Best specs. for CMSF?

[Piecekeeper]

Thinking of buying a new PC. I would like to build it for CMSF because that's the game i mostly play, and will in the future. What is the best specs. for CMSF? Is there any computer running, lets say, "objective pooh" mission perfectly smooth on highest settings?

[donnieitaly]

When you find one let me know :-)

And don't use Vista!

[cabal23]

1) Stay away from dell, gateway or any other prepackaged system. First they come loaded with Vista which we already discussed is garbage. Second they have a lot of integrated parts which you don't want. Third they come loaded with tons of garbage, that nothing short of formatting your hard drive will get rid of them.

2) Have one built by a reputable company. I use ginstar.com. Some of the cheapest parts in the US. You can customize a system until your hearts desires are fufilled.

3) Choose lots of ram, a video card from the $150-200 range(perhaps some people can suggest some) with as much on board ram as possible. A mid range dual processor and motherboard should do you fine. That is what I run and I run all scenarios flawlessly. Mind you I still have issues with draw distance because of my settings.

Just stay away from buying something from a big box retailer. Pricewatch.com is another useful resource when looking for the cheapest/reliable parts.

Shoot me an email if you have any other questions.

[Piecekeeper]

Thank you very much! Its hard to get around vista these days. Is it really that horrible when playing CMSF?. What about vista 64-bit? Ive heard only a 64-bit OS can use 4 gig ram. When is windows 7 coming? Nvidia? Ati? quad core? dual core?

[cabal23]

Quad core really is overkill, dual core is pretty standard now. I just wouldn't mess with Vista. I had more issues, not just CMSF related, with Vista than I ever had with all operating systems combined. Vista has a new email client different than outlook. I could go on but I won't, why i hated Vista. For my uses Vista was a waste. The rule with Window is wait until the service pack. Period. Way too many bugs to work out in the first few years. ATI or NVIDA is a preference. Do your research. I chose NVDIA because most recommendations rated it higher.

[Lethaface]

I dont have any problems running the game under vista 64bit. All scenarios run fine in 1920x1200, but they better did on my Corei7 920, 6gb ddr3 & 4870x2.

Obviously i dint buy this machine for CMSF. My new laptop can run it very well actually, dell E6500. It has 256 MB dedicated VRAM and a 2.4 ghz core2duo along with 4gb ram. So I guess any decent dual core processor and recent video card with at least 256vram should run the game fine. If I were you I would go for vista definately, having no problems with it (after years of skepticism). 64bit generally works fine generally, some older hardware wont have drivers for it though. Some rare software wont work, it never posed a real problem to me yet. I use it for my work pc as well. The ability to have more ram really favours it imo.

[c3k]

Lethaface, nice system.

Pooh with all the bells and whistles and highest AA/AF runs smooth as silk at 1920 x 1200 on mine; Vista64, 8Gb Ram, nvidia 8800gtx video card, q6600 (at 3.0Ghz). And I usually have other tasks running in the background.

(Piecekeeper; you mentioned 4Gb as a ram limit. Here's a thumbnail sketch. ANY 32 bit operating system has an upper limit of about 4Gb. Windows32 (any flavor) drops that a bit. The limit applies to ANY memory; RAM, video, cache, etc. So, in reality it's around 3 1/2 max usable RAM. Some tech guy will correct my nomenclature and numbers, but that's about right. Any 64 bit operating system can address a lot more memory. (2^32 vice 2^64) Then you run into physical limitations such as ram slots, available voltage/current, and actual memory sticks.

nvidia vs. ati - both good, it comes down to user preference, comfort. (My only "comfort" item would be to check your motherboard. If it uses an nvidia controller, I'd lean towards an nvidia video card. My .02)

A higher clocked dual core will give you better performance than a lower clocked quad core in almost any game.

Get a big screen.

[Sixxkiller]

Well I run CMSF just fine on my Dell cheapy $700 laptop with a video card not meant for gaming. You can uninstall any pre-packaged option w/o reformatting pretty easy. Vista doesnt suck if you know what you are doing.

I do wish I had Lethaface's rig tho But I would love a Quad-core to play a few games (CoD4 the most) that actually support it.

