More RAM=More CM Enjoyment

[Col Deadmarsh]

Just got me 256MB of PC133 today. Man, even with my rickety old Voodoo 3, the frame rates are much better. I can go on a large map now, down to view 1 and turn 360 degrees without hardly a hitch. Couldn't do that before. Had slow downs all the time.

Not to mention that I can now run Photoshop, Flash, and Dreamcleaver...uh I mean...Dreamweaver at the same time. Probably my last upgrade until I buy a new system but money well spent.

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Youth is wasted on the young.

[lcm1947]

Well, I've been debating whether to increase my 192Ram to the 256 Ram but the computer guy I go to said it wouldn't help that much. I sometimes wonder if they know as much as they think? Anyway, appreciate the info.

[ADAman]

I upgraded from 128 to 256 and didn't notice any difference. I have a T-Bird 800 w/GeForce II so it was probably clicking along fast enough I wouldn't see much change.

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Air Defense: Shoot 'em down, sort 'em out on the ground (AKA - if it flies, it dies)

[Mannheim Tanker]

Colonel, what OS are you using? I've heard from several sources that Win98 doesn't benefit from anything >128MB. I'd love to resolve this question, as I've heard conflicting evidence from both sides of the argument.

[Schrullenhaft]

The term "benefit" is probably what is crucial here. Windows 98 will recognize and use up to 512Mb. However there will probably be little performance benefit for most desktop applications for configurations over 128Mb in RAM. Some programs however can use up more memory (such as games and graphic manipulation apps, etc.) and can thus benefit from more memory if the program calls for it.

For CM more memory can be beneficial. How much of a difference the additional memory makes I don't know. But I suspect that it can make a noticeable difference for large scenarios and heavily mod-ed games.

That's not an end-all-be-all answer, but it is the way I see it (I currently use 512Mb on a BX-based motherboard with Win98SE and it works fine).

[lcm1947]

OK, that did it, I'm going to move up to 256 and see for myself. I'll just tell the wife all you guys said it would make a big difference.... and well worth it. Thanks.

[Maximus]

One note though, I understand that if you have a 1+ GHz machine, go with 200MHz DDR RAM. As it has been found that even PC133 RAM isn't fast enough for those top machines.

256MB of DDR goes for about $99 or so.

I plan on getting a 1.2GHz T-bird soon and that's what I'm getting.

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[Col Deadmarsh]

Originally posted by Mannheim Tanker:

Colonel, what OS are you using? I've heard from several sources that Win98 doesn't benefit from anything >128MB. I'd love to resolve this question, as I've heard conflicting evidence from both sides of the argument.

I'm using Win 98 2nd Edition. With my purchase today, I'm now running 512MB of RAM. At 256MB, it was slow on large maps, especially in View 1. I can honestly say that I do see a noticeable improvement. There were times before on large maps where if I were to turn the camera at ground level, the camera would stop moving for a few secs. That was a little frustrating.

Now on large maps when I turn 360 degrees at View 1, I get 1 slight slowdown per revolution. That's pretty good for only a 500mhz system with an average graphics card.

I'm not sure if it would be worth it for other players though, even when RAM is so cheap right now. I mainly got the extra memory for web design. Those programs use up a lot of memory, especially Photoshop which is a memory vaccum. This is where the extra amount will really come in handy.

The only downside is, my motherboard is somewhat old and I've been told it won't recognize 133mhz speed for 256MB sticks--only 100 when you get up that high. Your mileage may vary.

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Youth is wasted on the young.

[gunnergoz]

My sense is that for many games, but especially for CM, it matters first, how much RAM you have, second, how much Video RAM, third, how much free disk space (for Virtual RAM) and fourth, the speed of your CPU and Video board respectively.

I'd appreciate hearing about how others may perceive this. My PC upgrade priorities have always followed this sequence and I've enjoyed good luck with the combinations derived from it.

Currently I'm running a homemade P-II at 400 mhz, 256 MB RAM, a Matrox Millenium 400 Max with 32 mb, and two 10 Gig HD's with about 25% free space on each. I'm able to load up the largest CM maps with full hi-res mods (anyone who's got my speckled grass and bases installed knows how much they take to run!) for terrain and vehicles. The maps scroll very smoothly, with no delays or hiccups.

Of course, with my older, slower processor, the AI takes forever to come up with its turns and then to calculate the outcome. The movies, once generated, are run at full frame rates however.

I mention all this just to give a baseline for others to describe their systems and personal experience.

My advice to those upgrading on a budget would be to purchase more RAM first, then look into a newer video card with as much Video RAM as they can afford.

BTW, my next upgrades will be the following and in this order:

- AMD 1.1 or 1.2 mhz T-Bird with a good motherboard (more research required on the board)

- 256 MB of appropriate RAM

- New video card (64 MB VRAM) (manufacturer still TBD based upon research)

- New HD of at least 60 gb.

I figure this combination should run CM 2 and possibly CM II (or whatever it'll be called,) quite well. That's my target, anyway!

