Olle Petersson Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know what's the absolute minimum hardware requirements to run CM. Not to have a nice, flowing game, but to be able to start and run the program at all. (Like I ran the game F-16 from Digital Integrations on my 486, although the official minimum was P90. I had a frame rate of about 1-2 FPS, no sound, and all graphics set to minimum though...) As specified from BTS: - Win95/98/ME/2000 - Pentium (P5) 166MHz w/3D card - Pentium (P5) 200MHz w/o 3D card - 32MB of RAM - 100MB of Hard Disk Space (est.) - CD ROM drive - DirectX 6.0 compatible video card - DirectX 6.0 compatible sound card - 28.8 modem for multiplayer It is strongly recommended that you have a 3D Video card, preferably with 16MB of VRAM or more. Even a 4MB card will work ... My comments: - CD ROM drive; obviously. - 100MB HD space; no comment. - DirX6 compatible sound/video card; playable (but not very enjoyable) even without any sound card at all(?)! - 28.8 modem; Won't a slower modem work just as well, since there isn't much real-time data sent? - 32MB RAM; Does the exe-file really need that much space? The file itself is much smaller, and Windows use some HD space for virtual RAM. Win95 require 4MB RAM, and my guess is that this (or slightly more) is the true minimum requirement. - P166 with 3D card; Win95 runs on a 486SX25, why the need for more? (Crunching will take a looonng time though...) - P200 without 3D card; same as above, but framerate will go down. (Use very low res mods.) - ... even 4MB VRAM will work... ; I'd say even much less than 4MB will work, at the expense of framerate. Use very low res mods! What's the point? - If you have an old computer at home, together with the newer one that you usually use for CM, then the old junk can be used for TCP/IP play, if you make a LAN between the two. The faster computer do the crunching, while the game is still playable at the other terminal. (- This is yet another small plug for my Fastmods set of terrain and buildings. Currently being updated with less pink on edges and stuff. Until available for downloading at a site you can request it directly from me at ollpe@hotmail.com . The complete set of ~200 textures come as a 1.5MB zip-file.) Cheers Olle ------------------ Strategy is the art of avoiding a fair fight... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 18, 2001 Share Posted January 18, 2001 I would take the BTS's suggested minimums to heart. I tried the BETA Demo out on a PII 233 with a 2Mb video card and 32Mb of RAM. It was almost unplayable. I almost gave up on CM right then. The problem with this configuration was in issuing orders. The map would move around very slowly as you went to select units and check LOS, etc. The turn "crunching" wasn't really the issue. As for memory requirements... Microsoft Windows will take every chunk of memory it can find and dole out small parts of it to the programs that are trying to run. While the CM executable may be less than 4Mb in size all the models (multiple iterations on screen), textures, game data and calculations will take up a bit of memory. While your system could use virtual memory for some of this, it would horrendously slow down the game. As for the modem you could probably try something slower, but it too will affect the game since your opponent won't get the data any faster than you can send it or receive it. I'm not sure of the amount of data that is traded back and forth in a TCP/IP session of CM, but it is a little bit more than you may be thinking of since the initial (before Public BETA) iteration of TCP/IP for CM was changed to a model that sent more info back and forth since floating point differences between CPUs prevented the use of the earlier model. I think that you'll find the biggest obstacle to using a slow machine for CM in a TCP/IP session will be in issuing orders. The screen will scroll very slowly and you'd probably end up dropping your TCP/IP session with your internet provider while trying to issue orders. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bebbetufs Posted January 19, 2001 Share Posted January 19, 2001 I currently run CM well on my laptop! It has a s3 graphics chip with 8Mb of RAM. The game runs very well even with many mods installed, although it didn't pick the High res. grass... Only thing that doesnt work properly is the translucent smoke ! I agree with Schrullenhaft on the RAM part. My portable has 64, and I will uppgrade it to 128 because IMO thats the lowest you should go when running Win98 or later. 64, or even 32, should do for CM though! The RAM should't be a problem though, 'cause if you use a machine that old it should be using EDO RAM which is readily available, and VERY cheap! You can also tweak the amount of RAM windows uses. By default windows itself will use 1/3 even before you've started working. Windows is notoriously unstable with low RAM, NT is better for low RAM machines. I don't know when it comes to the CPU speed but I would think that with the amount of calculations CM goes through it plays a major part. The graphics shouldn't be a problem either. Picking up an "old" card with around 16Mb RAM is not a costly affair..... I just sold my ASUS V3400 TNT for 350 NOK (Norwegian Kroner ) which is slightly less than 30$. (some people less greedy than me may even give them away) A card like this should be fairly easy to overcklock as well which actually gives you more than adequate (CM) performance for the money. When it comes to sound you can get lucky and have an old SB 16 given to you for free, or pick it up on a web auction for 5-7$. Just my 2... ------------------ Visit http://home.c2i.net/bebenum for som tips on(flight)sim immersion hardware 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viceroy Posted January 20, 2001 Share Posted January 20, 2001 CM runs fine on my minimum set up: 200MMX 64mbRAM Voodoo2 Full install. I stick to small battles typically around the company level or less than a 1000 in QB. Runs pretty smooth and pauses while the computer thinks are not very long. I couldn't be happier. So, in answer to the Question .... you could go lower than mine and it'd still work. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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