[Lets_All_Fight]

I dont have any problems running the game under vista 64bit. All scenarios run fine in 1920x1200, but they better did on my Corei7 920, 6gb ddr3 & 4870x2.

How do you like the 4870x2? I'm currently building my new machine around an i7920 with 6gb of ram too but i'm undecided on what GPU to go for: I'm leaning towards an nvidia 285gtx just now but seeing as how the 4870x2 is a similar price i'm giving that one a lot of thought as well. Never had an ATI card before so I'm a bit unsure.

[Lethaface]

Hey Lets All Fight,

The 4870x2 works very nice for me. The latest drivers have even given some extra speed bonus, and I'll guess more of that will happen in the future. Didn't have any problems with it really, altough there is one setting 'adaptive AA' that has to be turned off for some games in order to work good.

Crysis runs very great at enthusiastic & 8xAA. Same goes for Far Cry 2. I have a 1920x1200 monitor.

This is my first ATI card as well and untill now I haven't been dissapointed. Stalker doesnt run but im not sure if it is vista64, Core i7 or the radeon (probably even stalkers crappy code).

I did like the Nvidia control panel better, altough the ATI works ok too. A friend of me has two 260's in SLI and has been complaining about the drivers a lot, which made me feel better about the few problems I had.

I think in the end it wont matter that much, I got the ati because it has 2gb ddr5 memory. The 'the way its ment to be played' program for nvidia ensures optimized performance before games do come out, I think thats a heavy plus for nvidia. However the recent driver problems for Nvidia shows that this doesn't always ensures smooth play.

In short: I would try to compare performance on some games you like, the cards are very comparable. At least the 4870x2 is worth its cost, playing Empire Total War demo I was happily reminded of the power

One thing about the Core i7: I can advise 1600 mhz or higher RAM though (in 3x2GB modules), the triple channel memory really pays off!

[manchesterreg]

This is going to be my new computer, any probs playing strike force on this you forsee??

Intel® Pentium® DualCore E5200 (2 X 2.50GHz) 800MHz FSB/2MB Cache

Memory (RAM)

4GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz - (2x2GB)

Windows Vista™ Home Premium 64 bit Edition + SP1,

Memory - 1st Hard Disk

320GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)

1st CD/DVD Drive

16x DVD-ROM & 52x CD-ROM DRIVE

Graphics Card

1024MB GEFORCE 9500GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Sound Card

Sound Blaster® Audigy® SE with 7.1 Surround Sound (£21)

Monitor

19 Inch Wide TFT Silver/Black 1440 x 900 5MS, D-Sub, DVI, Audio

[Lets_All_Fight]

Hey Lets All Fight,

The 4870x2 works very nice for me. The latest drivers have even given some extra speed bonus, and I'll guess more of that will happen in the future. Didn't have any problems with it really, altough there is one setting 'adaptive AA' that has to be turned off for some games in order to work good.

Crysis runs very great at enthusiastic & 8xAA. Same goes for Far Cry 2. I have a 1920x1200 monitor.

This is my first ATI card as well and untill now I haven't been dissapointed. Stalker doesnt run but im not sure if it is vista64, Core i7 or the radeon (probably even stalkers crappy code).

I did like the Nvidia control panel better, altough the ATI works ok too. A friend of me has two 260's in SLI and has been complaining about the drivers a lot, which made me feel better about the few problems I had.

I think in the end it wont matter that much, I got the ati because it has 2gb ddr5 memory. The 'the way its ment to be played' program for nvidia ensures optimized performance before games do come out, I think thats a heavy plus for nvidia. However the recent driver problems for Nvidia shows that this doesn't always ensures smooth play.

In short: I would try to compare performance on some games you like, the cards are very comparable. At least the 4870x2 is worth its cost, playing Empire Total War demo I was happily reminded of the power

One thing about the Core i7: I can advise 1600 mhz or higher RAM though (in 3x2GB modules), the triple channel memory really pays off!

Hmm. Lots to think about there. I'm really tempted to just go for it. Thats a shame about Stalker as its one of my favourite games and I was looking forward to playing it again. (my current card was an emergency purchase after my beloved factory overclocked 7950GT died.) I can get a Saphire 4870x2 for about the same price as a 285gtx and that makes it very attractive.

