Woody Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 I have a 166 with 2D card ( don't laugh to hard ) and I find it satisfactory for playing the beta demo. My concern now is whether I am going to be in trouble when I get the real CM, what with all the graphics changes made to it. Or will it perform the same. Any comments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaffertape Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 I've been hoping for some info on this too... I think it might be included on the elusive (not yet complete) FAQ on Combat Mission HQ. Just to add my 2 cents, I have a Pentium I 233 MMX 32 megs of RAM with the Voodoo Blaster Banshee (4 megs of Video RAM I think). GAFF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Germanboy Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 For the Mac side: I have an iMac DV SE no modification (128MB RAM, ATI Rage with 8MB VRAM, on which the beta runs fabulous and looks great. I also have a PM4400, upgraded to a G3/300 with 112MB RAM, 2MB EDO VRAM on the original card and it looks grainy, moving the camera is jerky, and sound sounds worse than on the iMac. It still runs, although not very well. Lastly I have a Powerbook 1400, upgraded to G3/233, 40MB memory. It looks slightly worse than the 4400, sound is worse, too and it seems to be a bit slower. But it still runs on it. Both of the last machines have 2GB HDDs, with 1.4 and 1 GB in use, respectively. So I suspect those would have to be upgraded for a full install? ------------------ Andreas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ol' Blood & Guts Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 Well fellas, I run a Celeron MMX-433MHz w/128M PC-100 SDRAM, 32M Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 Ultra video card and still experience a bit of choppiness when moving the camera around the inside of an occupied building. Of course, with my setup I don't expect any thing less than smooth motion cause maybe I'm a bit spoiled with it. You really need to think about an upgrade. I just saw a commercial for a Compaq (yes, I know, not the best brand) Celeron-500 for just under $1000. ------------------ "I am not interested in the names of your fathers...nor of your family's lineage. What I am interested in...is your breaking point!"--Gen. Chang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ol' Blood & Guts Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 Hey, Germanboy! Haven't seen you around for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Germanboy Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ol' Blood & Guts: Hey, Germanboy! Haven't seen you around for a while. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Hi there, I was in Canada for a while, trying on Racoon hats, but couldn't find one that fits, so I came back. But now I too believe that the Beaver is a proud and noble animal Canadians should be able to follow me... Do you want to finish our game now? ------------------ Andreas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrapGame Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 I have a 200mhz Pentium MMX. I had the 2mb vram video card (1996 Dell standard issue S3 Trio card). I could functionally play the demo, but the video was incredibly slow trying to display the cursor. It just couldn't keep up. So I shelled out the $90 bucks and bought a Voodoo 3000 for PCI with 16mb vram. What a difference. Best money I have spent in a long time. The graphics are incredibly richer, and the scrolling around the map is very fluid. I can only imagine what this game must be on a high end PC. Take my word for it, scrape up the $90 bucks - (knowing how much better it is now, I would have collected soda cans for the nickels to pay for it). Also, I think I have seen the voodoos on sale in Wal-Mart for $79 recently as well. CrapGame out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ol' Blood & Guts Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Germanboy: Do you want to finish our game now? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Nah, I was beat....Didn't have enough infantry to do anything else. My Shermans were just about out of HE, only 5 rounds or so left each, IIRC. It's ashame I didn't do what I did the other day in CE. Ran ALL my infantry up to the German woods and formed a line. Then slowly crept forward, slaughtering every little Volks squad that wondered into my line of fire. Oh, I took casualties on my left flank, but eventually won out. When the Gold Demo comes out in about 4 weeks, we'll try again. Have you seen the latest DAM special on CMHQ? Awesome textures on the Panthers now! ------------------ "I am not interested in the names of your fathers...nor of your family's lineage. What I am interested in...is your breaking point!"--Gen. Chang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Germanboy Posted April 13, 2000 Share Posted April 13, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ol' Blood & Guts: When the Gold Demo comes out in about 4 weeks, we'll try again. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Okay, I think I can be convinced to grant you a chance to redeem yourself in the eyes of your superiors Only kidding, look forward to it. ------------------ Andreas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted April 14, 2000 Share Posted April 14, 2000 I can only give my opinions on this since I'm not a beta tester (and I'm not a graphics programmer). As CrapGame pointed out - the big difference for CM appears to be video cards. CPU speeds and memory also make a big difference, but what most users are going to notice is the speed of scrolling around, etc. The Gold Demo and final release of CM are going to have larger textures which is going to affect the scrolling speed. If your video card has 4Mb or less of RAM, then (I guess) you're going to see lower performance with the Gold Demo, etc. The larger textures will fill up your video memory faster and thus will require moving data from system memory to the video card more often if your video memory can't hold them - these additional data transfers of textures slows down your system and causes the "jerkiness" of scrolling some users report with low memory video cards. If you can afford it, then I would suggest upgrading your video card first.On PCs: For those who only have PCI (and no AGP video slot) - the 3dfx Voodoo 2000 16Mb PCI is probably your best bet (the card that CrapGame mentioned he bought). For those with an AGP slot a TNT2, Matrox G400 or GeForce based card would be your best bet. The GeForces come in two major types the SDRs and the DDRs - this is essentially the type/speed of the memory on the card, with the DDRs (Double Data Rate) being the better of the two (though the price jumps about US$100+ for the DDRs). As mentioned previously in other threads, some of the video cards won't be "pushed" very hard by slower CPU's. What this means is that a slower CPU is not going to provide data to the video card at a rate that is going to make full use of the card's speed. In other words, the faster CPUs will get better performance from these top of the line cards since they can "feed" data to them quicker. A slower CPU will hold back the performance of these cards (i.e. - you may not get your money's worth with some faster cards since a cheaper video card would appear to have the same performance). What is the magical speed for a CPU to make buying one of these cards worthwhile ? That seems to be a bit in debate. Some gaming websites may have some recommendations on what to buy depending on your system (any card that performs well with Quake 2/3, Half-Life Unreal Tournament is probably going to be sufficient for CM). For those that are price concious I would suggest a TNT2 if you have an AGP slot (the TNT2 Ultras have a higher clock speed on the chips - otherwise they're usually the same). For those with more money (US$250+) and faster systems (I'd suggest at least PIII 450+ / Celeron 500+ or Athlon to make them worthwhile) the Matrox G400 & GeForce cards are both good. If you would REALLY like TV out then the Matrox is the better bet since it is more capable in that regard. The GeForce cards have a new feature compared to other cards in that they support (in hardware) transform & lighting (T&L) - a process in the display of 3D images. Most games don't support T&L in hardware and CM doesn't appear that it will either, so it is a moot feature for CM (but Quake 3 will "supposedly" have the capability of using the GeForce's T&L). So if you're heavily into some of the latest FPSs then a GeForce may be a good buy. Cards based on ATI, S3 and Voodoo chipsets probably aren't as good as the previously mentioned boards. Several users on this board have reported problems with the ATI & S3 boards and their drivers (when it comes to CM at least). Sometimes these may be cleared up with driver updates (I saw one beta CM video anomaly disappear with an ATI video driver update), but these may be a long time in coming if ever for some boards. The 3dfx Voodoo boards can also be good, but don't usually have the performance of the NVidia or Matrox boards. But there are some new boards due out this summer from 3dfx that may change that. In addition to possible faster performance the Voodoo 4 & 5 based boards will support hardware anti-aliasing for smoothing "jaggies" on screen. For a Mac: I'm a bit ignorant of the video offerings on the Mac. Between the ATI & Voodoo based cards I would suggest an ATI since that is what Apple is using in some of the latest G4's. 3dfx has also started to support Mac a bit more with their latest drivers, but it is hard to say what their commitment is to the Mac. They've just recently added RAVE support to their Voodoo2/3 line, which is the API that CM needs (CM doesn't currently support OpenGL). For those who own a laptop that appears to be substandard for CM - I believe that they will have to skip playing on that particular laptop since there is almost no way to upgrade the video on Mac or PC laptops. A number of the newest laptops with higher end video chips seem to be fast enough for CM. However it seems that driver updates must come from the LAPTOP manufacturer rather that the video chipset manufacturer. Most of the video chipset manufacturers won't post newer drivers for their laptop chipsets and instead inform you to go back to your laptop manufacturer for driver updates. What this does is severly limit the frequency of updates that you would normally see from a chipset manufacturer. Most laptop companies aren't too often concerned with the performance or compatibility of a game with their laptop video drivers, so updates for these drivers will be less frequent. What this boils down to is that if you currently have compatibility issues with CM on your laptop (usually due to the display), then there is a very high likelihood that you will be unable to play CM on it for a long time (if ever) since most laptop manufacturers don't update their drivers too often (if at all !). Anyway... hopefully someone finds my rambling opinion useful. [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 04-13-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ol' Blood & Guts Posted April 14, 2000 Share Posted April 14, 2000 Excellent post Schrullenhaft It's funny how people with Voodoos claim high framerates, but from what I have heard, the image quality is very lacking, especially about the jagginess that anti-alaising fixes. That feature is somewhat standard on nVidia based chips. It's seems the difference in using Voodoo 2s & 3s and nVidia's TNT2 is like the difference in Playstation graphics compared to N64 graphics. N64 graphics are much clearer, non-pixelated, etc. I may be a little off with my comparison, but that's about the basic truth. nVidia-based chips may be a slight slower than their 3Dfx equivalent, but I assure you that the image quality is much better. ------------------ "I am not interested in the names of your fathers...nor of your family's lineage. What I am interested in...is your breaking point!"--Gen. Chang Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dschugaschwili Posted April 14, 2000 Share Posted April 14, 2000 If you want to upgrade an old computer (say <250MHz) take a Voodoo card for two reasons: 1. They are available as PCI devices and you probably don't have an AGP slot anyways. 2. They don't require a fast CPU to run properly. This isn't well known anymore today, but if you stick different video cards into a slow computer, the Voodoo cards win performance wise. Obviously the drivers have a lower CPU demand than those of other cards. 3. They're cheap. Ok, now it was three reasons, but still: a TNT2 or even a GeForce is definately overkill for slow computers. Dschugaschwili Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolColJ Posted April 14, 2000 Share Posted April 14, 2000 TNT2 overkill? hmmm...tnt2 is slow is crud...my p573 overpowers the TNT2 ------------------ CCJ aka BLITZ_Force My Hompage ----> http://www.geocities.com/coolcolj Double your immersion with my Tweaked Textures and Saving Private Ryan sound set mods for CM!! Check out my new Textures V2.0 photo Gallery and my music while your there, or grab a CM Wallpaper! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woody Posted April 14, 2000 Author Share Posted April 14, 2000 Thank you all for your collective knowledge. I think I'll go for the Voodoo plan ( it is has biggest bang for the buck). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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