32 megs vs 64 megs vs 128 megs

[WWB]

Originally posted by Eric Young:

Matrox has a killer 128 three monitor card coming out, three monitors of CM, wow.

E

Reports are in, the parhelia is a waste for the money.

And I do remind you all, just because CMBB does not require gads of VRam does not mean it will not take advantage of gads of VRam.

WWB

[ August 16, 2002, 03:19 PM: Message edited by: wwb_99 ]

[MikeyD]

I understand CMBB's very clever in automatically adjusting itself to your machine's hardware. To run smoothly it'll automatically drop some doodads, loose some trees, downsample some art until it gets the frame rate where it wants it. I've heard about 350mhz imacs with 8meg video cards running big CMBB Beta scenarios without so much as a hiccup. These guys are simply amazing.

Of course you won't be able to count the nose hairs of the squad leader after the art's been downsampled 3-4 times (you WILL be able to at full resolution!). There's no such thing as too powerful a video card.

[Michael Emrys]

Because it bears repeating:

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

"If some is good, more is better."

Michael

Michael

[Scipio]

For general defense of BTS:

They are only a couple of guys with only one programmer, they use there own 3d engine instead of a lincensed Quake engine or something like that (what wouldn't work in CM anyway for some reasons, I guess). Beside that, graphical candy is very important (for me), but CM is not a simple FPS. I LOVE the 3d invironment, and I'm very excited to see the improvements in CM:BB, but my favorite list of CM:BB improvments is : artillery system, gun accuracy, tank damage model...just to name a few. Compared to the latest FPS, the CM:BB graphics are outdated. And this is surely true for CM:BO - but I play rarly something different then CMBO in the last two years - just because it is the best wargame ever..until 20 September, of course !

[Bruno Weiss]

First publication written by Tarqulene:

and as republished (2nd Printing) by Michael emrys:

That's the trouble with being sarcastic, isn't it? After you do it you can never be certain that any replies are even more saracstic. Well, we all have our crosses to bear.

Wait! This is important. Lemme write this down, now I know what's wrong. And my Chiropractor thinks it's a slipped disk.

[ August 16, 2002, 06:23 PM: Message edited by: Bruno Weiss ]

[lcm1947]

I just hate showing my ignorence in public but I just have to ask. Makjager do you mean that you switched your 64 MB for a slower 32 MB? Am I missing something? I would gladly have anybody explain that to me. :confused:

[Schrullenhaft]

He's on a Mac and there's a very significant quality difference in the drivers between the two. ATI has much better drivers on the Mac than NVidia does. Image quality, complete API support, compatibility and sometimes performance are some of the differences.

[Seanachai]

Originally posted by Firefly:

Hmm.. someone complaining about CM not supporting a the latest greatest video card (with backwards compatability of course).

Sound familiar?

That's right! Which toad was it that kept starting up threads going on and on about 'the graphic card' issue, and making it sound like BFC was dropping the ball, and therefore didn't deserve serious consideration by gamers? Was it that complete arse, Gunny Bunny? Or someone else?

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Gunny Bunny it was. And you guys think I'm hard to deal with!

Regards

Jim R.

[arax3]

It was that linguistically challenged "Iron Chief Sakai!" He said he is glad to be gone from the forum; I am also glad of that.

[Måkjager]

lcm1947... Ian is correct .

I bought a Apple Dual 800mhz proc G4 last August with a OEM nVidia GF 3 card sporting 64MB of VRAM and a Gig of ram

. I thought..YEAH..this should make me happy..and i was..sort of until i opened my eyes to eye candy on other guys computers.

What i noticed between my setup and theirs was that my vehicles seemed to suffer from a slight blur .. they were not crystal clear.

It was confirmed to be via Marco Bergmann who sent me a pix of the Tiger mod i am working on. On the actual Photoshop bmp;s i had great detail that was nice and clear..but yet "in house" with my G4 /nVidia GF3 it looked muddy..the details were not a distinct as i knew i had made them.

I sent off the mod to Marco who sent me back a pix and lo and behold all the detail was there.

Marco was and is using a 8MB Vanta TNT 2 card ( afaicr) and the clarity on it mad me gasp...when compared to the crap i had to look at after paying out a lot of money to have the card. Originally i wanted the Radeon but Apple discontinued them in their G4 ( around the time ATI dropped the ball and let a cat out of the bag which Steve Jobs did not take kidly to ).

I got a chance earlier this year to pick up a 32MB OEM Radeon from OWC and the difference it made was ten fold ( in that i could now see my work in all its intended clarity).

So in future unless nVidia get their act together i will be sticking with ATI products.

regards

Måkjager

[jeffsmith]

Note to consumers

I too prefer the ATI Vid Cards

I am on a Mac

However the ATI cards in PC's

seem have an issue with the fog tables in CM

[Janster]

Actually, the game does push limits, as the normal first person shooters arent based on 3600x4000 meter areas like I play in operations(exept Flashpoint and it aint a graphical monsters either) they can afford to tune up gfx that much, but if you did that in combat mission and played the largerst operation types, you would crawwwwwl.

I have a amd1200 512 mb + gforce 3 64 mb and it runs only well on the operations, of course it cruises on the battles, but battles arent what this game is about..its the operations that kicks ASSSSS

with regards

Janster

[Voxman]

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

Do you think everyone out there is buying 128Mb video cards right now ?! Perhaps BTS/BFC can just come out with the minimum specs of a P4 2.53GHz

Developing a game and catering it only to the latest hardware is not a good idea.

I agree making it 128 mgs today is to much. However 64 mgs with backward compatibility is definitely a good move. I think BTS misjudged the technology jump when they started writing the program 2+ years ago.

REMEMER - backward compatibility....

Many of you think that is CMBB is 64 mgs you need a 64 mg video card. You do not !!

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

CMBB doesn't necessarily cater to gamers who are typically 14-30 year old males who have the cash and time to always upgrade their computers.

I think the typical gamer is in the 30+ age group. Most people under that age do not have the patience for military strategy. They want instant gratification. However, being a 30+ myself, I have the money to upgrade, in fact, people between the ages of 35 and 50 are in their most productive years !

Question for you Schrullenhaft:

If a player of CMBB has a 32 mg card with the default mods and they play a 9000 point game with a 1 ghz CPU, do you think they will experience choppy graphics ?

I would be willing to bet they would and if they upgraded the mods to high res, then the choppiness will increase. This being said, perhaps 32 mgs as advertised is not "TRULY" the max card required ! Perhaps, at larger point games a 64 mg or even a 128 mg card would be required to stop choppiness ??

Fascinating subject.

Cordially,

Voxman

[Schrullenhaft]

Originally posted by Voxman:

REMEMER - backward compatibility....

I think you overestimate the capacity to downsample when your VRAM target is higher. With the 32Mb 'target' the idea was to be able to downsample to an 8Mb video card. It doesn't look or perform as nice as a 32Mb (or larger) video card, but it still plays. If that 'target' were raised to 64Mb, then 8Mb probably wouldn't be possible or just so ugly to play at that it wouldn't be reasonable to consider it a 'playable' solution.

The more VRAM (generally speaking) on your videocard, the happier you'll be in CMBB. Just because the 'target' was 32Mb doesn't mean you don't see additional benefits with more VRAM.

Basically the one major thing that BTS/BFC could do to 'raise' the graphic requirements is to put in higher res textures. However there is a point of diminishing returns with improving image quality with higher and higher res textures. Another image quality difference is 24/32-bit color. The current engine is not capable of this color depth (which is 16-bit currently) which involves a major rewrite of the graphic engine to change this fact. Changing the color depth would definitely raise the graphical requirements of CM (quite possibly more than two-fold). Most of the graphical improvements that players have requested would need a major change in the graphics engine - something that isn't up for consideration with the release of CMBB.

While technology 'pundits' and other industry commentators like to point out the increasing speed of what they consider 'minimum hardware' these people are basing their opinions on 'new purchases'. The survey I posted in my first post to this thread gives you an indication of what is out there. I'm not sure how accurate it is right now since it is based on user input which can often be erroneous and I don't know when the start and close dates for the survey were (I believe it was open for quite awhile). So there is a good possibility that the info is a bit dated, however this is data gathered for a very popular FPS game which would likely have a higher proportion of high performance computers than you would see among 'military strategy' game players.

I think the typical gamer is in the 30+ age group. Most people under that age do not have the patience for military strategy.

I wasn't referring only to those people who play military strategy games, but any sort of games on PCs & Macs. The primay (and often target) audience for most games on the PC are young males. Most of them have minimal financial obligations and are more likely to spend money on their computers than the average computer owner who may be an older adult. Just ask anyone here how often they upgrade and you'll get a wide range of responses. Many people here have financial obligations (or spouses, however you want to put it ) that prevent them from upgrading their hardware every six months. That or they don't find it a financially sound idea to remain near the cutting edge of computer hardware.

If a player of CMBB has a 32 mg card with the default mods and they play a 9000 point game with a 1 ghz CPU, do you think they will experience choppy graphics ?

I would be willing to bet they would and if they upgraded the mods to high res, then the choppiness will increase. This being said, perhaps 32 mgs as advertised is not "TRULY" the max card required ! Perhaps, at larger point games a 64 mg or even a 128 mg card would be required to stop choppiness ??

Realize that 32Mb of VRAM is not the 'max'. It is the target at which below it you will start to downsample the textures for performance reasons. It may even be possible that at 32Mb that there will be downsampling in very large battles (with a large variety of equipment - hence many unique textures), but I don't know. Some downsampling is noticeable - other instances are not except when you're up close.

A battle of 9000 points in size could quite possibly lead to 'choppy graphics' with a 1GHz CPU and a 32Mb video card. There are a number of variables concerning the scenario's contents and other details of the system that will affect the performance you see. VRAM capacity in this discussion also acts as a rudimentary measure of GPU performance. However there can be a wide range of performance between 32Mb video cards and this can have a significant impact on performance in CM.

I don't know how well an 8Mb card would handle such a battle. It will definitely be choppier for several reasons. Some people would probably consider such a game unplayable on an 8Mb card, but I've read accounts on this forum of how little performance some people are willing to endure to play CM, so this becomes a very subjective judgement.

So the next question would be, if you can get choppy performance on a 1GHz CPU (a PC CPU, that is) with a 32Mb video card and stock graphics (textures), has BTS still missed the mark ?

I too wish that BTS/BFC could add more to CMBB than what they've done already. However I have much greater expectations for what the engine rewrite will make available and that's where I'd rather BTS spent their time.

[ August 17, 2002, 08:38 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]