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by lcm1947:

OK, that did it, I'm going to move up to 256 and see for myself. I'll just tell the wife all you guys said it would make a big difference.... and well worth it. Thanks.

Hehe...I'm in agreement with you on this point! Thanks for the info, Schrullenhaft. That's probably the best clarification that I've heard to date, and explains a lot of the 'conflicting' advice that I've heard regarding RAM and Win98.

[Guest Napoleon1944]

OK any of you mega machine owners want to test your horsepower with a large scenario I have created? I need some playtesters. I have a Tbird 850 with 128 ram and I love to max out my scenarios now. CM plays better at battalion level or higher as battles don't hinge on losing one or 2 units. Email me and I will send it out. Bulge historical scenario.

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The only enemy I fear is nature.

-Napoleon

[Mannheim Tanker]

Thanks for the info, Col. I'm currently using a PII-450 with 128MB and a 32MB Matrox card. Interestingly enough, since upgrading from a 16MB card to the Matrox, I haven't experienced any of the "freezes" that you did when rotating the view, despite having only half the RAM (actually one quarter of your upgrade). There might be something else at play here besides memory...I'm still strongly thinking of getting another stick of 256 though.

Maximus, can you simply substitute a stick of DDR RAM for a SDRAM stick? Forgive me if this is an ignorant question - I'm still getting my feet wet with the hardware end of PCs (it's been mostly software experience up until now). I'll do some detailed research on my own, but I'd like to get the opinions of all of you gurus too

[Capt Canuck]

Hey everybody!

Me and the family are upgrading our PC with a P-III 1.0 Ghz Processor and getting a new video card, probably an Nvidia card with 32MBs VRAM(from an old Matrox G100!), and to boot~a new motherboard. We just recently upgraded to a 20GB HD and 128MB RAM. But are there any other suggestions for video cards? Are there any known issues for the Nvidia's with CMBO? etc...

Anyways,

Thanks!

Dave

[This message has been edited by Capt Canuck (edited 03-13-2001).]

[Guest machineman]

Anyone looking at a new video card may want to have a look at the Hercules 64MB Kyro II. Anantech tested it today and was extremely impressed:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1435

Quote:

"The performance of the Kyro II based 3D Prophet 4500 is nothing short of stunning given its price: a mere $149.99."

Anandtech doesn't usually gush like that. Some new rendering architecture allows it to beat a $340.00 Geforce II Ultra in some tests. May make a nice upgrade for those of us with TNT2's, Voodoo 3's and the like. I was thinking for CM the very good FSAA and 64MB of ram may be useful.

[This message has been edited by machineman (edited 03-14-2001).]

[Porajkl]

Well, my fellow comrades, I think just the opposite of you... The amount of RAM does influence on CM, but only if you upgrade from 64 to 128 Mb. Above all, its nonsense, because game engine doesn't use such large amounts of RAM (512Mb - are you nuts? ).

Large amounts of RAM helps only if you work with more programs simultaneously or if you do a lot of bitmaps editing. If the game (assume CM) uses 70 Megabytes to work, there will be no difference if you have 128 MB or 512 MB. Of course, that is, if you run only CM and no other programs.

BMPs are stored and used by videocard RAM, so the framerate improves if you add fast videocard with more Ram.

Just take a quick look at CM directory and you'll find it's around 350 MB (more or less, depends on wether you have hi- or lo-res mods). So, if you have 512 MB of Ram, you could load all CM in Ram Disk and that would only (significantly tough) improve load time of CM. An nothing else. The game itself will still recalculate the turns with the same speed and viewing the terrain will also be the same.

If you want to increase the speed of CM, buy faster processor, faster videocard with a lot of RAM and only then fast RAM (but there is no need to go above 128 MB).

Regards,

Porajkl

[Soddball]

If it's any help, Windows 98 can't address a particularly large amount of RAM. I don't know the exact figure but it's around the 128-192 mark. This means that anything over that is largely redundant.

Windows ME can make use of the extra RAM - I have 512MB of PC133.

If you are using an AGP card then, of course, it can make use of extra PC RAM - so you can run the whole game in memory.

One nice aspect of masses of RAM is you can play Winamp in the background and listen to stuff like Ride of the Valkyries as your Panthers crest that ridge and lay waste to all before them.

Spod heaven.

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"Woof!Woof!"

That's my other dog impression.

[Soddball]

For Capt. Canuck -

I am using a Creative GEForce 32MB DDR - NVidia chipset, and using latest NVidia drivers for Windows ME. No issues at all.

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"Woof!Woof!"

That's my other dog impression.

[Capt Canuck]

Thanks Soddball!

Dave

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Soddball:

If it's any help, Windows 98 can't address a particularly large amount of RAM. I don't know the exact figure but it's around the 128-192 mark. This means that anything over that is largely redundant.

Windows ME can make use of the extra RAM - I have 512MB of PC133.

If you are using an AGP card then, of course, it can make use of extra PC RAM - so you can run the whole game in memory.

