Samsung

hope I managed to give you all info required, also must say my hardware knowledge seems to be stuck 5 years ago, and today I admit its very hard to find some quality info, as so much new is on offer, I simply got lost in all that

once again, thank you for great help so far, and can be only happy to meet someone to give me precise instructions regarding my upgrade to play this great game

waiting for reply with my eyes wide open

[scourgeofrome]

Hey,quick question.How do I look up this information.All I know is my computer can play games like Elder Scrolls:Oblivion without any problems.

[AlJabberwock]

Scourge,

If you are unsure of what your hardware is, go to programs, choose accessories, then system tools, then system info. After the window pops up and populates, you will be able to see the basics like your grpahic card the rate at which your cpu is rated, and the amount of physical ram you have...

You can get a little bit more info out of your machine by going to the command line...
From the "start" button, choose the "run" button, type 'dxdiag' which will start the diagnosis process from your Directx program. To get the nitty gritty, you should do what Chopa did above, which is download the free program CPU-Z. This will do all sorts of nifty listing in a more detailed way.

Show us what you find, but if you're playing obliv. 4 w/ no problem, you probably don't need any help...

Chopa
Totally cool dude. Good on ya. Yeah, the CPU is probably not up to the task, and the Ram ain't helpin' either. I am going to look up your mobo specs (which you can do as well as I can probably if you don't have them there right in front of you). What we need to see is a compatibility list from Asus-they're the arbiter of what goes on their board not some bloke on a bboard somewhere- unless he's already seen it, or makes the bloody things. This way we can see what cpus it supports and what its max ram is and per slot... Pretty soon you'll be able to sell those 256 sticks to a museum ya know... Give me a little bit of time, since I need get a shot of scotch in order to look at the Asus site...

[AlJabberwock]

Heh!

Chopa my friend,
Well figures, the Asus site is always a bugger but it looks to me like either I have really good news, or not very good news at all...

Does this look familiar to you?:
P4P800-E Deluxe

ASUS Intelligence Everywhere
-Intel 865PE Chipset
-800/533/400 MHz FSB
-Dual-Channel DDR400 Memory
-Intel Hyper-Threading Technology
-ASUS Intelligence Features
-Wi-Fi slot for optional wireless LAN upgrade

Specifications
CPU -Socket 478 for Intel Pentium 4/Celeron up to 3.2GHz+
-Intel Hyper-Threading Technology ready
-Supports Intel Prescott CPU
Chipset Intel 865PE MCH
Intel ICH5R
Front Side Bus 800 / 533 / 400 MHz
Memory -Dual Channel Memory Architecture
-4 x 184-pin DIMM Sockets support max. 4GB DDR400/333/266 non-ECC DDR SDRAM memory
-ASUS Hyper-Path Technology
Expansion Slots - 1 x AGP 8X/4X (0.8V, 1.5V only)
- 5 x PCI
- 1 x ASUS Wi-Fi slot for optional wireless LAN upgrade

Does that look like your mobo? There is no p4pe-x listed on the Asus site, only this and a slight variation called the SE. The letter designations make sense and the memory would be consistent except in one way...

I need you to look inside your case very carefully and tell me if there isn't a 4th dimm slot that is simpy not being used. Either of the mobos in the class yours is supposed to be in would have 4 slots. Something you might also do is give me all your CPU-Z pages since I can probably suss it if you cant from what I have put out here... If you would like you can also go to the ASUS site, look up motherboards under products, choose 478 sockets, and then choose the p4p800e-deluxe and look at the picture. You can choose enlargement to expand the pic. If it looks like your board and you have 4 mem slots WOOHOO! We probably have a winner... Less interesting but as likely to give you an answer, you can just open your case and read the name of the mobo off the board... should include the 800 on it, but if not, please give me the info and count the slots physically.

