Apache

Yep, got CMSF and NATO only. Was going to be just CMSF. Why: Moderns not my bag at all, especially this setting. Only got it to get acquainted with the engine and controls for Normandy. Got NATO simply for the change of playing the German forces (along with two similarly equipped other nations). It's good but I shall be glad when Normandy comes along, doubt CMSF will get much use after for me.

Jeeeeez, it gets worse, no weather!!! It's hard to get an OS other than Win 7 now (albeit XP etc may be available but I don't fancy a new build with an OS that they pull the plug on support wise etc.). It almost seems like building a Win XP machine, on a reasonable but cheap mobo and CPU with an older GPU one or two notches below the 460 may be the best way to go for CM, and save £500 into the bargain!!!

Really odd?? Perhaps you could give an update if you find anything else, or if you try and Nvidia card and the problem goes away!!

Ah...forgot....the new build will have an SSD (Crucial Real C300 64GB). Thanks for the pointer Erwin!!

It sure seems to get to a point of cut off where further expense, CM wise, may even actually be wasted.

That's the only thing holding me back from ATI with the new build I will soon be doing. I may not go for absolute top notch GPU for now but maybe a 560 or a 460 and upgrade in 2 -3 years. I hope THAT will be OK. Hope you get it sorted!! And get off those roads........... LOL!!!!!!

I am currently playing the German campaign and, due to my newly acquired desire not to lose ANY troops KIA (and certainly no vehicles) because I am not entirely sure of what the consequences will be for the next mission, I find myself doing countless reloads. Probably more than I'd like but it's OK for now. For me though I think part of the problem centres around the modern warfare setting, the chosen theatre of operations and the protagonists. As the Germans I have all this modern kit and firepower yet spend maybe 80% of my time skulking around trying to avoid something being KOd by various ATGM systems. The desperate need to identify these systems demands that much of your force spends probably an equal amount of time watching. The infantry I tend to use for checking empty buildings as I find that's the safest thing to do with them and I ALWAYS avoid rooftops!!! My feeling is yes the campaigns are not easy and you have to preserve your men and equipment to not impact your force for the next mission all of which is very realistic. The preservation issue is something which I understand as being needed to balance the firepower problem, and the ATGMs as a requirement to stop it being an AFV walkover. I understand it all (albeit sometimes the time limits I find a bit tight given the need for force preservation). Is it interesting though?? For me I'm not so sure. I'm playing it to blazes now in readiness for CMBN and am enjoying it but the excitement wanes a little when I start each new mission, see the objectives and my forces arrayed and then think "ah here we go, dodge the ATGMs again". So this is why I've always avoided the modern warfare era (I do in table top gaming too) and certainly any kind of uncon setting like this. Sure WWII also has to be watched, you can't just drive vehicles about with wanton abandon or they die fast but it's all just more balanced IMO. I find in WWII that I'm involved in much more, and a much greater diversity of, 'activity' with constantly checking an avoiding LOS (to ANYTHING) probably taking about 20% of my thought process with each move. In the CMSF setting I find that rises to about 50-60% with much of the rest centering around getting troops/vehicles into positions where they can watch, and watch and watch and............. Hard to put a finger on it exactly but those are the kind of feelings I get with CMSF. Long term it would not be 'entertaining' enough to keep me coming back whereas CMBO was, and I'm sure CMBN will be. Couple that with a greater feeling of 'attachment' to playing WWII and yes I will be very very happy to return to the WWII setting for CM. As it is I think the scenario designers do a grand job of making campaigns challenging given the restrictions of the setting and BF have done a grand job with the game engine and the game in general. A lot of this will of course be tainted by personal preference but that's life. I'm happy to have bought CMSF and the NATO module, I may well play the Canadian, Dutch and Stryker campaigns if I finish the German one and if there is time before CMBN comes out. I won't be adding more modules though. With the return to WWII there would be no doubt about those issues, it would be a certainty for all of them, all campaigns, all missions and all modules!!

Well, not sure who made YOU judge and jury dictating what other people should and should not do, perhaps if you took the time to read yourself you would see that something still seems to be amiss. Still, takes all sorts and I did promise myself for 2011 not to waste ANY time getting into arguments with people who demonstrate abrasive and/or obnoxious and arrogant attitudes on forums. Life's too short. You have nice day!!

I do sometimes wonder if I'm going OTT putting a GTX 570 in my new build now given that I could put in an GTX 250 or a GTS 450 (still way above the suggested 7600 etc) for a £100 or so less than a GTX 570, still have a spec that will eat CM (with a 1GB memory) given that the faster newer cards I think tend to offer minimal performance hike over their predecessors at maximum price hike. In 3 years time or so I can then buy another GPU at around the £100 mark which will likely be some replacement for the 570 launched in two years time.