Yep, I've got 6 gigs of 1600 mhz Corsair dominator ram on order. Should be here on Saturday with the MoBo and cpu. I tell you, everything was easy enough to pick until I got to the gpu - the only thing I've learned on various sites is that the Nvdia/ATI divide has a habit of redifining the term 'Fanboi'!

Cheers for that Lethaface, that was very helpful and might have just pushed me towards my first ATI card.

[c3k]

Stalker: Clear Sky working fine on my rig; vista64. See upstream post for the rest of my rig. May be something else there.

[Lethaface]

c3k,

Yeah i dont know whats the problem. Tried reinstalling etc but wont help. Saw some other people running the game fine with an 4870x2 on fora, sow perhaps it just the combination of things or my bad luck

Lets All Fight,

You surely wont be dissapointed by it

What mobo did you get? Im using the asus p6t deluxe and im quite satisfied with it. Placing another one 4870x2 could pose some difficulties though, since the thing is Massive. Be sure to get a big case, otherwise you'll run into trouble with any of the newer gen cards. I got a quite large tower from Antec, and it only barely fits in

My friend with his 260's in SLI only has room for 1 HD left in his box, hehe. The 4870x2 is like 1/3 the size of my 15" laptop, to give you an impression.

Last part of advice, 650W minimum so I would go for a 700W+ PSU if I were you. If you cant be bothered reading the install manual, make sure to connect 2(!) power cables to the card, or it will run at half speed only. Its quite easily overlooked and could pose some a serious frustration....

One thing that might scare you at first is the bloody temperature these things run, at vanilla fan speed. The yellow line begins at 85 degrees in the ati tool, when I saw it at 86C under full load I was like WTF &*@^$*.. However all seems to be normal according to ati, and the Nvidia 2xx series are similar in temp (80C+). This is all without any hardcore cooling system (all stock), however my case has 3 built in fans though. I think that a smallish case with only 1 stock fan in it might not be wise to use for this cards, as they probably will turn the thing in a sauna.

I have created a manual fan profile at 50% and that keeps the card well under 50C easy, at full load. However, you'll need some decent sound system as the fan at 50% sounds like a jet engine at 100%

Anyway, you could probably just let it heat up, 3 year warranty included. After 3 years its a piece of junk anyway

Have fun with your new setup!

Im awaiting to play Empire Total War, it just started downloading from Steam. The game is one of the reasons for me getting this system, so i'll probably be away for some time. Feeling like a bloody kid, hehehe.

[Dietrich]

Generally my computer (I'd list its specs, but I don't want to bore anyone =P) yields good framerates in most any scenario, even ones with maps as large as any in the Marine campaign or the Forging Steel campaign.

My recent attempts at playing "USMC FISH" (F.I.S.H.ing in Garmsir), though, have been dogged by poor framerates. Could it be because of the sheer number of buildings and walls on the map? I'm puzzled about it. I switched all the graphics settings to medium so as to avoid framerate problems.

[Lets_All_Fight]

Lets All Fight,

You surely wont be dissapointed by it

What mobo did you get? Im using the asus p6t deluxe and im quite satisfied with it. Placing another one 4870x2 could pose some difficulties though, since the thing is Massive. Be sure to get a big case, otherwise you'll run into trouble with any of the newer gen cards. I got a quite large tower from Antec, and it only barely fits in

My friend with his 260's in SLI only has room for 1 HD left in his box, hehe. The 4870x2 is like 1/3 the size of my 15" laptop, to give you an impression.

Last part of advice, 650W minimum so I would go for a 700W+ PSU if I were you. If you cant be bothered reading the install manual, make sure to connect 2(!) power cables to the card, or it will run at half speed only. Its quite easily overlooked and could pose some a serious frustration....

One thing that might scare you at first is the bloody temperature these things run, at vanilla fan speed. The yellow line begins at 85 degrees in the ati tool, when I saw it at 86C under full load I was like WTF &*@^$*.. However all seems to be normal according to ati, and the Nvidia 2xx series are similar in temp (80C+). This is all without any hardcore cooling system (all stock), however my case has 3 built in fans though. I think that a smallish case with only 1 stock fan in it might not be wise to use for this cards, as they probably will turn the thing in a sauna.