As you can see, if this _is_ your mobo, it CAN take the Prescott, and it is made for Hyperthreading. TWO POINTS FOR YOU! Further, it has 4 mem slots, so the easiest thing to do is buy a 1 gig stick and put it in slot one, and move the 256 stick in slot 1 to slot 4. Now, I haven't priced the two makers you already have of ddr in your board, but Kingston was around $100 for a 1 gig stick online at Newegg in the States. Probably more for the Samsung, dunno about the Hyundai (but their cars are cheap at least!). With that, you wuold have money left over to comteplate a slight upgrade maybe on your vid card even... [raises his eyebrows].

Albeit all of this stuff is already antique, it will get you reasonably through the next year probably... By the end of 07, not only will most software be taking advantage of all the current technological changes, but you will have Vista, Directx 10, and the threatened brinksmanship of AMD in the quad and beyond cores through caveman technology.

If this is NOT your mobo, well, we don't know a damned thing...

Al Jabberwock

[Motep]

Thank you oh wise computer savvy AlJabberwock. Thank you for the info...also...how is the campign gameplay on the 5800?

[AlJabberwock]

Motep,

Please keep in mind that our test was with a system that had above average ram and CPU power for the typical set up in this class. (I do not have a 5800, only a 5500 and a 5500 OC). If your cousin or you have significantly less ram or CPU power, you may get bottlenecking in these quarters. Try the demo gold. Tell me how you do.

As to the actual full game, I know an awful lot about it from reading just about every post on the TWC, Org, and Com forums in the last two days and what I have been able to glean from the demos and the developer comments official and otherwise...but as I have said elsewhere, I live in the desert in Tucson AZ. We h'ain't got no game nohow for another ta-oooow dayz! I have to say, I might be a whole lot less helpful if I had the game on me right now at least till I got through the first day or two and had played a good number of turns and looked at the access for modding the whole year/age/build/ratio thingy...

Al Jabberwock

[Motep]

awaiting your results!

[chopa]

no jabber

this is my mobo (i found it with no probs on asus website)

P4PE-X (Intel 845PE) Series
P4PE-X socket 478 Pentium 4 motherboard is based on the Intel 845PE chipset. Supporting idustry-leading technologies such as DDR400(O.C), and FSB800(O.C) and an abundance of advanced features, the all-new P4PE-X enables outstanding performance and value. (When you used a CPU with 800Mhz FSB, you need to install a PC3200 (400Mhz) DDR memory.)

CPU
Socket 478 for Intel Pentium 4/Celeron
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology ready

Chipset
Intel 845PE
Intel ICH4

Front Side Bus
800(O.C)/533/400 MHz
Note:(A 800 FSB CPU requires a PC3200 DDR DIMM)

Memory
3x 184-pin DIMM Sockets support max. 2GB PC3200(O.C) /PC2700 / PC2100/ PC1600 non-ECC DDR SDRAM memory
Note:(Optain PC3200 DDR DIMMs only from ASUS qualified vendors list)

Expansion Slots
1 x AGP 4X
6x PCI

Storage/RAID
2 x UltraDMA 100/66/33

Audio
ADI AD 1980 SoundMAX 6-channel CODEC
S/PDIF out interface

LAN
BROADCOM 10/100 Mbps Ethernet controller

USB
Integrated 6 USB2.0 ports

Special Features
ASUS EZ Flash
Support S/PDIF out interface
ASUS C.P.R.(CPU Parameter Recall)
ASUS CrashFree-BIOS

Internal I/O Connectors
Front panel audio connector
1xUSB2.0 connector support additional 2 USB 2.0 ports
20-pin ATX power connector
4-pin ATX 12V power connector
CPU /chassis Fan connectors
SPDIF_OUT connector
Chassis Intrusion
CD/AUX/Modem audio in

Overclocking Features
ASUS JumperFree
CPU,Memory, AGP voltage adjustable
"SFS(Stepless Frequency Selection) from 100 MHz up to 230MHz at 1MHz increment "
Adjustable FSB/DDR ratio, Fixed AGP/PCI frequencies

Back Panel I/O Ports
1xPS/2 keyboard
1xPS/2 mouse
2xSerial
4xUSB
1xParallel
1xRJ45
1x Audio I/O