All a bit worrying. There is a tendency to expect that 'up everything' and all will be fine where PC gaming is concerned. Fast and powerful processor, modern, big and fast GPU and all will be well. Only reason I am planning an upgrade is that it'll play CMBN better than my ageing Dell XPS which is: PD 830 EM64T 3.Ghz nVidia nForce4 SLI X16 MEMORY DUAL CHANNEL 1024MB (2X512) 667MH (upgraded to 2 GB) 250GB SATA (7200RPM) HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB NVIDIA GEFORCE 6800 256MB SINGLE CARD 600W PSU Even a low end machine would run circles round it I suspect but yours is up in the high end spec, same as the system I plan to build. Hard to know what to do for the best. Last thing I want is to spend big bucks and have it run slow!!!

Personally I found reading the manual fully better than the tutorials. Problem with many game tutorials is that the game interacts with you to give you hints etc, pointers to command etc etc. Not a criticism of the game us such but CM doesn't (and I suspect can't) do that. In that sense I find the tutorials to be worth little, in particular they don't 'teach' you to do anything, just perhaps limited practice against enemies with restricted fire ROE. I only recently got CMSF as moderns is not my bag. Only got it to get to grips with the engine prior to the release of Normandy which is what I'm really waiting for. I just got the NATO module and that will be enough for me. If I was looking at buying two modules though I'd definitely go for the bundle though as you can (or at least could) get all three modules for the price of two.

PS Motherboard should read P8P67

Thanks and thanks for help. Glad it's over to be honest, well the spec part!!! Still looking at cases as I can't find the perfect one at moment, at least not for less that £191!!!

DONE!! Just waiting for CPU/Mobo/GTX570 to be available (hence estimated prices) then I plan to go for: Case: £30 Xclio Godspeed One Full Black or Antec 300 (could go for a Silverstone FT02RW but stupidly expensive!!!) CPU: £172 Intel i5 2500 K ??? RAM: £63 4 or 6 GB(2/3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 1600 Mhz Mob: £140 Asus P8P97 Pro ??? (supports SLI and Crossfire) PSU: £65 Corsair 650W (or maybe 750/850 - need to check system parts - i5 2500 and GTX 560 are supposed to be quite efficient) Mon: £175 BenQ G2420 HDBL (or Samsung 2494 HM, £200, or 27" Iyama E2710 £270) Video: £163 Gigabyte or MSI GTX 460 (probs with Palit/Gainward heatsinks and noise) or GTX 560 £200 HDD: £40 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 or Western WD1002 FAEX (7200 SATA 3) @ £65 CD1: £16 Pioneer CD2: £16 Pioneer KB/M: £45 Logitech Wave (need Bluetooth dongle??) *** Win 7: £77 Home Premium 64 Bit Total: £1,063 Need to consider: SSD: £97 Crucial Real SSD C300 *** REALLY consider this for the OS!!!! Fan: £25 Gelid Tranquillo WiFi: £19 Edimax EW-7722In but not needed I think Bluetooth: Unless I go for MX5500 KB/M All I plan to do with this is add more RAM, replace or add another gfx card in 2-4 years time and maybe change the CPU for the top end Sandy Bridge K when they have come down again in 3-4 years. I figure should be OK for 6-8 years, form me at least!!! Thanks for all the help.

I'm erring more and more on the side of waiting for the Sandy Bridge i5 2500K and the Asus P8P97Pro now I have to say. Aria has the i5 2500K listed as £172 and the price of the P97 will be around £140 I think, the board a bit pricey maybe. In fact, as I have gotten by for 5-6 years with my current machine, a few more weeks wait is neither here nor there particularly given that Sandy Bridge and Bulldozer are both new architecture as opposed to just tweeked, I think they will both be worth waiting for to check out, performance and price wise. The GUI on the P97 IMO makes it s superb board though. Still can't make my mind up on build/buy. The access the pre-built suppliers have to labs, testing kit and diagnostics is an issue, if of course, they use them.

Brilliant AAR - game looks superb. Plan to read the German one after, keep the suspense up

In fact I posted details of this on a couple of miniatures gaming sites I use only last night. Never done that with a PC game before as most, being of the FPS variety, are IMHO crap.

