Top Gun Posted October 28, 2000 Share Posted October 28, 2000 Right now I have a PII 350mhz with a 16meg TNT card and 128meg RAM. Will my machine be fast enough to use the MODS that are available? Also, since I'm waiting for CM to be delivered, can the graphics mods be applied to the gold demo? At least that way I can try to figure out which ones I like the best. Great forum; great dedication; great enthusiasm for this game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyShot Posted October 28, 2000 Share Posted October 28, 2000 You should have no problems with mods slowing down your system - at least not significantly. Just stay away from any mods labeled "high-res" if you are really worried - most of them are the same size as the originals though which means no slow-down. I don't know if the mods will work in the demo - you could check by downloading a small terrain mod and seeing what it does. And there are special mods just for the gold demo around somewhere - searching this forum or finding a site with good CM links would probably locate them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Splinty Posted October 28, 2000 Share Posted October 28, 2000 Top Gun,I'm running all kinds of mods,and I'm using a 300 Mhz AMD,with a Voodoo 3 2000(16megs)and 64 Megs of RAM,so you should have no problems. P.S. that includes some Hi-Res mods,I would avoid grass texture mods as those do seem to slow things down somewhat. ------------------ Nicht Schiessen!! [This message has been edited by Splinty (edited 10-28-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Top Gun Posted October 28, 2000 Author Share Posted October 28, 2000 Thanks for the input gents. Now...if you could only make the game show up in my mailbox!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marco Bergman Posted October 28, 2000 Share Posted October 28, 2000 I use a PII 400, 8Mb TNT, 128Mb RAM, with high-res mods & the velvet grass Low res set, full tree & smoke settings BUT ambient sounds off and horizon at minimum. Works OK. Your extra video memory should make up for the CPU difference. But a High-res grass set will really bog you down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Andrew Hedges Posted October 28, 2000 Share Posted October 28, 2000 I agree with everyone else who has said used everything but hi-res grass. I have an AMD K6-2 530 machine with 128 RAM and an a TNT2 card w/32 meg of RAM; I use hi-res grass, but, at least for how I like to play, my set up may be a minimum configuration. I would probably have been better off with a TNT2-Ultra, rather than the TNT2-Ultra M64, as the M64 is apparently slower...for for a $99 vid card I was happy enough. I get slowdown or choppiness when I set the camera at one end of the battlefield and pan across it; I see no slowdown when actually moving the units or watching the movie. Luckily, though, high-res grass is one of the least important mods (at least for me). While it's cool to have a realistic-er looking landscape shot, it's much cooler IMO to zoom down during the battle and watch a realistic Sherman or Tiger (more commonly the Sherman) burst into flames. And that you can get with no slowdown. I do like Tremblatt's tile roofs, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaSCa Posted October 28, 2000 Share Posted October 28, 2000 I'm running a T-Bird 700mhz w/128M pc-100 ram and a TNT-2 Ultra with 32meg. The game ran like a cheap pair of panty hose out of the box but I did notice a difference after loading all the mods. (As noted before, it was the grass, which makes sense because it is probably the most rendered texture.) The game still runs fine though and with the 1 gigahertz t-birds under 300 bucks there could be one in my Christmas stocking this year. I'm trying to hold off on the ram upgrade in the hopes of doing the DDR thing, but I may break down and spend the bucks on some pc-133 dimms. I've also seen SDR Geforce I cards out there for 150 bucks or less, which would be a good upgrade if you can't afford one of the high dollar cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximus Posted October 29, 2000 Share Posted October 29, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by CaSCa: I'm running a T-Bird 700mhz w/128M pc-100 ram and a TNT-2 Ultra with 32meg. The game ran like a cheap pair of panty hose out of the box but I did notice a difference after loading all the mods. (As noted before, it was the grass, which makes sense because it is probably the most rendered texture.) The game still runs fine though and with the 1 gigahertz t-birds under 300 bucks there could be one in my Christmas stocking this year. I'm trying to hold off on the ram upgrade in the hopes of doing the DDR thing, but I may break down and spend the bucks on some pc-133 dimms. I've also seen SDR Geforce I cards out there for 150 bucks or less, which would be a good upgrade if you can't afford one of the high dollar cards.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm thinking of upgrading my Celeron 433, 128MB PC100 DIMMs, 32MB TNT2 Ultra, SBLive! system to a AMD Duron 700, 128MB PC133 for around $350. Gotta get a new AMD motherboard of course, so that's a good half or so of the cost. There's a relatively new computer shop in town run by your typical computer hardware geeks that I went and talked to a few weeks ago. They said a 700MHz Duron ran better than a 1Ghz Athlon because the Duron has full-speed cache when the Athlon has half-speed cache or something like that. I probably need to get a second harddrive because my little 13GB drive is all filled up. I don't have too many games on it, it's just all the damn mods for each game that takes up space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted October 29, 2000 Share Posted October 29, 2000 Two quick points. I just picked up a Slot 1 P3-850 for less than 350 ,$324 actually. Depending on your motherboard you could just a get faster CPU and not even bother upgrading to faster rated memory. A lot of PC100 ram will run faster anyway if overclocking is your eventual goal. Oh, and about the speed of the internal cache: In a game or just about ANYTHING for that matter: YOU WILL NEVER NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE... Check out http://www.pricewatch.com Madmatt ------------------ If it's in Combat Mission, it's on Combat Mission HQ! Combat Mission HQ CMHQ-Annex, The Alternative side of Combat Mission and home of the CMMC CMHQ-Annex Host of the Combat Mission WebRing [This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 10-29-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaSCa Posted October 31, 2000 Share Posted October 31, 2000 There have been so many changes lately that it's hard to figure out what to change to. It is enough to cause your brain to hurt. If you're going to need an Athy mobo, the Asus A7V has gotten great reviews. I've had 3 ASUS m/b's and have been happy with them all. I'm currently running a FIC since my last upgrade was spurred on by a cpu failure and forced me to buy before I (or asus)was ready. This is my second FIC and though it's more stable than my first, I still don't like them very much. They're very picky about the hardware you put in them. Or as Madmatt proposed, stick a faster proc in your current m/b. I wouldn't worry too much about the cache either. As far as I know the amount and speed of cache is more important in things like big database applications, and not so much for games. A more important decision if you do get a new m/b is the slot vs. socket one. Slots seem on the way out, since the cache is back on the die and no longer is on the daugher card. Of course, you could always run socketed chips in a slocket connector in your slotted mobo so it may not be a consideration, except do you really want an extra board in there? I don't know...what's that?...Oww!...My Brain! [This message has been edited by CaSCa (edited 10-30-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Heidman Posted October 31, 2000 Share Posted October 31, 2000 You can buy a GeForce 2 MX 32MB video card for less than $100. Right now, depending on your processor, that may be one of the most cost effective upgrades available. Jeff Heidman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emthon Posted October 31, 2000 Share Posted October 31, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman: You can buy a GeForce 2 MX 32MB video card for less than $100. Right now, depending on your processor, that may be one of the most cost effective upgrades available. Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Amen. I bought one of those jewels to pair with my Cel2-566. I overclocked both and can now chew through any scenario with any mod at 1280x1024. Full speed ahead! L8r, Em Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfe Posted October 31, 2000 Share Posted October 31, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>They said a 700MHz Duron ran better than a 1Ghz Athlon because the Duron has full-speed cache when the Athlon has half-speed cache or something like that.