BeWary

Well, I haven't tried the 7.58 drivers, but I installed the 21.81 drivers on my Win98SE AMD Thunderbird system with a GeForce2 Pro, and CM runs fine with and without FSAA. I've noticed though that 2x FSAA doesn't look as good as before. I think I'll try 4x FSAA tonight and see if it looks better. I should also note that escaping to the desktop and going back in seems to work fine, though it hasn't been necessary since I haven't seen any graphical quirks to correct. The drivers are actually having fewer quirks then the older 6.50 drivers I was using, in CM and Half-Life (Day of Defeat mod). As far as performance goes, I don't know if they're any faster than the 6.50 drivers. I haven't done any formal benchmarks, and I think my system runs my games so fast that at this point I can't tell a difference. Thought some of you still on the fench would like to know. BeWary P.S. I haven't noticed a speed increase with FSAA turned on in Half-Life. It still occasionally makes me lose frames in OpenGL, so I'm back to running Half-Life with FSAA off. [ 10-02-2001: Message edited by: BeWary ]

I think it depends on the terminology your router uses. I have a D-Link firewall/router and for me it's called a Virtual Server. I tell it to route incoming packets on port 7023 to the internal IP address of my machine. That should be all that's needed, though if you have strict policies enforced for outgoing port traffic as well, then you'll need to also open 7023 as an outgoing port (unless CM uses a different port for outgoing traffic. Maybe that's where 7024 comes in). For me, that's done on a different screen. Good luck. BeWary

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aaronb: I have _only_ 7023 open with a Linksys, and it works fine.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ditto

I could be mistaken, but I think that's in one of the high-res building mods. Check the official fan site (www.combatmission.com) for the mod. I think they have it. BeWary

Sometimes I have to open the "My Computer" window and hit F5 to refresh. This should always refresh the icon for the CD (in essence, Windows redetects the CD in the drive). If it doesn't show the correct icon, then right-click on the CD-drive icon and "eject" the CD. Reinsert, wait for it to spin up, and hit F5 again to refresh. I have to do this sometimes, and I don't know if it's a quirk of Win98SE or my drive. I think it's my drive. I have a Pioneer DVD 114. Hope that works for you. BeWary

Thanks Schrull. I'll probably try them out, but I prefer to wait for drivers that don't have any problems with them. BTW, I have a GeForce 2 Pro 64MB DDR. Anyone know if the FSAA performance has been improved? BeWary

I'm still using v6.50 on my Win98SE machines, since it seems so many other people have been having problems with the newer drivers and CM. But I think it's time to upgrade, especially if the new drivers increase performance as advertised. So anyone try them out? Do they work "completely" with CM? How about with and without FSAA enabled? Any abnormalities at all? Inquiring minds want to know. Thanks, BeWary

Hmmm. Those are neat little quirks you guys found. Though perhaps unrealistic and unintended, I don't think they're problems. Are you really going to change your strategy because you see an 'infantry?' unit on the opposite corner of the map, whether you know what it is or not? I doubt it. I guess the Archer thing might change your strategy, but if I was facing an "unknown" tank, I would be as careful as I would if I knew if was an Archer. BeWary

I know of a good game to make with this engine. CMBB! Ok, that was lame. I admit it. BeWary (thought I was gone, didn't you)

What kind of video card is it? A friend of mine has a laptop with a NeoMagic (I think that's the name) video card, and CM won't work, period. You may have the same situation. I used to run it on a P2-400 with no problems. Good luck, BeWary

Worst case, you'll need to delete Windows and reinstall your OS. Windows tends to get flaky when installing new video cards. It's happened in the past, and it's still happening now. I have personal experience with this.

I'm not so sure it's the AMD chipset that's the problem. I'm also running on the AMD 761 chipset, with 266 FSB and a GeForce 2 Pro (AGP 4x). I have no problems with CM, though my MB is an Asus A7M266. So it looks to me like it's a MB bios issue. See if there's a bios update available for your MB. Also, when I installed everything initially, I had to install some Via 3-in-1 drivers, as well as an AGP fix for Windows/AMD. These drivers/fixes were on my motherboard installation CD. Do you have something similar? If you do, uninstall your video card drivers and select the Generic VGA card drivers. Reboot. Apply the fixes, rebooting as necessary. Finally, reinstall the Detonator 6.5 drivers (that's what I'm using anyways). You may also want to reinstall DX 8.0a. It's also possible that it's an incompatability problem with the GeForce card, or maybe the card is bad? If you have another AGP 4X video card, you could try popping that in and see if you still have the problem. That would at least help you isolate the problem. Good luck. BeWary

Try deleting your Prefs file in the CMBO directory and relaunch CM. If that doesn't work, delete it again and upgrade your video drivers before relaunching CM. Good luck. BeWary

Not that I know of. When you hit alt-s after you've already named a scenario, I believe the game automatically saves the scenario (i.e. you can't name it yourself). It's been a while since I played last as I'm in the middle of building my new computer, so I may be wrong. However, when you enter the main screen to load a scenario, the saved games are shown at the top of the list in a different color than scenarios. One other thought... have you installed the game to your hard drive? Or are you playing from the CD? If you're running it from the CD, you won't be able to save your game as you can't write to the CD (I'm assuming BTS has the disc's closed so no more data can be written to them). BeWary [ 04-20-2001: Message edited by: BeWary ]

