Herr Kruger Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 Hello all, So, being the owner of a PIII-450 Mhz with 192 MB RAM and a 32 MB ATI Rage Fury, I was wondering if I maxed out my RAM to 384 MB, would that make a difference? I don't plot my orders with trees on but usually I have smoke and now dust set to 'high quality' and I am noticing slowdowns. Every once in awhile I like to turn on full trees and terrain and that for looking at everything and screenshots, then I get a significant slowdown on CMAK demo. Any opinions on what to do? Money is extremely tight... Thank you! J Kruger 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lars Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 I'm running a slower system than that. Ram is cheap and more is always better. $20 or $40 will double what you already have But I'd say a really good video card would help the most. I'm running a (old by now) VisionTek Geforce3 TI 200 w/64 mb on the card. Great card, great company, never had a problem with it. Try Pricewatch.com and see what you can afford. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elmar Bijlsma Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 Having upgraded from 128 to 384 I noticed a modest improvment, but nothing earth shattering. I'm guessing your video card and brute processing power are the main bottlenecks here, but neither can be fixed as cheaply as additional ram. I think your best bet is to accept things as they are now, keep your money in your wallet and start saving for a full machine upgrade. Upgrading your RAM won't solve the problem, a video card might but a good one is expensive and with a PIII you wouldn't get your money's worth out of the purchase. And upgrading your CPU would most likely be prohibitivly expensive. I feel your pain Herr K, I'm just lucky I'm at a different point of the upgrading cycle and my scraped together rig is still current for a little while longer. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 384 MB is enough for all but the biggest battles. If you noticed that turning on the trees causes the most massive slowdown, then your video card is the bottleneck. But don't put anything more than a geforce-3 in it. There are CPU upgrades for these old motherboard, for example I could put a P-III based Celeron 1300 MHz into a P2B motherboard, not bad for a 1998 board. www.powerleap.com sells some although usually not cheap. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 Compared to my setup your specs are downright astronomical! If you've got better stuff to spend you money on this season I'd say ignore all the upgrade advice at first, get the game, then see if there's any indication you need an upgrade to run it more efficiently. Admittedly I do tend to avoid 'Huge' all-infantry battles. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil stanbridge Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 Well.. I play CMAK on my main rig, which is a phase-change cooled P4 3.2ghz @ 4ghz with a gig of ram and a Nvidia 5950 and I STILL get slowdown with the bigger battles. It's obviously not as major as what you guys are seeing, but it is definitely heavier on the old resources than CMBB! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcm1947 Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 I can't give you any advise as I don't know much about computers but thought I'd tell you what I have and how the game performs for me. I have a 850 Mhz processor with a 64 MB video card and 384 MB of Ram. I have no trouble with anything but the larger games like "All is Fair" which is 4100 points. This game is playable but not much fun as it is somewhat jerky and slow. Now if I play "2 Pounders and Tigers" which is listed as 3600 points everything is fine. No jerking and the speed is just fine. Hope this helps you? Oh as a point of interest. I recently changed from a 32 MB video card to this 64 MB before CMAK came out back when I was playing CMBB and noticed very little if any difference. I was actually very disappointed after spending the money so I think the processor is what counts, but that's my unlearned opinion and may not be accurate. Anyway, good luck and I can relate about the money thing. Not being rich sucks, don't it? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marco Bergman Posted December 17, 2003 Share Posted December 17, 2003 One of the machines I beta-tested with is a P2-400 with a Geforce2 MX400 64Mb, and 256Mb ram (+ Win95). It is perfectly usable for ~2500 pt battles with the graphics at default settings but ambient sounds off, no downsampling. Turns do take a while to process, however. A ram upgrade would be nice but your video ram is the chief problem here. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herr Kruger Posted December 18, 2003 Author Share Posted December 18, 2003 Originally posted by phil stanbridge: Well.. I play CMAK on my main rig, which is a phase-change cooled P4 3.2ghz @ 4ghz with a gig of ram and a Nvidia 5950 and I STILL get slowdown with the bigger battles. It's obviously not as major as what you guys are seeing, but it is definitely heavier on the old resources than CMBB! phil, this is the low-end systems thread! lol 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herr Kruger Posted December 18, 2003 Author Share Posted December 18, 2003 Thanks for the advice everyone, I shall take it all under consideration. J Kruger 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denwad Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 CM is very processor intensive, it needs to do lots of calculations and formulas to produce the results on screen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herr Kruger Posted December 19, 2003 Author Share Posted December 19, 2003 Just as an added thought, I hope you modders out there know that low-res terrain, trees, and terrain elements are greatly appreciated by the likes of me. J Kruger 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
First Mate Detrius Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 Humm. I played 20.000 point operations CMBB on my PIII 500 Geforce MX420 (64MB) 512 RAM. offcourse overweight armour, but I probaly had 3 companies..and my opponent the same. Some waiting, but hey...thats CM ..shouldnt think CMAK is that different..or? Your Grafic card could need a boost, but you'll probably manage. I have an old geforce Annihilator 256 card (32MB) lying around, but I dont know i that would help. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAUS_TD Posted December 19, 2003 Share Posted December 19, 2003 Hello herr Kruger, when you are ingame and turning arround then its your videocard. if you upgrade your cpu or your internal memory it will only speed up the time you have to wait between a move. so upgrade your videocard maus_td 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herr Kruger Posted December 20, 2003 Author Share Posted December 20, 2003 Weekend Update - Well, playing the desert demo scenario, the dust kicked up by large amounts of vehicles and gunfire and artillery is causing major slowdown! More evidence it is a video card problem? Someone should do a mod of the dust and smoke to make it lo-res! J Kruger 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blazing 88's Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Have you tried the "fast and compatible dust" - shift I. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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