Hpt. Lisse

Should do it - though I must say, 60C for a Barton is climbing up there (esp. if that's an idle reading.) My OC'ed Barton 2500 (to 2.1 GHz, and 360 FSB) may hit 50C after CMing for hours (w/Thermaltake Silent Boost HSF, running toward the slower/quieter end of the fan control.) I also have the same Mobo as you do. You may wanna throw down for a decent 500W PS, just in case you upgrade your rig anytime soon...

That's fine. I don't have much experience w/Media Center OS. And remember, you'll probably be able to stick 2 more 512MB sticks in the motherboard if you wish... 7600GT is a much better choice.

You definately want to get something with a little more graphic muscle than that 7300 - review here Remember that, as good as ATI cards are, it will leave you sans fog in CM. That makes NVidia a good choice if you like your CM eye candy. You may want to grab (2 x 1 GB) memory sticks while you're blowing your dosh, some games (and others soon) can have a memory footprint larger than 1 GB...

Eh, I'm not thinking Panzer Command so much. In all honesty, Uwe, it looks like a bargin basement Combat Mission imitator, which was bound to happen sooner or later. It's graphically 1/2 a gen behind CMAK, and unless there's some mind-blowing AI at work, why bother? I mean, look at the screens... Panzer Command The environment, the terrian has no detail. Could it really have the complex armor penetration formulas that CM has? Not likely...

As a rule, dual memory control improves memory performance by 5% to 7% (depending on the application.) But for winXP, the jump to 1 Gig (again, depending on the game) can help you quite a bit (esp. if you play FPS games.)

Yup. Don't get me wrong, Sergei, your explanation is the primary (correct) one. But if you have an enemy tank 3000m out, the manner that AA/AF filters the tiny object has an effect on graphical visibility. Try it.

Test away. Between Beta-beating CMC and 1C/Maddox hunting for a N. American publisher for their untitled "WWII RTS", we have nothing but time...

Your AA/AF settings can effect what gets seen in the far distance, too.

I'd be curious to know, 'cause I'm about to order that very setup for my upgrade... I also had a Ti4600 vid card for along time, and it was great for CM.

Yeah, if you can scroll 'huge' maps full of high-res models without noticeable stuttering, then I wouldn't call that "no difference", 'cause your previous setup wouldn't do that...

Yeah, not sure if it's about the 8xxx cards or not - they should be launching the 16-pipe 7800GS any time now. Same goes for the AMD 940 socket update - Q2 '06- introducing DD2 mem support and other improvements. I'm about to do a big mobo/vid/CPU crossover, but may get a AGP 6800GS (current is a FX5900, Barton XP, NForce2 mobo) as an interim solution. Still want to purchase a San Diego(or maybe dual? 4400x2?), 939 mobo, 7800GT setup but will be 1/2 price when M2 AMD procs & mobos are released... The real question is also - big update for what? Still waiting for 1C/Maddox's "WWII RTS", CM's only true competition, which won't be released for another few months. Will play the demo for CMSF, but not truly interested in modern warfare (please, no hate mail.) Not a flight sim guy, so... not desperate for the hardware. The 6800GS would get me by for awhile... [ January 16, 2006, 11:10 PM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]

Yeah, the XFX factory-overclocked 6800GS is the way to go, unless you can get a 7800GT. PS looks good. I did buy my laptop from TigerDirect, but do all my shopping at NewEgg now, mostly because of the $ combined with excellent service. They don't blink an eye when you need to return a stick of memory, etc. Let us know how you make out...

With an eye on the near future, something 500 watts or more. Your potential machine specs a PCI-express slot, and assuming you want an NVidia card... (this gives you visible fog in battles that have fog, ATI cards won't...) 6600GT - 8 pipes, ~ $115 6800GS - 12 pipes, ~ $190 7800GT - 20 pipes, ~ $275 7800GTX - 24 pipes, ~ $450 I have played CM with on-board IntelExtreme Graphics2, and it's possible, just ugly. Like, I mistook that sheep for my girlfriend ugly... [ January 16, 2006, 12:26 AM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]

Well, replace that crappy 266-watt power supply and upgrade the on-board Intel graphics chip with a decent graphics card, and you're off and running...

Interesting on the Powerbook DVI>HDMI thing... The fact that the HDMI bandwidth can handle more than 5Gbps will help out on the home front, though people may be surprised when the HDMI input processor won't allow bootlegged DVD images through... My apologies, I missed that bit about the highest res. (published, anyway) for your screen being 1280x1024 you mentioned ealier. We have to remember, too, that not all scalers are created equal, just like the various forms of compression can differ in quality. Wow, a console version of CM for the masses. Who would of ever thought...

No, that's the difference between a locked "video signal" and a DVI computer sinal. In theory, the 1080p won't exceed 30fps due to the standard. But an ass-kicking vid card setup may be able to do better than that, limited only by the A)refresh rate, and B)the millisecond response time of the Sharp (that Sony WEGA SXRD had a fast 5ms response time.) In other words, the Sharp shouldn't read that DVI signal as a 1080p video signal, it's just gonna say, "ho, here's 1920x1080 res. computer signal, let's slap it up and refresh it as fast as we can." That's assuming the Sharp will do that (no reason to think it wouldn't.) Does that clarify it at all?

Much better, Jack... Hey T, the way it falls down is this: While limited to 12 pipes, the GS was manufactered on a smaller die process (110 for the NV42, vs. 130 for NV41), hence a big increse in core speed. Becasue of the new manufactering process, I don't think the GS can be "unlocked" - those 4 pipes may not exist on the NV42 chip. But I'm unsure of this - if anyone knows for sure, please post. Here's a good article on it. And look at the price difference to a 6800GT- eVGA 6800GS (425MHz) - $190 XFX 6800GS (485MHz) - $205 eVGA 6800GT (350MHz) - $245 BFG 6800GT (370MHz) - $280 By that time, you're knocking on the door of a 7800GT... so I imagine the XFX 6800GS would probably outperform a standard GT, cost less and allow the move to PCI-E to be less painful on the wallet.

...and this is the thrust of it: Would you rather lock-in a game at a video-based 1080p format (30 fps) than let the GPU hit the DVI at 1920x1080 and see what frame rates the PS3 (or whatever the source) can cough up? Would the 1080p standard offer better color in the image? What's going on between the GPU and the digital HD processing unit? Blu-Ray to HDMI may not (as in playing a DVD) involve the GPU directly, but playing a game will... and of course, just because the HDMI is sending 1080p format, doesn't necessarily mean that a "guaranteed" 30fps of gaming godness is being generated, depending on how busy the action is on-screen... We are at a unique place, where video signal/resolutions are roughly equivalent to computer signals... it's changing Vid. Eng. on a monthly basis. I'll post more as I find more out. Basically, what my buddies and I would want to do is hook up your Sharp both ways and play something, and see what works best...

Yes, your Sharp should display true 1080. Those frames rates are appropriate (24 fps = film, 25 fps PAL video, 30 fps US (drop frame)). Right now, a few video engineer buddies and I (it's my job) are having some discussions (arguements) about input selections (like HDMI vs. DVI, etc.) Stand by...

Hmm, you'd probably hit the screen via VGA input using a widescreen resolution (like 1366x768.) However, I don't know if CM supports those non-standard resolutions or not... But it doesn't take a killer rig/vid card to get that rolling (depending on the size of battle/AA & AF involved.) There are hardly any plasma/LCD's out there that will give you true 1080p anyway (that's 1920x1080) without interpolation - using some kind of scaler to average the pixels out to match the screen's true resolution. You'd basically have to be running a SONY SXRD to achieve that... [ January 03, 2006, 08:35 PM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]

Jack - I ran the test out of interest - please note: Internet connection disabled, then real-time virus scan turned off - no AA/AF for tests in 1024x768 (default game test) Also Barton 2500+XP OC'ed to 2.1 GHz and 362 FSB on an Epox 8RDA+ NForce2 mobo eVGA FX5900 OC'ed to 438 MHz, and 926 Memory clock. 3DMark score - 5592 CPU Mark - 612 Tests: GT1 - 167.1 fps GT2 - 40.9 GT3 - 33.1 GT4 - 33.7 CPU tests test 1 - 65.8 fps test 2 - 11.3 Feature Tests fill rate, sing. text - 1480.5 meg/text multi. text - 3135.3 vertex shader - 17.9 fps pixel shader 2.0 - 47.4 rag doll - 19.8 Sound tests no sound - 37.9 fps 24 sound - 34.5 60 sound - 32.4 Hmm. I can explain about the sound - my mobo came with the MCP-T sound chip, which was significantly more powerful than the standard MCP chip found on most NForce2 mobo's. And your CPU tests are roughly in line. But your vid card is far better, and you have twice the system memory. This is where Sandra can help you out - even the freeware version can analyze critical parts of your system, and see if everything is running the way it should be....

Sorry there, Jack, I had sotra prefaced my upgrade discussion by focusing on the choppy video, not the turn rendering times. As Redwolf says, that's completely CPU/FSB based. Mostly idle, Redwolf, 'cause them fancy shader engines aren't being called on. But they're still rendering pixels. A 24-pipe 7800GTX is spitting out twice the amount of CMAK as a 12-pipe vanilla 6800. Believe you me, I was relieved (as we have similar rigs) when Jack commented on the smooth scrolling of his 6800GT. And it may even be fair to say (trying to claw towards "the obvious" here) that, past a certain point, there wouldn't be any discernable difference. Jack's 6800GT may well scroll as smoothly as a 7800GTX 512MB in CM, who knows. Being that I'm in the market for a new build, I was just trying to get some feedback from CM players who have newer video cards. Jack's info leads me to believe that a 6800GS may be enough for now, instead of spending the extra $100 for a 7800GT. 'Course, the 16-pipe 7800GS are about to be released, but I'm not sure yet where it ends up on the price/performance curve. [ December 27, 2005, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]

Redwolf - not buying it. Even without the advanced features, Carr's 6800GT is processing 16 pipes in one pass, where the Ti4600 is doing 4 (or my FX5900 is running 8). Certainly, alot of the subroutines per pipeline that has been engineered since the 4X00 line has to do with advanced features, but he's still pulling with 16 cylinders vs. 4 before. (BTW, the very fact that those fancy DX 9.0c calls aren't being used may only speed up vid card throughput.) Again, if he doesn't play larger than med. battles, he may not subjectively notice a difference... esp. if he doesn't use any AA/AF, which I do with the FX5900 in med. or smaller battles (at 1280x1024). [ December 26, 2005, 10:41 PM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]

Today is your lucky day. Sandra from Guru 3D - free 3DMark2003 - at guru All shareware. AGP aperture should read something like 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, etc. Another test you need to do is run a "Huge" battle with plenty of units, and then report back if 6800GT improves your FPS or not. I loved my Ti4600 card, too, but you may not see much of a difference until you really tax the scenery, graphically speaking. It may look similar until you load up larger battles. Obviously, the vid card will not speed up the rendering of a turn, which is CPU-based. Remember, too, that a Venice 3200+ CPU and NForce4 mobo runs well under $300 - if your current memory is PC3200, it'll swap right over... though you'll need a PCI-E vid card. One could still get an NForce3 mobo in order to retain AGP but upgrade to socket 939...

Yes, Looks like an NForce4 mobo, 2 GB memory, and a 3700+ San Diego processor. There were rumors floating around that the 6800GS was going to be released in AGP as well, but I haven't seen one yet. I may try to make the stretch for a 7800GT vid card. But Jack Carr brings up a VERY interesting question - to make his kind of vid card upgrade and see zero improvement, that doesn't seem right. Does Sandra read your card as using the 8xAGP? What is your AGP aperture set to? Drivers? Did you have a chance to run 3DMark'03 before and after the new card? It would be quite notable if the 3DMark scores changed significantly, but you see no difference in CMBB/CMAK... 'Course, this isn't the first thread about "Where does CM bottleneck computers", either. <community patiently waits for Schrullenthaft to throw in...> [ December 26, 2005, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: Hpt. Lisse ]