If nothing else works, I suggest formatting your hard drive and loading up Win98 Second Edition instead. WindowsME has had a lot of problems with a number of games. A friend of mine has 2 machines with it and they are both having trouble/doing strange things. Of course, reinstalling your OS can be a pain, so try all other suggestions first. You may want to try using a regular PS/2 mouse and see if your problems go away. Also, disable/shut down unnecessary programs running in the background as some can interfere with games. BeWary

You may want to try the NVidia reference drivers version 6.50 available from www.nvidia.com. Other than that, I'm not sure what might be causing your problem. Let us know if the driver upgrade works. BeWary

I'd suggest the MSI StarForce 815 GeForce2 Pro (8815) with 64MB of DDR ram. I just last week bought it from www.newegg.com for $209 with free shipping! It is slightly better than the GeForce2 GTS, but not quite as good as the Ultra. However, the Ultra is easily over $300, and from the stats I've seen I don't feel it is worth the money, especially since the GeForce3 is coming out soon. You can use the Nvidia reference drivers (Madmatt suggests using the latest "official" release, which is v6.5). The GeForce2 GTS and MX cards are also good if you have less to spend, and you can also opt for only 32MB of RAM, which will last you ok for the next year. I'm guessing your cpu is 733MHz? If it's much slower than that, you'd probably not see a big performance difference with only a video card upgrade. I've heard good things about the ATI Radeon cards, so you may want to read a review of them too. Just search the web for "radeon review". BeWary

ckoharik, I'm going with Asus because I've gone with Asus for the last two computers I've built and they've worked great. I haven't had to upgrade the bios once to fix a problem, though I've upgraded them a few times anyways for preventitive maintenance. I think I got the Asus P55T2P4 the first time, and a P2B the second time. BeWary

I've not seen this. Are you sure your shortcuts are pointing to the correct CM executable file? If you installed beta patches before, you may be playing with those EXE's. BeWary

Cool Maximus, I hope it works out for you. This is what I ended up getting (all parts should be in next week): AMD Thunderbird 1.33 GHz, 266MHz FSB 256MB RAM, PC2100 (266 MHz), Micron Asus A7M266 motherboard Maxtor DiamondMax 40GB hard drive, 7200 RPM, ATA 100 MSI StarForce Geforce 2 Pro, 64MB DDR SB Live! Value Boston Acoustics BA4800 Superpower Zephyr KS-201XP case (w/300W power supply) Extra fan for case All that cost me around $1000. :cool: I'm using current hardware (mouse, keyboard, DVD, etc.) to fill in the holes. BeWary

Chris, True dat. I will certainly concede that new technology tends to have its fair share of quirks and bugs to work through, and yes, it can be very frustrating for sure. I guess I'm just used to it by now. Thanks for a civil discussion. I like that about this board. BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution.

Maximus, I'm afraid the Geforce 2 Ultra is the fastest card out there now. It is only available in DDR 64MB. It currently sells for over $300, but that should go down I hope when the Geforce 3 comes out later this month. It is faster than the Geforce 2 GTS/Pro because it uses 4 nanosecond memory, which is why it is so expensive. Check out the Asus board I mentioned (A7M266), it supports DDR ram. As for the hard drive, the 5400 RPM will probably work ok for you, but since the hard drive is usually the slowest part of a computer, and "access time is king", I'm going with the 7200 RPM. Chris, I disagree with you. I "jumped on the bandwagon" when the PC100 RAM first came out and I bought an Asus board with the latest and greatest chipset (440BX I believe). I never had any problems. Plus, if you do have problems, Asus is quick to fix them and it only requires a simple BIOS flash to upgrade the motherboard. As far as what you buy today won't be upgradeable later on, that is pretty much always the case if you upgrade once every 2-3 years, which is what I do. If you upgrade more often, then yes, you probably can get away with keeping some of the same components from one upgrade to the next. It's all a matter of preference I guess. I prefer to pay a little bit more and enjoy my games to their fullest extent for 1-2 years easily. I've done this for the past 6 years and it has worked quite well. My PC100/440BX board I mentioned above is only now starting to show its age, which is why I'm upgrading. I built that system in July of 1998, so it's almost been 3 years since my last upgrade. Not too bad in my book. Just my 2 cents. BeWary P.S. www.crucial.com (they sell Micron memory factory direct) just released PC2100 (DDR 266MHz) RAM. I just bought 256MB for just over $100. That beats the best price on www.pricewatch.com by $75! ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution.

I forgot to mention, make sure you get an ATA100 7200RPM hard drive. The Maxtor DiamondMax is a good one. 40gb should be enough for now. BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution.

I'm in the process of building a new system, and I'm going with the Asus A7M266. It supports a 266MHz FSB and PC2100/PC1600 DDR system RAM. I sure wouldn't buy an SDR motherboard at this point, and even though the Asus web page says it has a system bus of 200/266, it apparently doesn't support DDR ram (which seems strange, though I guess would be possible). Their A7M266 is newer and should be faster. www.pricewatch.com lists the A7M266 for $177, but the prices keep dropping. As for the video card, I'm going to wait a few weeks until the Geforce 3 comes out. At which point the prices for the Geforce 2 Ultra should come down (theoretically and reportedly will). www.tomshardware.com had a recent article that shows that a cheaper video card with a kickin' processor doesn't do your system justice. Not that a GTS is that bad, but an Ultra is that much better. BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution.

Well, he got it working. He had to go to 640x480 and turn Video Hardware Acceleration all the way down. Unfortunately, he's none to happy with the pixelated screen, and I can't say I blame him. Looks like he's gonna pass on CM unless he gets another computer. Oh well. BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution.