Upgrade advice needed

[Ace Pilot]

I’d like to improve how CMBB performs on my computer, but I’m not that knowledgeable on computer hardware. I’m hoping you guys can help. I have an HP Pavilion 8555C with:

Celeron 500MHz processor

Intel 810 chipset

64 MB RAM

Video memory consisting of 11MB shared system memory (I think a video card can be installed, but I’m not sure which kind. The specs sheet says “Video Graphics – PCI Local Bus” which I think means I could use a PCI video card, but not AGP – correct?).

I’ve noticed that anything but the smallest CMBB scenarios experience jerky playback (is this the same as a slow framerate problem?), and even huge CMBO scenarios can be challenging.

I recently installed DirectX 8.1b and the latest drivers for the 810 chipset, which improved things marginally.

I am in the process of upgrading the RAM to 256 MB (max possible) and would like to know if I will see any improvements in CM play as a result of this upgrade, or if I will need to upgrade other aspects of the system.

Thanks for your help,

Ace

[BeWary]

I'm sorry to say that most likely it is your video card. It sounds like you have onboard video, sharing your system memory. Your only probable upgrade choice would be a PCI card, but newer cards don't seem to come in PCI versions I believe (you can check on this). Check your computer manual or contact HP to see if an AGP card would be possible. Also note that if you get a new video card, you'll probably need to disable the onboard video by setting a jumper on the motherboard. If not through a jumper, you'll at least need to disable it through the BIOS/CMOS settings.

Your processor speed plays a part too of course. I believe 500MHz is their minimum requirement for CMBB, so if possible you may want to start thinking about upgrading the whole machine.

However, if you're willing to buy a graphics card and it has to be a PCI card, you probably won't want to put it in a new machine if you end up going that route.

Also, your RAM upgrade may speed up response times a bit if you see a lot of disk access while playing, but unfortunately it won't speed up your actual gameplay. That is, you'll still have jerky movement.

BeWary

[brooktrout]

The Intel 810 chipset uses what Intel called a GMCH or Graphics and Memory Controller Hub. This allowed them to integrate a video device onto the motherboard with direct access (bus) to your system memory which is the 11MB shared memory that you stated. That 11MB of system memory is not available to your OS for other tasks. Some of the 810's also had 4MB of onboard video cache in addition to using the system memory.

The 810 chipset does not have an AGP bus so your other option would be to use a PCI video card. There are only a few choices in that bus, namely the GeForce MX PCI series and I believe that ATI makes a few PCI cards in the 7000/7500 range. I believe the ATI cards do not support fog in Windows versions of CM.

[Voxman]

Your computer is okay for Office duties and the Internet but for gaming you will need a better system.

Computers are cheap now. Minimum would be a 1.5 ghz CPU and a 32 meg video card. Depends on your budget.

Regards,

Voxman

Originally posted by Ace Pilot:

I’d like to improve how CMBB performs on my computer, but I’m not that knowledgeable on computer hardware. I’m hoping you guys can help. I have an HP Pavilion 8555C with:

Celeron 500MHz processor

Intel 810 chipset

64 MB RAM

Video memory consisting of 11MB shared system memory (I think a video card can be installed, but I’m not sure which kind. The specs sheet says “Video Graphics – PCI Local Bus” which I think means I could use a PCI video card, but not AGP – correct?).

I’ve noticed that anything but the smallest CMBB scenarios experience jerky playback (is this the same as a slow framerate problem?), and even huge CMBO scenarios can be challenging.

I recently installed DirectX 8.1b and the latest drivers for the 810 chipset, which improved things marginally.

I am in the process of upgrading the RAM to 256 MB (max possible) and would like to know if I will see any improvements in CM play as a result of this upgrade, or if I will need to upgrade other aspects of the system.

Thanks for your help,

Ace

[Ace Pilot]

Thanks for all your help. With Christmas just around the corner, my salvation may be at hand.

[Slappy]

I have (had) a system non unlike yours. I bought my PC at a dead dotcom garage sale and it was essentially a business, not a gaming, machine with no AGP slots.

I picked up a 64MB PCI card which perked things up dramatically. I went from not being able to run CMBO with any hi res mods to running most CMBB scenarios quite well.

There aren't that many 64MB PCI cards made (most are 32 PCI or 64-128 AGP) but they are worth tracking down. I picked one up for about $150 without a lot of looking and installed it in about 30min and I am not a computer person.

This may be an option that prevents system replacement, and it's worth $150 to try it before you kick in for an entirely new system. You can always sell the card on e-bay if you're still not happy.

[Ace Pilot]

I just finished the install of the 256MB RAM and it turns out that CMBB scenarios that were unplayable before (medium or larger, or anything with armor, it seemed) now appear to be running smoothly. I expect I'll still have problems with the bigger scenarios, but this is a welcome improvement. Thanks for all your help guys. As scary as it sounds, I think I'm actually learning some useful computer skills. You guys should really charge for this stuff - but please don't!

brooktrout, I'm pretty sure I don't have the 4MB onboard video cache. However, I came across an Intel white paper on the 810 chipset that seemed to indicate that the more recent drivers increased the maximum shared video memory from 11MB to 32MB, if I'm reading it correctly. Perhaps the RAM increase from 64 to 256 allowed the new driver to make use of the increased video memory.

Slappy, it does sound like a video card would improve things even further - I may have to give it a try. Thanks for the detailed info.

[Redwolf]

I was also very pleased with the CPU upgrades that powerleap.com offers. They are not exactly cheap but they do what you want without digging out your soldering iron and even with the old bus, ram etc. the speed advantage is dramatic (thanks to Intel, not powerleap).

Just be sure whatever you do, do not "upgrade" to any low-MHz Pentium-4 or P4-based Celeron system. A 1.7 GHz P4 is about as fast as a 1.3 P3-based Celeron in CM.

[Redwolf]

I forgot: I upgraded my video card in a 450 MHz PII system from a Matrox G-400 to a Radeon 7500.

This was useless from a speed standpoint, the CPU could not feed the new graphics card.

If you buy a new video card you will get higher-res mods fitted and maybe more resolution, but if you find your system to be too slow now, it won't really help. I never used the i810 integrated graphics card, maybe it is more crappy than I can imagine, so take this with a grain of salt.

[ October 05, 2002, 10:37 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Most complaints about speed in CM are usually related to display speed since this is the factor that has the biggest bearing on what players most often do in CM - scroll around the battlefield to give orders, check LOS (a CPU function actually), etc. While CPUs and video cards are somewhat 'matched items' where very fast video cards would be a waste of money with slower CPUs, it is still something very worthwhile in upgrading on most computers.

In this particular case an i810 integrated video is very slow compared to most dedicated video cards. With the integrated video sharing some of the memory bandwidth - a video upgrade helps in some other speed areas too.

Assuming your motherboard can take it (power supply, motherboard compatibility and possible physical constraints) you could purchase a PCI GeForce2 MX400 (32 or 64Mb) or a TNT2 M64 32Mb (I'm not sure what standard, Ultra, Pro, etc. models of the TNT2 are available now beyond the M64). These cards should be a fine match for your current CPU and will make for a nice speed boost in the game. Again the issues I listed above could pose problems for any of these upgrades, but usually these PCI cards should work.