I have created a manual fan profile at 50% and that keeps the card well under 50C easy, at full load. However, you'll need some decent sound system as the fan at 50% sounds like a jet engine at 100%

Anyway, you could probably just let it heat up, 3 year warranty included. After 3 years its a piece of junk anyway

Have fun with your new setup!

My system so far is:

Antec 1200 case, (with five fans including the top mounted 200 mm monster.)

Core i7920

Corsair TX850w,

gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 MoBo,

6 gig dd3 dominator ram,

I was going to get the same board as you got but went for the Gigabyte since I've had gigabyte boards before and liked them, and there didn't seem to be that much between them. Annoyingly the company I bought it from started seeling a bundle today of the same ram, the same chip and your board for about 40 notes less than I paid....Lol, never mind.

I'm going finish it off with the 4870x2 (saphire version,) a western digital caviar black hdd, a coolermaster v8 heatsink and some cheap as chips dvd rewriter. I'll need to get vista sorted out as well, which means buying it and sending away for the 64bit version which is a major pain. I'll get all that ordered over the next few days and them get stuck in.

I've never actually built my own machine all the way up from scratch before but I'm looking forward to it. When the case and psu arrived the other day i took one look at them and spent the rest of the night saying 'What have I done?' over and over again!

I play a lot of sims so I'm hoping for games like Over Flanders Field and Il2 to fly like the proverbial. It'll be nice to play some of the more intensive games I've had to put off for a while as well. I can't wait to play CMSF with everthing on full.

[Lethaface]

Ah, I see you had done your homework

Would hate to see some1 with a too small case or underpowered PSU. Got the asus since I had asus before and it tested out pretty good on most sites.

Antec 1200? Just looked it up and its massive hehe! I got the P182 workstation case since its standing in my living room and I don't want to anger the girl too much with 'unestethic' craphola blabla

I like the Antec design and functionality, altough its not completely screw-less.

It was my first completely self built altough I have been swapping every single part for probably more then 10 years. Its a some work but no rocket science if you just take it slowly. Oh and put in your dvdrom first, some holding pins make it difficult to slide it in from the front when the motherboard is placed with processor on top - in my case at least (took me quite some time to get it done).

I advice you not to look at any prices for some time, that is if you dont want to feel ripped off

With your cooler you can easily clock your 920 to 3.8 Ghz stable, by only adjusting the bclk frequency to 190 in Bios (tried it myself, however not with my dominator ram inside, take care of ram voltage max 1.65v).

Temps on full load were reaching 77C though under full load, so I just returned it to normal settings. Its fast enough stock speed after all.

Hope all your games work with Vista 64, however 6gb is a must for the core i7 and its socket/chipset features so Vista 32 is not really an option.

Ah, I see that finally Empire is at 99%, I have some musket firing business to do!

Cheers

[Lets_All_Fight]

Well, that's everything ordered. Went with the 4870x2 as it just looked great for the money. Should all be here on Saturday.

I ended up buying the 64bit OEM version of Vista. I know the deal with the OEM version but, to be honest, I'm not planning on upgrading the motherboard until well after Windows 7 comes out and I'll migrate to that OS probably sooner rather than later. At nearly 50 quid cheaper than the retail version, and seeing as how I don't have to mess around with getting the 64bit dvd from Microsoft, it just made more sense.

Anyways, cheers guys. Cannot wait to get it set up and CM installed.

[MeatEtr]

This is going to be my new computer, any probs playing strike force on this you forsee??

Intel® Pentium® DualCore E5200 (2 X 2.50GHz) 800MHz FSB/2MB Cache

Memory (RAM)

4GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz - (2x2GB)

Windows Vista™ Home Premium 64 bit Edition + SP1,

Memory - 1st Hard Disk

320GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)

1st CD/DVD Drive

16x DVD-ROM & 52x CD-ROM DRIVE

Graphics Card

1024MB GEFORCE 9500GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Sound Card

Sound Blaster® Audigy® SE with 7.1 Surround Sound (£21)

Monitor

19 Inch Wide TFT Silver/Black 1440 x 900 5MS, D-Sub, DVI, Audio

I don't have any first hand experience, but I've heard SB sound cards don't work with Vista at all. So your gonna have to use on-board sound instead.