BIOS
2Mb Flash EEPROM
Award BIOS with enhanced ACPI,DMI,PnP,Green,TCAV
ASUS EZ Flash, ASUS C.P.R, SM BIOS 2.3, ASUS Crash-Free BIOS

Industrial Standard
PCI 2.2, USB2.0

Manageability
WOL by PME, WOR by PME

Support CD
drivers
ASUS PC Probe
Trend Micro PC-cillin 2002 anti-virus software

Accessories
User's manual
UltraDMA cable
FDD cable
I/O shield

Form Factor
ATX
12.0"*9.0" (30.5cm*22.9cm)

i found all that info here:http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...88&modelmenu=1

waiting for reply

[scourgeofrome]

Is this good?
Memory:510MB RAM
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.20 Ghz,~2.2GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Anything else you guys need?

[AlJabberwock]

Is this good?
Memory:510MB RAM
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.20 Ghz,~2.2GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Anything else you guys need?

Uh, wow, no. Seems I overestimated what it takes to run Obl 4 well.

Your CPU is up to the task. Your Ram is probably not really, even though it matches the bare minimum M2TW calls for in the specs... Practical experience would indicate you will not like how the game runs with it if you do not at least double or triple it. The Graphic card also is suspect and dragging right along the bottom of what it would take to run the game at all. I am quite amazed you have no trouble with Obl 4 unless you are running with many of the graphical features at low or off... Best to try the demo gold. You will need AA and AF off, shadows off, and most other things near low or lowest... Let me know.

Al Jabberwock

[AlJabberwock]

Thanks Chopa!

Yep, I always love the ASUS site. You are certainly correct that many options come up when you put in the Socket 478 today, including yours, but last night only two came up and a search for your exact motherboard returned "0 items returned in your search" !

This is going to be a long and slightly technical post, full of not so nice things to say about the Asus site and their 'support', so if you just want to know what I think you should do, go to the summary at the end.

After mucking about on the ASUS site for way too long, I did come across a smattering of reference in the forums related to your Mobo about the Prescotts being defined by Intel techs as possibly not working on the mobo because of the L2 cache size (entirely possible because these are 1m). On the other hand, at least one of the Asus people on the boards seemed to think it might be possible a P4 Prescott with a 512 L2 cache WOULD work...since there aren't any P4 Prescotts with less than a 1m L2 (and I think the Celerons are 256), I decided not to pay much more attention to the Asus responders.

Despite this, I also found this less-than-obvious location for CPUs supported by the p4pe:

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/c...s&model=P4PE-X

Here you will see the list of what the board supports as of the last time ASUs updated their list... Trust me, its been a while. Since their last Bios update was in 2003, its a cinch they haven't gone on to look at what more modern CPUs can be used on the board, or made even the most insignificant effort to make these compatible with your board either... Like many board makers, no money in it for them. Now if you troll through the list you will see many low-powered, outmode-type cpus, and toward the bottom, a few that might make you satisfied for the time being.

Nota Bene:
The p4pe-x board means 800 fsb cpus all will require you upgrade to the newest Bios, buy PC 3200 (ddr 400) and there you are also limited to only one stick in the first slot, and further there is a typically cryptic and non-english type of vague reference that appears to purport only northwoods are supported. This appears to conflict with info provided on the cpu page, but that's typical. This 800 fsb information can be found if you look at the "limitations" link listed next to any of the fsb 800 cpus in the cpu list... Except, that unless you are lucky, you will often see NOTHING in the "limitations" link because their site is not optimized for Explorer or some other reason as they have done to many of the links on their site (if they work at all - another case in point is the reference link for the updated Bios for the p4pe-x which will tell you sorrowfully that it is 'still under construction, come back soon' ... Since they made the Bios update in 2003, it seems they should have been done by now, but most likely, like most of the other things on their site, it will never be done). If you run into the "limitations" link problem, I was able to come up with a work around : move the cursor all the way to the top of the page of the limitations, and then from the limitation link, choose the "technical papers" link and once you go there, click on the "back" button on your browser and you should be able to see the limitations if you want to see what I was talking about above.

