Hardware for CM:Normandy ...

[Scheer]

Guys,

if I buy a new motherboard/cpu/videocard/ram combo, where should the money go ? What will CM:Normandy tax more ? I have a fixed budget, is ist better to buy a fast, multicore cpu or a faster videocard ?

[Sergei]

There's no saying until the demo is out. And building gaming PC's is voodoo magic. How much is your budget anyway? Personally I'd put videocard a top priority, but then again I'm a Wego player so there is no much cpu drain except when processing turns.

[Schrullenhaft]

CMSF should be a fairly decent indicator of CM Normandy's performance (with a possible few exceptions). The engine is still the same except there'll be more trees/foliage and water.

Currently the engine doesn't make any use of multiple cores in a CPU. So for any CPU upgrades you may want to consider looking at faster clock speeds (not the best comparison between AMD and Intel though) rather than more cores - if CMx2 performance is your main concern. Typically anything beyond a dual-core is probably overkill when it comes to most games on the market at the moment. 3 and 4 core CPUs will run their cores a little slower compared to a 2 core CPU in order to limit heat and electrical current draw. A faster CPU will help with large battles with lots of shooting and LOS/LOF checks.

A faster video card will help with larger/denser maps and allow for more filtering (anisotropic or antialiasing). Hard to say where the exact "sweet spot" is for this. The fastest and most expensive video cards may only show a marginal difference in CMx2 compared to not-quite-so cutting edge video cards. CMx2 may not make sufficient use of newer shading and lighting effects that these very high-end cards may help accelerate.

The CMx2 engine will remain a 32-bit application for quite awhile, so it, of itself, will not really benefit from more than 2/4GB of RAM (2GB application, 4GB total OS/hardware). Even with a 64-bit OS, most users probably will not see much, if any, performance difference with more than 4GB of RAM. That however is subject to change, but probably not for a few years.

So it comes down to how much you're looking at spending to balance out which hardware might be the best purchase. A fast CPU will always help and this might be especially true of Real Time play. A fast video card is also always nice, but you may not see much of a benefit of going "cutting edge" in getting the latest video hardware. However if your budget only allocates a certain amount for some mid-level video cards, then re-balancing your purchase may be necessary (i.e. - possibly a slower CPU for a faster video card).