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

[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.

[Incongruous]

This should do it.

7900GT

2 GIG of Ram

and well

AMD 3800+

[Bob the Insane]

Well, seeing as we are showing off the first bits of my new PC arrived this morning...

CPU INTEL|C2D X6800 2.93G 775 4M R
CPU COOLER ZALMAN|9700 LED
MEM 1Gx2|COR 240P TWIN2X2048-6400C4
MB GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 P965 775
HD 500G|WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000KS
SNDCD CREATIVE|70SB046A00000 Fatality X-Fi
CASE ANTEC|P180B BLACK
DVD-ROM SONY 16X DDU1615/B2s

Still to arrive is the 650watt PSU and the sweetest piece of all...

The BFG 8800GTX...

Hopefully on Wednesday it will all be here...

[AlJabberwock]

Chopa,
YEAH! great dude, you've got most of the goods now. Won't be all on max, but should run considerably better. Run the gold demo and let me know? If you have cash left and want more upgrades, go for an AGP Geforce 6600... You can find them at newegg.com very reasonably... $100 to 120 US. (If you had a new mobo you could get a PCIex16 GeForce 7600 for $143, but, oh well!).

BFG rules Bob!
Good on ya. Your Sys is an Intel version very similar to an AMD dual core, SLI sys I built for my middle kid down to the Zalman! (Those things look so COOL with the green LED when they're running! I had to send the first one back to Newegg since one of the fan fins had drooped in their molding of it, but got its replacement right away). Same Corsair mem, but I had to buy the Pro as they were out of the regular, though that has LEDs along the top that look wicked in operation. I am interested in your PSU, which model and mfgr? Hope you checked for your +12v reqs! Baby loves 12v
Cheers!

Bopa,
Yeah dude, you're well over the average and most things will run on max and little to no sweat... Using a single 7900gtx oc (from BFG!!) the gold demo is smooth as silk with everything on max. Fraps will give you a bad rating on your frame rate, but my advice is to ignore it. Looks like 7th gen GeForce cards in the upper end like yours get bad numbers, and yet the game runs fantastically, and the frame rate reported doesn't change no matter what eye candy you turn off or on... (No, I had v-synch turned off!) Running twin 7900gtx oc's in SLI was even smoother, and stupid fraps reported the same frame rate- I suspect some tech artifact is returning false data. I will look at some 3d mark 2005 readings for comparison.

Scourge,
I sure know about the limitations parents put on ya! (I'm a parent, and sometimes I hate me!). On the other hand, without them, you wouldn't have a machine at all! I'll tell ya what though, if you give me your mobo model, I'll bet we can come up with a few things that might make your machine run better, if only a little bit, and possibly we can find a place where very very cheap upgrades are possible... Heck, I can send you a 5500 for free (which isn't much help as its barely better than a 5200).

Here's an example... most folks use the cheap ata cables that came in the last generation of mobos (those without PCIex, without hyper transports, and limited or no sata2, vid power hook ups and so forth...). IN these cases, many people will hook up their legacy devices (like older HDs or CD/DVD drives) and their HD on the same cable... The legacy device will slow down access times to your HD by as much as 10% creating significant slowdown in game performance and some other potential problems...

Matty,
Your CPU is ok, its the Ram that comes to mind as the worst offender. This is the bare minimum to get the game to run. You should at least double it. I always prefer overkill in the Ram dept. as it is much cheaper than going to a better system altogether... If you like crackpot analogies, the Mobo can be likened to the human body where the CPU is the brain, the Ram is the muscle, arms and legs, and all the things that go in PCI, AGP and PCIex slots are your senses (hearing, sight, touch, etc). YOu have a good mind there, but its a little bit like Johnny Bravo with his giant head running along on teensy tiny legs. The 9200 vid card comes in an AGP AND a PCI version...more on this in a minute. Your vid card is an ATI , and as an avowed NVidia junky, I am not as qualified to speak on it as many others here, but with 4 pixel pipelines, you are at least doing better than the FX 5000-series owners but you will also probably have to turn off a lot of the eye candy to get decent playing smoothness... Lose shadows first as these are the least needed no matter how cool you think they are. Trust me that from the moment the first exploding shell shakes your view as the armored french cavalry charges straight into your face as you try to stand fast with the pikes of your Landsknecht outstretched, you will never notice the fine detail of shadows under your nemesis as he rides crunchingly over your mangled corpse!
One note of caution on the assumption of your video card being 'marginally ok'. If this is the PCI version of this card, it is possible the CARD not the RAM is the worst bottleneck. The old PCI bus is at best giving half or less of the bandwidth of the AGP slot in your machine. There are a couple of ways of determining whether you have the PCI or the AGP version of the Sapphire 9200 (or 9250). The most straightforward is to simply look in your case and see if it is sitting in one of the lighter colored PCI bus interface slots (there will be anywhere from two to 5 of these altogether by the out slots on the back of your computer). If its in the darker and slightly offset AGP slot nearer to the top of the board (closer to the CPU), you are fortunate and have the AGP version. If its in the PCI slot... I would ditch this card. It is the main reason anything of any size will become so lagged you can hardly wait for it to end. Before the Prophet I must humble myself by stating I once bought this card years ago before I knew any better. I was so appalled by what it would not do, and that I had bought it in my ignorance, that I spent the next two to three years studying everything I could get my hands on in my spare time to never, NEVER do such a thing again, and to pledge myself to prevent others from being in such a state to be duped by the knowledgeable.

