running a low end machine

[Flyboy]

with the nearing completion of AH2 i may be forced to upgrade or even buy a all new computer, so i need some pointers on what i need to upgrade.

here is my machine: (the info is from a software called Hwinfo32 i myself dont have a clue what some of those figures mean )


running win98(se)
intel P4 1500
motherboard- Biostar M7TDA/B/R/E/F/P4TDK
256Mb memory SDRAM
nVidia geforce2 MX100\200 (64mb)


what is the expected frame rate from such a machine? i tried AH2 in the early betas and it was unplayable.

[Orig]

It'll may run fine depending on how crippled the GF2-MX card is.  Get some recent video drivers, make sure you have directx9b, and see what happens.  There have been some framerate optimizations done in the last month or two.  If it doesn't run, all you really need is a new video card so you'll just need to decide if you want to go budget, mid-range, or high-end on your vid card.

[FOGOLD]

I would imagine a better video card would help..but.. your system IS getting a bit long on the tooth. Depending on your budget, you could pick up an Athlon 2500XP 512 DDR Ram and a midrange Graphics card in a new box for ooh I dunno,certainly less than 500 dollars asuming you keep your old keyboard, mouse and monitor.

Your system would be fine but the SDR memory is a bit of a bottleneck and your Motherboard probably doesn't support DDR.

I would be inclined, rather than spend money on a graphics card and given you don't know (or care:D) about the guts of your PC, to go out and find a reasonable new box.

Sorry. Rambling on as usual.

[MOSQ]

Flyboy,
You have everything you need except a vid card to make AHII work.
My system get's 30 FPS low over a field and I max out at 45 FPS in flight above a couple of thousand feet. I have my AHII set for 45 FPS max, so I don't know what max rates I would get. And this is with AA and AF enabled.

Here's my specs:
Originally a Dell XPS -T P-3 600. Still use all the original Dell compenents including the BX-440 mobo except the CPU and vid card upgrade below.
My system was unplayable in AHII until I added the below video card. I had already upgraded the cpu in December to make AHI more playable.

Upgraded the CPU with a PowerLeap Celeron 1.4 ghz.
384 megs RAM
Win 98se
Nvidia FX 5200 Ultra 128 mb vid card.

It's the video card that did the trick. AHII is a direct X 9 game. Your card, and my previous card (Nvida GF4 440MX) are not Direct X9 enabled.  You MUST buy a direct X 9 enabled card.

I bought the 5200 Ultra becuase it was the cheapest DX-9 enabled card that has good performance. It was $114 at Frys.

The best deal around for the $ is probably the Radeon 9600 XT, available on New Egg for $150 to $199. I didn't get it becuase I figured I was CPU limited, a high performance card would have been a waste. The 9600 XT is an excellent perfomer.

The cheapest DX 9 card on the market is the Radeon 9600 SE, but I strongly reccommmend against it. It's a really poor performer.

As you can see our systems are very equvalent. A new DX-9 vid card and you'll do fine.

[Skuzzy]

Actually, you can breathe life into a lot of video cards in AHII.  I noticed you have 64MB of video ram.  Set the maximum texture size to 256 in AHII.  Right now you are swapping like a maniac, depending on the situation as the default textures are 1024.

Turn off bump mapping and transitions.

We have given far more options in AHII to help scale the performance.  Obviously you lose a lot of eye candy, but that is the trade off.

[MOSQ]

Skuzzy,
A quick primer on what texture sizes do and how they should be adjusted would be very helpful, along with bump mapping, AF, and transistions. For instance I have a 128 MB vid card, what and how would texture sizes changes make a difference. Perhaps a "sticky" on how to adjust AHII settings and what difference they make in the game would help everyone.

[Skuzzy]

I'll try to get one together MOSQ.  In the meantime, there is nothing preventing anyone from just playing with the settings.

The problem is what works with one video card may not work with another.  Makes it a bit complicated.