One nice aspect of masses of RAM is you can play Winamp in the background and listen to stuff like Ride of the Valkyries as your Panthers crest that ridge and lay waste to all before them.

Spod heaven.

See, this is exacly the argument I've heard against getting >128MB RAM for Win98. Now I'm really confused, considering this flies in the face of advice given above. Not trying to doubt you, Soddball; I'd just like to clarify this matter. My experience with Win98 tends to support your side of the debate. It's almost as if the infamous Windows98 memory leak kicks in somewhere between 128-192MB, as I've noticed considerably different performance in software at work (Not an app like Word, but rather mapping software). Significantly better performance on an NT box with 192MB than on a Win98 box with 128MB. This involves data sets of varying sizes, from a few KB to >200MB.

[Doug Williams]

Mannheim Tanker,

I don't know where people are getting these ideas about W98 not handling over 128 Meg of ram. I did some reasearch, and could find no evidence of this. I, myself, noticed an improvement in the speed of CM when I went from 128 to 384 Meg of ram. Aparently, there is an upper limit on the amount of ram that W9x/ME can utilize. That limit is 512 Meg. Go here for info: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/14967.html .

My advice is if you only have 128 Meg of ram, it's time to upgrade. Ram is cheap right now, so pop in at least another 128 stick.

-Doug

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expert \'ek-,spert'\ n : someone who knows more and more about less and less until eventually they know everything about nothing

[Hawkmek]

Well, I'm convinced also. I will have to get another stick of 128 for my system.

Curently I have an Athlon 700, Leadtek GeForce 256 DDR with 32 Megs o' Ram and 128MB system Ram. I also get stutters when panning around the battlefield. Since Ram is so cheap, I'll make the purchase and let you know if the stutters go away. BTW Canuck, I also have had no worries with the GeForce and CM or any other game for that matter.

"If logistics were easy, it would be called tactics." --lame quote from my old Guard unit.

[Olle Petersson]

Current pricing of 128MB PC133 original:

SEK 850 (= USD 85), including VAT...

Cheers

Olle

[vcents]

Current pricing of 128MB PC133 original:

SEK 850 (= USD 85), including VAT...

Wow..that seems a little high in USD for 128 @133. I was quoted $45US yesterday.

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The only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them. - Churchill

[Doug Williams]

Hawkmek (and others),

Adding more ram is a very good thing. There are other things you can do to improve your Windows environment for gaming. Go here for some great tips:

http://www.cdmag.com/Home/home.html?article=/articles/026/077/tuning_feature.html

-Doug

Be sure to read part two "Thanks for the Memory" also...

[This message has been edited by Doug Williams (edited 03-14-2001).]

[Herr Oberst]

Where to start???

Generally, a RAM upgrade is a savior for those systems "on the border". So-so performance with lower amounts of RAM cry out for a RAM upgrade (128 really should be the minimum if you use Microsoft Office products). It really irks me to see vendors selling racehorse CPU's that are RAM constricted right out of the box. A 700 MHz CPU running Windows 98/ME with 32 MB RAM is sheer idiocy.

Open Task Manager and look at the Processes running on a typical day. WinWord.EXE = 18,952k. Outlook.EXE = 5,984k. IEXPLORE.EXE = 9.780k. Add in your virus scanner, FastFind, Database Server, Web Server, and it al gets eaten up really fast. Sitting here typing this with Outlook open on my laptop my Memory Usage is 109,004k.

For CM, I doubt that many of us have 3 or 4 other apps open while we are playing. We all probably shut down everything we can to free RAM and processor slices. I kill SQL Server, no Outlook, no other apps. What could slow me down?

Well, raw CPU speed counts of course. Somebody has to be telling the video card what to show. If the CPU only speaks with a slow southern drawl, even a fast auctioneer speed video card will do you no good. They don't match up, and the video card is left wanting input. Reversing the roles results in the same unsatisfying behavior, except that the racehorse CPU is trying to cram information into the slow-poke video card.

Let's say we tune the video card and the cpu to the same speeds, neither has to wait for the other. What happens?

As a short aside, this is where you will hear numbers about the RAM speed, and the FSB or Front Side Bus speed. This is how fast the CPU can talk to the RAM in the system. More is better. If you're adding RAM and your FSB is currently at 100, buy 133 rated RAM. You'll thank yourself later when a motherboard and/or cpu upgrade could make use of the faster RAM.

Back on track:

Welllll, how much RAM does the video card have? This is where the textures thingie comes into play. How often does the video card have a texture fault (doesn't have the desired texture in its RAM)? For the video card, more is definitely better, especially for the future. You probably don't need the killer, top-of-the-line video card with 64MB RAM if you're running a Celeron 366. A gigahertz T-bird-based machine makes alot more sense, and would be a much better match.

Unless you are like me, who has to stagger out his purchases. I have a god-awful video card form hell (GEForce2 GTS) that sits around waiting for my dual Celeron-366 machine right now. But on the horizon awaits the Thunderbird 1 GHz, and yes, it shall be mine...

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