Folks, if you want to play games, do not think about old PCI, LE, SE and 'turbo charged' memory versions of video cards. They are bywords for the 'The cheap, the bad, and the ugly'! Matty, after you have had a look at your machine, let me know what you find?

Al Jabberwock

[PaulTa]

Hey Al, good to see that this is more than a pissing contest.

Maybe you could offer some advice on what I should upgrade next, aside from my obviously lacking power supply (only 300 watt). (By the way, if anyone wants to donate an old power supply that is PCI E capable and is above 300 watt, I can probably scrounge up a few bucks to send back to ya. Please, try and make sure that it actually works though)

I have a 2.8 gig intel processor
X800 GTO from connect3D
1 gig of DDR2 RAM (four 256 pieces actually :P)

I was thinking about trying to rob a bank and get enough money for the 7600GT on newegg for 143 bucks, but that would also require a power supply update, since my 300 watter ain't gonna cut it. (Damned dell shipping bare bone minimum parts with their PCs)

Also, I don't know how you are on hardware, but the fan quit out on my X800. Being the avid gamer that I am, even if I could find proof of purchase for the card (got it on newegg) I probably couldn't bear the wait of having it gone for a few weeks while they tink at it. Basically, the fan starts up after I fiddle with it a bit, but there is apparently some friction between the fan blades and where it sits, because it makes a chirping noise that indicates that it's rubbing up against something with it's high speed turns. Thankfully, the rather large heatsink coupled with a box fan blowing in the general direction of my PC is keeping the temperatures down (I average around 35 C idle, and max 45 C while gaming), but that's only CPU temperature, as my card doesn't have the hardware to monitor heat output.

I'm starting to get artifacts after prolonged gaming on graphics intensive games like FEAR, which I'm betting is a result of overheating. On occasion, my computer has decided to black screen, which is probably a bad indicator. Poor X800 is dying.

If it helps, the X800 isn't being overclocked at all, and I've made sure to discharge any static on my persons before handling the card with a large dose of TLC when trying to clean it and fix the fan.

Any comments, suggestions, or donations are welcome. :P

Thanks in advance,
Paul


P.S. If the help is really profound, we'll have to keep in touch and I'll show my gratitude when I graduate college and start making around 100k a year.

[Matty]

Matty, after you have had a look at your machine, let me know what you find?

Al Jabberwock

Wow, seriously impressive response. Many thanks.

With some trepidation I've take the side off the machine. It didn't explode or electrocute me, which was a plus. By a process of elimination I think I've identified the video card (I note the lack of any evidence like 'video card' or 'video card goes here'). Terrifying logic deduces that its probably the bit that the monitor connects to.

It seems I have 6 horizontal white slots near the bottom of the box, all empty. Just above this is a shorter dark slot into which the video card is placed. there is a sticker on it saying Radeon 9200 64MB DDR V/D/VO. Hopefully all of this is good news.

If I want more RAM do I just buy it and stick it in one of the two spare slots next to the existing RAM?

My incompetence leaves me feeling deeply inadequate....

EDIT: So I slung another 512 of RAM in and it made almost no difference (I did check that its working), especially on the sieges. The buildings seem to blow its mind. Should I get more RAM??
EDIT 2: Another 1 GIG of RAM and its better but still way from good for the sieges. That's it, I spend no more!

[Bob the Insane]

Chopa,
BFG rules Bob!
Good on ya. Your Sys is an Intel version very similar to an AMD dual core, SLI sys I built for my middle kid down to the Zalman! (Those things look so COOL with the green LED when they're running! I had to send the first one back to Newegg since one of the fan fins had drooped in their molding of it, but got its replacement right away). Same Corsair mem, but I had to buy the Pro as they were out of the regular, though that has LEDs along the top that look wicked in operation. I am interested in your PSU, which model and mfgr? Hope you checked for your +12v reqs! Baby loves 12v
Cheers!

Thanks for that, I am seriously over excited at the moment...

PSU is:

Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 ATX12V 650W Power Supply with Three 12V Rails (SLI certified) Plus it has PCI-e connectors...

Thanks for all the advice...

[scourgeofrome]

Scourge,
I sure know about the limitations parents put on ya! (I'm a parent, and sometimes I hate me!). On the other hand, without them, you wouldn't have a machine at all! I'll tell ya what though, if you give me your mobo model, I'll bet we can come up with a few things that might make your machine run better, if only a little bit, and possibly we can find a place where very very cheap upgrades are possible... Heck, I can send you a 5500 for free (which isn't much help as its barely better than a 5200).

Here's an example... most folks use the cheap ata cables that came in the last generation of mobos (those without PCIex, without hyper transports, and limited or no sata2, vid power hook ups and so forth...). IN these cases, many people will hook up their legacy devices (like older HDs or CD/DVD drives) and their HD on the same cable... The legacy device will slow down access times to your HD by as much as 10% creating significant slowdown in game performance and some other potential problems...

Truth,I don't know a word you said (not computer literate).And for making it run better,I can live with it moving a little slow and having to turn down the graphics a bit.I don't need pretty grass and clouds to kill little virtual people.Besdies,I autocalulate battles quiete often (yes,I'm lazy.Only fight real important ones,have lost often using autocal.,or just got bored).