Summary
Bad news is, if you want the faster FSB, the dopes make it so you have to buy the faster ram, which is ok, but paradoxically, they limit you to only one stick of it...

Also, we want to buy more bigger sticks of ram in addition to what we have, not eliminate what we have, so there looked to be a 3.06 ghz P 4 on the list, that has a 533 fsb. This does not require you change your ram, but you may have to update your bios if you do not have bios 1004 or higher (there is actually a 1007 out, but you may not need it). Also, probably any of the 533 or 400 CPUs in the 2.4 plus range should be ok too, just stay away from 800 fsb's and make sure the L2 Cache is 512, no larger. And sorry, this means NO Prescotts unless you want a Celeron, since the L2 Cache is too large.

Next, it also appears that the p4pe-x can only take a double sided ram stick in the fist slot, so that will have to be your only mongo stick, and the others can keep the soon to be museum bound 256's. (the 2 and 3 slots are set up in such a way that if you put a double sided stick in one of them, it makes the other unusable... another handy feature from those geniuses at Asus limiting the upside of your memory muscle). I have not seen anything to indicate you cannot take a 1 meg stick in slot number one and this would seem to be neccessarily possible if the sys is to reach its purported max of 2 gigs with only 3 slots (two of which can only take single sided ram).

Use the link above. You can look at the lists by mobo or by the processor you find... For other Asus users, this is a handy list, so book mark it.

Chopa, hope this helps. Look at the list, look up what you want to get and let me know?

Al Jabberwock

[scourgeofrome]

Uh, wow, no. Seems I overestimated what it takes to run Obl 4 well.

Your CPU is up to the task. Your Ram is probably not really, even though it matches the bare minimum M2TW calls for in the specs... Practical experience would indicate you will not like how the game runs with it if you do not at least double or triple it. The Graphic card also is suspect and dragging right along the bottom of what it would take to run the game at all. I am quite amazed you have no trouble with Obl 4 unless you are running with many of the graphical features at low or off... Best to try the demo gold. You will need AA and AF off, shadows off, and most other things near low or lowest... Let me know.

Al Jabberwock

.And yes,most graphics on Obliv 4 were tuned down.Oh well,I don't mind tuning down graphics.Don't need pretty trees to kill people.

Edit:I can't get an upgrade for my computer anyways.I just got one a few months back to play Obliv 4.My parents aren't gonna upgrade it again so soon.

[chopa]

tnx Aljabber

seems Im looking for this

P4-3.06 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB, HT, C1/D1) or P4-2.80 GHz (533 FSB, L2 cache:512KB)
(i dont fancy celerons as Im told they are low end CPUs and not good for gaming)
+
512/1 GB of DDRams

must say Ive been laughing for those silly limitations by Asus (only double rams in first stick etc...)

also strangly, asus site works greatly in firefox

tnx mate its been a great help, and some learning stuff for me

seems that 3,06 PIV will be very hard to find in Croatia , maybe if YOu have some good links for online shops?

edit:
no need for online shops links, Al Jabber
found at my local computer store PIV 2,8 Ghz, 533 Mhz, 512 cache l2 for cca 120 $, and 512 DDRam for 70 $

should keep me happy I hope for next year

tnx once again for great help Al Jabber

[Matty]

Afternoon chaps.

I could do with a little advice on the technical side as I am something of a numpty in this department. With small battles all is well, but I just tried taking Paris (as one does) and with the 2000 odd soldiers on the field it got very delayed - sufficient for me to quit in desperation. I have the settings on custom but wondered whether my 2 year old ex-office beast was not up to the task.

I have:
AMD Athlon XP2400+ processor (1.99GHz)
512 MB of RAM
Sapphire Radeon 9200 Atlantis.

I'll fiddle with the video options but any advice you kind fellows could provide would be much appreciated.