schrullenhaft help needed...

[patboy]

Hi,

:confused: Don't know whether it's already asked before ? I would like know if anyone has the same problem as me ? I explain me, when I play a very huge scenario vs AI my PC is very sluggish ; I only have 256 Mo RAM, and I would like upgrade my memory to 512 Mo RAM. Do you think this issue might be solved ?

Thanks by advance

Cheers

Pat

[ April 02, 2005, 12:00 AM: Message edited by: patboy ]

[Ian Criag]

Hi,

Upgrading your memory from 256MByte to 512MByte of RAM is a good idea, but won't help you speed up the sluggishness in the game significantly. Its down to raw cpu power, how much onboard cache the CPU has, how much system RAM, and how much RAM the graphics card has.

To give you an idea, when playing huge senarios on my machine which is a 3.2GHz P4 (512KByte Cache), 2GByte DDR syetm memory, Gainwood 256Mbyte 6800GT Graphics card) it is still sluggish when playing a Huge scenario. I tend to stay away from Huge scenarios!

Hope this helps.

[DEY]

There is several things needed to be know of your PC Pat.

What type of CPU does the PC have and what is it's clock speed.

Is this a brand name PC or a Clone. We need to know what type of motherboard is in it.

Does the motherboard support SDR and or DDR RAM, is your current ram sdr or ddr.

Does the motherboard have a AGP slot or is your videocard PCI.

What type of videocard are you using and how much ram is on it, and is it a PCI or AGP.

Also what your using to process sound can have a major affect on overall game performance. Mostly all of that intergrated sound will kill a PC in regards to gaming.

What version of Windows are you using, if it's XP and your using it as a game rig, you for damn sure want to boast that up to 512mg of ram.

[Redwolf]

To figure this out you need to start the system monitor, select the memory usage chart, run that big scenario and then look whether the memory curve went over the 256 MB you have.

If yes, upgrading RAM will help. If not it is something else, e.g. your video card.

For me it does. I forgot the details but big CMBB scenarios were hovering around 384 MB.

Keep in mind that the Windows memory monitor is stupid as it doesn't allow you to tell anonymous memory from paged in file-backed memory.

[ April 02, 2005, 07:35 AM: Message edited by: Redwolf ]

[patboy]

Thanks to all for your help !

Hardware : MB/CPU Intel P4 2.4 Ghz

chipset Sis645DX/962L A2 ATX

memory 256 MB DDR PC 333

VGA Nvidia geforce 5700VE 128 MB AGP 8

sound on board chipset AC 97

Windows XP

Hope these info could help you to give me the right way to follow. Thanks again.

* I've enough to play short scenario

Cheers

Pat

[ April 02, 2005, 03:24 PM: Message edited by: patboy ]

[DEY]

Pat,

Without doubt that low amount of ram would be a real performance bottleneck in your current setup.

I would suggest you add a 512meg stick if you could afford it. I'm running 768meg of 266mhz stuff.

You didn't mention what kind of soundcard your running, do you have any performance problems when there are a lot of units on the field active at any one time.

Then of course videocard settings can affect performance big time, such as Antialiasing, Anisotropic Filtering. Also whether Vertical Sync is enabled or not.

And even the videocard driver version can affect things alot in that regard.

[Redwolf]

Again, if you want to know this you have to measure it. Instructions in my post above.

Everything else is pure speculation.

[yacinator]

Originally posted by DEY:

And even the videocard driver version can affect things alot in that regard.

Very true always make sure to get the latest drivers. For example, updating the drivers for my x800pro made a humongous diffrence. I went from like 3700 sumfink in 3dmark05 to like 4440 ! Thats like ~20% diffrence!

[DEY]

when I play a very huge scenario vs AI my PC is very sluggish ; I only have 256 Mo RAM,

I guess I'm getting old I was under the impression you meant that moving around a huge map was giving you problems, but I gather you mean anysize map with a lot of units on it is a big problem.

sound on board chipset AC 97

Okay you did mention what soundcard your using, again I blame old age.

As I stated considering your running WinXP, you need to increase your system memory to at least 512meg, the more ram you have the more cache windows will make, improving all around performance.

Frankly I don't know what kind of sound method is used in the combat mission games.

But I do know that much of that integrated AC97 sound is a real pig on a PC's performance, in regard to games.

First I would boast up the ram, check out those other things I mentioned about the videocard and see how things are, if still having performance problems I'd condsider next looking at doing something about the sound processing ablities of your machine, by installing a soundcard capable of hardware acceleration.

[Andrew Kulin]

I seem to recall that scenarios with lots of damage (i.e., craters and stuff) really can slow down even the most mighty of PCs. Trees and effects levels may need to be tuned down too.

Also check your video-card settings - you may need to notch back AA/AF somewhat for really huge scenarios if you have set it to something other than "Application Controlled" under Performance and Quality Settings (onmy NVidia Card).

Run the memory monitor to confirm, but getting more RAM can only help. Just make sure to review your mobo manual before buying as there may be limitations in the number of sticks you can use and pairings and so forth. Wouldn't hurt to also confirm what you do have in there now (RAM size, type (speed))

[TufenHuden]

XP is a ram-resourse hog-Go to start/run/type-

msconfig and shut off apts you don't need and reboot-a window will pop up of what you have done,

check the box that says don't you want the meesage to continue-this helped me-and I had the juice

P-4-3.0 GHZ

ASUS-P-4C800E-DELUXE

1-GIG-Corsair-PC-3200-dual-channel ram

Gainward-6800GT-256MB GS

XP-Pro-

and at 1st CM would lock up then continue.

You got good stuff-up to 1-gig of ram will help

latest vid drivers that go good with CM.

Mobo drivers might help to-also maybe new Vid card

6800-GT 256mb run from $415.00 and below-or OME for -ASUS-GAINWARD-BFG.

$335.00

[Redwolf]

One last time:

if you want an answer to your original question, you need to run the f*&^#ing memory monitor. Do you think we can look into your PC remotely?

XP's memory hunger doesn't have anything to do with CM performance as long as there are no active programs in the background. CM uses the DirectX libraries and the video and sound and input drivers. These did not grow since NT4.0. All that desktop junk in XP isn't active so it doesn't matter that it wants more RAM.