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> In a word: NO. A 1GHz classic Athlon will outpace the 700MHz Duron in virtually every computer app you pick. The only way a Duron will beat a significantly faster Classic Athlon is if the code from the app completey fits within the cache structure of the CPU. Normal apps almost never fit this description. You'll only see this in some scientific proggies that do lots of small iterations and essentially nothing else. Or in synthetic benchmarks (which are mostly worthless anyway). Did they not mention the option of upgrading your CPU? Or even buying a real Athlon (Thunderbird), which has 256KB of full-speed 16-way set associative exclusive L2 cache (same as Duron but 4x larger)? As others have pointed out, I'd investigate if you can upgrade your current motherboard with a Pentium III Coppermine chip first (don't know if you have a Slot-1 or Socketed Celly or if the mobo can do a 133MHz bus speed or support the voltage/pin configuration (if socketed) for a Coppermine; check with the manufacturer). This may be the cheapest solution (though a Duron + mobo combo really is pretty inexpensive). If not, then look for a new mobo and CPU. Be sure to get a well-known brand name mobo like Asus, ABit, Soyo, Epox, Tyan, etc. Something based on the KT133 chipset for Athlons or 815e for P-III's. The A7V is a very good board; I'm personally looking at the Epox 8KTA. The reason for getting a well-known board is because they have very active newsgroups (e.g. alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus) filled with folks who know every nook and cranny of the board and can explain things to you or help out with any problems. What mobo comes with this bundle you're looking at? It's important to find out. And why are they suggesting you buy the additional memory? Do you run Windows 2000 or do photo-editing and need more RAM or are they simply suggesting you replace your "outdated" PC100 with PC133? The speed difference between PC133 and PC100 is absolutely miniscule. And you'll be moving on to Rambus or (more likely) DDR SDRAM with your next upgrade anyway, so whatever mem you buy today won't last. Same goes for CPU and mobo, I'm afraid. You can get a 700MHz Duron with 8KTA mobo and heatsink/fan from Multiwave for $181. A 900MHz Athlon Thunderbird is $305 and would be much faster and cheaper than the 700MHz Duron they propose. You might want to shop around. I'd shoot for a minimum of 800MHz myself. For more mobo recommendations, search the forums over at Ars Technica for 'best motherboard' or motherboard recommendations', etc. Good luck. - Chris [This message has been edited by Wolfe (edited 10-31-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terence Posted October 31, 2000 Share Posted October 31, 2000 same question as original poster: except I have an even slower, more evil Compaq computer: PII 233mHz, 32 megs of Ram, with a VooDoo 3 3000 card. Im going to upgrade next year, when I can get a 1 gHz processor for a smaller amount of money than for now, but until then, what mods can I run without taking a performance hit? Also, should I stay away from medium to large battles? *they make my head hurt, anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Croda Posted October 31, 2000 Share Posted October 31, 2000 Here's a vote for the Coppermine. My 500E has been running at 720 since January without a problem. I could probably go higher if I didn't buy a cheapo Soyo 6VBA mobo. Add 192 MB PC133 Mushkin and a 32MB DDR Geforce, and I cook through everything. ------------------ "Nuts!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaSCa Posted November 1, 2000 Share Posted November 1, 2000 As regards which mods your system will run I suggest the empirical approach. Back up your .bmp file and then add mods until things get unbearable. You can save good changes along the way by backing up your .bmp file again. Do this until you get to a good compromise between speed and visual satisfaction and then use that as your config until you upgrade. Wolfe: I bow to your superior nerdiness . I will no longer try to give system advice. [This message has been edited by CaSCa (edited 10-31-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfe Posted November 1, 2000 Share Posted November 1, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Terence: 32 megs of Ram,<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yikes! Regardless of what mods you use, with only 32MB of system RAM, your computer has got to be paging to the hard drive like mad. 32MB is barely enough to run Windoze itself much less any program on top of it. 128MB would make life sooo much easier. Even 64MB would be helpful. Large battles are still going to hurt because of all the polys the CPU has to deal with, but your DRAM situation is really low. Spending a couple of bucks there can really be helpful. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wolfe: I bow to your superior nerdiness.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks. Erm. I think. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I will no longer try to give system advice.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Bah! Everybody's got different experiences with different hardware. Nobody knows it all, especially those who pretend they do. Helping out others is always a good thing. - Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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