RAM or CPU?

[JSB]

Hi,

I have rather low specs to play CMSF but it's ok for reasonable maps/battles.

(AMD Athlon64 3400+, 512 Mo RAM, NVidia 6800 (128 Mo), Windows XP).

Not enough money to update the whole thing however.

Will there be a change if I only double the RAM?

There are two graphic options (3D model and texture quality). Do they solicit CPU and RAM the same way?

[Hawkmek]

JSB,

I think another 512 of RAM would be your best bet. I jumped from 512 to 1GB in memory specifically for Oblivion. There was a noticeable difference and my system is older/slower than yours.

Athlon XP 2800+

nVidia 6600GT 128MB

CMSF should play smoother or at least allow you to up the settings with another 512 of RAM.

Good luck,

BG

[aka_tom_w]

RAM for sure

[cmezriczky]

Go for RAM.

I have an old 2MHZ Pentium 4 but 1 GIG RAM and running fine...

Maybe a bigger Graphics Card would help too...

[JSB]

Ok, thank you all.

I'll try it soon and will report the changes.

[JSB]

Well, I have recently bought some additional RAM (1Go now), but since I posted this question, enhanced LOS appeared in the game; Anyway, I can't see real improvement in the performance.

The game becomes especially slow when a lot of units are firing at the same time.

Is it worth to buy a third RAM (up to 1.5 Go) or is my computer a desperate case?

[Tuomio]

More RAM. I find it hard to believe that 512mb vs 1Gb has no noticable difference. 512mb is the limit when you get XP running itself without extensive virtual memory usage. Launch a game on it and a lot of the variables will run from the hard drive.

I have 64 2800+ with 2*2gb DDR in dual channel and do not experience any gameplay hindering performance stalls.

[SlapHappy]

It's hard to get CMSF to scale up very well with hardware upgrades. I moved from 8600 GTS card to an 8800 GT (with 1gb video RAM) which is a helluva jump. My improvement was definite but not massive. I still can't play "City Ruins" with useable frame rates in all views/camera angles. There are just too many buildings and units involved.

Battlefront better optimizing their code for current drivers is probably the best bet for ALL CMSF owners to see the most marked improvements.

One thing I did notice with the new card is my textures seemed cleaner and less buggy. Not sure why though.

[Schrullenhaft]

Generally I would have thought that the extra 512Mb (for a total of 1Gb) would have been a nice speed improvement. I believe the "Enhanced LOS" that has been added to CMSF has increased the CPU load quite a bit (more detailed LOS/LOF checks now).

I assume that you have a Socket 939 AMD64 system. Upgrades for those CPUs are pretty hard to get nowadays. The fastest CPU I see available for this socket from online retailers is the Athlon 64 4000+ (San Diego core, 2.4GHz, 1Mb L2 cache) in the $43-$50 range for an OEM chip (no heatsink included). If you look on eBay you could upgrade to an Athlon 64 X2 4600+ or 4800+, if your motherboard supports the X2 (dual core) processors. CMSF won't really take advantage of the second core (in fact there are/were some problems with multi-core CPUs).

If you're running on a Socket 754, then you have fewer options when it comes to upgrading - mostly limited to CPU purchases from eBay. The fastest CPU generally available is the 3700+ (Clawhammer).

I'm not sure how much of a noticeable difference these particular CPU upgrades will offer over what you're currently running. Depending on the core of your current processor (AMD CPU Info utility) there might be some benefits with a processor upgrade or little discernable difference.

An additional 512Mb *might* make a small difference, but the likelihood is that it won't for CMSF (unless Windows has quite a few things loaded up in the background).