I got a new system being delivered next week myself. Here's my new PC journey thread from the GF.

My specs:

Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz 1333FSB 12MB L2 Cache

GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB

750 Watt PSU Corsair CMPSU-750TX

500GB SATA HD

Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Chipset

4GB Corsair PC6400 RAM

I ordered mine from Cyberpowerpc.com They've won a ton of awards and the price is pretty cheap compared to other custom building dealers.

[Lets_All_Fight]

Well, it's all built. A lot easier than I hoped - even fitting the huge V8 went smoothly. One of the fans on the case doesn't seem to be running but I haven't really looked into it yet. Aside from that everything is great - until . of course, i get to windows.

It seems my ancient voyager 100 modem - which i've had for about six years - is not compatible with Vista so I'm unable to get online with it which is kind of annoying as I have several games that need to do the online activation thing. Guess I'll just have to see what I can get from my ISP....

Core temp at idle is 29 degress - time to try overclocking, i think.....

[Lethaface]

Have been drowned into ETW last few hours of my spare time, must say I enjoy the game.

How's your performace?

29C idle temp is very nice, might get one of those v8's for myself when i can be bothered with replacing it.

[acrashb]

Is it really that horrible when playing CMSF?. What about vista 64-bit? Ive heard only a 64-bit OS can use 4 gig ram.

Vista 64 is working very well for me. Everything maxed out, smooth panning with as much smoke and action as you can imagine. Core i7, 6GB DDR3 RAM, quick ATI graphics card, etc. But it works just fine on my duo-core laptop (Vista 32) as well, with some built-in graphics chip.

Yes, to use more than 3GB you need a 64-bit OS. It's the future, might as well go there now and be ready. Keep an eye on when buying off-brand peripherals; some don't have 64-bit drivers yet.

[MeatEtr]

Yes, to use more than 3GB you need a 64-bit OS. It's the future, might as well go there now and be ready. Keep an eye on when buying off-brand peripherals; some don't have 64-bit drivers yet.

You sure about that? Check out this pic of my 1 week old system.

I thought it was dependent of the graphics card memory myself. So my graphics card with 512MB would subtract from my memory, so I thought I'd end up with 3.5G of memory. As you can see that's not the case.

Here's my specs:

Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz

Asus P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Chipset

750 Watt Corsair PSU

4GB PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory Corsair

GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB

500GB SATA-II HD

Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX Gaming CPU Cooling Fan

[Lethaface]

I thought it was dependent of the graphics card memory myself. So my graphics card with 512MB would subtract from my memory, so I thought I'd end up with 3.5G of memory. As you can see that's not the case.

Well actually a 32bit system could theoratically support up to 4GB of RAM. However, several hardware components are in need to be mapped into the available total memory bandwith. So dependant on OS, hardware and other things you might have in between 3 and 4 GB available of your 4GB, the rest of the possible bandwith gets eaten up by the addressed hardware components.

Logically that would mean you should have less then 3.5 GB available if you have a

GPU with 512 MB. Well, there are technologies like Physical Address Extension (PAE) which can crank up the available memory in your OS, however not all applications are able to use this.

So, in short: 4GB in 32bit is better then 3GB. Dependant on your setup you might notice it very well or not at all. however, since ddr2 RAM is so awfully cheap, just get the extra bank imo.

[Lets_All_Fight]

Have been drowned into ETW last few hours of my spare time, must say I enjoy the game.

How's your performace?

29C idle temp is very nice, might get one of those v8's for myself when i can be bothered with replacing it.

Performance is great. Far Cry 2 runs with everthing turned up at about 60-65 fps, Stalker:soc looks and plays brilliantly. Only game I'm less than impressed with is Silent Hunter 4 which looks a lot worse than I remember it but I'm not sure why that is. Still have to install shock force on it. I'll maybe try it tonight.