EarlofWarwick Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 If I want to speed up battles and fight bigger battles faster --by faster I mean with shorter crunch times between the planning and action phases-- should I get a more powerful processor or add more RAM. I'm guessing it's the former. I love CMAK by the way, but in the North African battles the los checks during the "computer thinking" phase can be teeth-grinding waits. I know this game is not RTS, but too much waiting can suck the excitement right out of the experience. [ June 10, 2004, 09:42 AM: Message edited by: EarlofWarwick ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoofyStance Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Earl, that depends largely on the specs of your current machine. If it's an old PC, it may not support significant upgrades of the processor or RAM, in which case an all-new PC might be the best way to go. If your machine can support it, adding RAM is the more cost-effective way to boost the performance of your machine, up to the maximum amount of RAM supported. For many contemporary machines, this upper limit is 1 GB, but newer ones will support 2 or even 4 GB. Doubling the amount of RAM will be noticeable, and you can get 256 MB of PC133 RAM (what many older PCs use) for less than 100 bucks. A new processor will cost more, and it's more likely your motherboard will not support it. Even adding a new video card with more VRAM (at least 64 MB) can help, especially with graphics-intensive applications like CMAK. A 128 MB video card can be gotten for under 100 bucks as well. [EDIT - Many new video cards are AGP-enabled, meaning they need an AGP slot. Many older machines won't have such a slot, in which case a PCI video card would be necessary.] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKELLEN Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Originally posted by EarlofWarwick: If I want to speed up battles and fight bigger battles faster --by faster I mean with shorter crunch times between the planning and action phases-- should I get a more powerful processor or add more RAM. I'm guessing it's the former. I don't claim to be technical minded, but your guess is correct. More ram would not really be utilized as far as I know and a faster processor is pretty much a given if you can't stand the wait times. Also if you don't feel like upgrading just yet, then hang on for the new CM and splash out on a new computer like I will be doing - assuming you can wait that long? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergei Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Also, it's not just the amount of memory that counts, but how fast the memory is. Turn processing involves reading and writing a lot of data from and to the RAM, which adds to the delay. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lars Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Originally posted by GoofyStance: If your machine can support it, adding RAM is the more cost-effective way to boost the performance of your machine, up to the maximum amount of RAM supported. For many contemporary machines, this upper limit is 1 GB, but newer ones will support 2 or even 4 GB. Doubling the amount of RAM will be noticeable, and you can get 256 MB of PC133 RAM (what many older PCs use) for less than 100 bucks. A new processor will cost more, and it's more likely your motherboard will not support it.$35 bucks a stick for PC133 in 256MB. I bought a bunch when Best Buy put it on sale for $20. Buy lots, it's cheap and does make a difference. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Depends on alot of factors. If you are really short RAM (like using 64 or 128mb with a modern OS), RAM will speed up crunching significantly because it will eliminat using virtual memory. Paging out to disk is horribly slow. If there is alot of disk activity while playing CM, you are likely short on RAM. If you have enough RAM then a faster processor will help. CM is very floating point intensive, and favors athalons over pentiums if you have a choice. Note that if you play truly huge operations (think To the Volga from CMBB) there are limits. 2.8ghz PIV boxes will still take a good ~10 minutes a turn on it. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EarlofWarwick Posted June 10, 2004 Author Share Posted June 10, 2004 So, if I have a 1.8 gh Pentium IV with 256 RAM, I'm probably not going to see a big diffenrence with more RAM, and a faster processor is probably the best (next) upgrade. Sound right? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrrich0000 Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Actually... a quick and easy way to see if you could use more RAM would be to look at your hard disk light the next time you play during the turn resolution. (or any other time your computer is running slowly for you) This is because windows uses a hard disk file called a swap file to store data that will not fit in actual RAM. If your hard disk is flogging itself when doing heavy tasks, that is a prime indicator that more RAM would be useful. The reason I say this is because depending on what O/S you are using, 256Mb is a rather small amount of RAM these days, and a 1.8Ghz CPU is not that slow... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergei Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Your CPU should be fast enough for Combat Mission, as it's like 3 times the minimum requirement. In CMAK the dust causes longer computations, and that way also bigger memory requirements, so maybe upgrading to 512 could help. Remember, there's differences in SIMM's. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lars Posted June 10, 2004 Share Posted June 10, 2004 Originally posted by EarlofWarwick: So, if I have a 1.8 gh Pentium IV with 256 RAM, I'm probably not going to see a big diffenrence with more RAM, and a faster processor is probably the best (next) upgrade. Sound right? Nah, I'd get more RAM first. I'm using a PIII 350mhz. Put a gig of RAM behind it and it does just fine. Just how quick do you really need to process a turn anyway? Mine will usually do it in well under a minute. Really large scenarios take longer. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malakovski Posted June 11, 2004 Share Posted June 11, 2004 Originally posted by Lars: Nah, I'd get more RAM first. Correct. 256 is now marginal for a new machine running XP. It's happier with 512 or more. But watching the hard drive light is a good way to tell for sure. Lots of HD activity when you are not loading a program (i.e. during turn calculation) indicates the swap file is in use. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted June 11, 2004 Share Posted June 11, 2004 For the computation of the turns you either have enough RAM or not, if you have enough and the system doesn't page to disk you don't need more. CM uses a lot more RAM in the graphical representation of the movie and when scrolling in the orders phase. If you are satisfied with the movie and order scrolling speed it is impossible (and I mean it) that you see a noticable improvement by adding more RAM, for CM turn computation. Other applications can of course behave differently. Early Pentium-4s were basically a scam and they perform much worse than their clock speed would indicate, in particular for any program which hasn't been optimized for Pentium-4s - such as CM. The problem wasn't only the processor, but early Pentium-4 systems were also using RAM architectures that just don't play well with P4s, again you see the effect much more for programs not written with P4s in mind. If older programs such as CM are your major concern, then I'm afraid you have to get rid of the mainboard and processor ASAP, you are unlucky enough to have the worst possible combo for this. If you are lucky then you have a modern motherboard with just a low-clockspeed CPU, in that case you could just put in a faster processor. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EarlofWarwick Posted June 11, 2004 Author Share Posted June 11, 2004 Gents, thanks for the response. Just a couple of questions (which will reveal my monumental technical ignorance): Where is the hard drive light? Is that on the front cover of the cpu assembly? Redwolf, when you say "scorlling in the orders phase," do you mean moving from unit to unit as you hit the "next unit" key to assign orders? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted June 11, 2004 Share Posted June 11, 2004 The hard drive light might be anywhere, many PCs don't have one or don't have it connected. If they have one you usually find it next to the power LED. Regarding the scrolling, what I means is changing your viewpoint while watching the movie or giving orders. If it jerks when doing that and the hard drive is active you ran out of memory. I didn't monitor CM memory usage too closely so far but my impression is that medium-size scenarios rarely use more than 64 megabytes. This is easy to check using the system monitor, in XP available after pressing control-alt-del and then selecting the second tab for processes. In Win2000 you have a time graph which is more useful. If anyone finds a CM with more than 128 MB please post a screenshot of the memory monitor. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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