So what not GTX 460 or above would you put in a lower spec rig, a 250? Not sure why you make the assumption re me and/or the power supply. A little insulting to be blunt - don't mistake novice for stupid! I'll get whatever power supply is appropriate. Most systems using any of the Nvida 1GB cards seem to demand a 700 or 750. I will run it through a system spec/power ratio site and past any supplier/builder I source the parts/machine from. I'm leaning towards not scratching around trying to build a lower spec machine now and just get a Sandy Bridge i5 2500K/P8P97 Pro based system with an appropriate card. For the sake of £100-150 for me it's just not worth chopping bits here and there. I figure a GTX460, 470 or even a 570 (if the price is right).

Ah thanks. There seems to be a myth then that AMD = ATI as others have mentioned that preference for pairing before and I seem to recall it from years back too. Having looked more I CAN probably save £200 or so by going with this system: CPU: AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 Ghz Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology HDD: 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16M Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive MEMORY: 4GB (2x2GB) PC12800 DDR3/1600mhz Dual Channel Memory MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M4A87TD EVO AMD 870 Chipset CrossFireX Support DDR3 Socket AM3 ATX w/ 7.1 Audio, GbLAN, IEEE1394a, USB3.0, SATA-III, RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe, 1 PCIe X1, & 3 PCI SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB 16X PCI Express It comes out at about £854 but nearly £300 of that goes on the monitor, OS and a Logitech Wave KB/Mouse and they will need to be in any system I go for. I suspect this could eat CM. This is a pre-built machine as I'm beginning to wonder if it is really worth it at this price, given I have a million other things to do. I could probably save £50-80 tops by self building and of course I don't have the access to their testing kit etc if anything does go wrong. That said, Sandy Bridge launches 9/1/11 and indications seem to be that performance and power consumption are top notch and at a good price.

My understanding also was that if you went AMD with the CPU you need and AMD board and that they tend to pair better with ATI graphics cards. Maybe I'm wrong or maybe that's old hat now.

It's an error which apparently will be fixed in 1.32. The update to 1.31 removed the launchers from the infantry teams (intended) but also from the Marders (not intended) and they will need to be 'Acquired' in future.

Actually the price between Phenom II dual 3.X and quad 3.4 is not that great, between £40 - £60 here. Rest of components remain at around the same price and even the video card is only about £50 difference between the 250 and the 460. So, in all, about £100 saving or so, or roughly 10% of the overall cost, which, given the compromises, does not really seem a significant enough difference in terms of cost/benefit analysis. But thanks for the suggestions, good to check these things out at least. If there was a significant price difference for a machine specced lower and just for CM I'd consider it but for 10% I'll probably go for the contingency that I MIGHT use it for more. I'm not just asking with regards to CM. I'm trying to work out (for the few other things I do) if a 3.4 quad is better, per se, than a 3.4 duo and THEN where CM is concerned will there be any difference in performance if it was operating on either of the two systems, other components notwithstanding. If I understand what you're saying there's no difference as the 3.4 is per core and the game will only access 1? And the other aspect is a 3.4 dual better than a 2.8 quad for instance? On the gaming front it seems that in this regard the 3.4 dual is indeed better (albeit most intel 2.8 quads are more pricey than the higher Ghz duals).

Right. I'm now looking at a Phenom II X4 970 Quad 3.4 Ghz, Asus M4A87TD mobo, GTX 460 (as the only lower spec they do is a 1GB 430 at £60 cheaper and I'm not sure if that will hack CM or, for the sake of £60 if it's just carving the spec down to CM capable too much, whereas a 460 should do the job. The latter needs a 700W PSU rather than a 450W mind. Again the price is creeping up to near the original Intel spec machine so I'm beginning to wonder about the benefits. I'll look more tomorrow. Specced out now!!! One thing that will help is getting this right. I'm assuming here that a quad core 3.4 Ghz is better, £ for £, than a dual core 3.4 Ghz? On the same line, is a 3.33 Dual Core better than a 2.8 Quad??? Trying to get my head round this but not too well!!!

Aaaaaaaaaarrrggggg. Really I hate PC change time. Several suppliers have machines around the £800 mark so I decided I might build and get a better one. trouble is it REALLY is for JUST CM (and some Rome Total war) and some very light Office type work and CD ripping to FLAC, and most of that is done now and with Napster, I rarely buy CDs even!!! The price has crept up to £1,000 + now (always the way) and I do wonder if it's time to say right STOP. Go AMD/ATI at around 3.4 Ghz and Radeon (not sure which) and save 30% plus. Or maybe, not quite so sure having just had a QUICK look that it'll be much cheaper, maybe £100 in which case I may as well go with the original (latest - LOL) plan.

AFAIK both the i7 930 and i5 760 are 2.8 Ghz Quad core, the former being socket 1366. Both have 8MB L2 cache. Being TOTALLY new to building I am not to sure what other figures are/are not important.