I had managed to pull 25-40 fps in AH2 with my 2 year-old Dell 1.7 gig P4 machine. I thought that was pretty good considering. Then the Dell's motherboard went belly up and it I had little choice but to build a new machine using the various drives from the old machine.
Since I could pick individual components, I was able to build a nice machine on the cheap.
Frame rates improved considerably, now up between 60 and 80 fps. However, I knew that ATI card had a lot more in it, so I began making adjustments. Essentially, I set the performance slider halfway off center towards "performance".
I logged into the beta arena and began checking the frame rate at various locations.
I was getting 155 fps in the cockpit on the runway. Once airborne out of the ground clutter, the frame steadily went up. To my amazement, while glancing to my right from the cockpit I observed an astounding 320 fps, with 245 fps straight ahead!!!
That's a full order of magnitude increase in frame rate for an expenditure not much over $450. Moreover, there's still more speed if I want it by just moving the Radeon slider to the max performance setting. Perhaps, at the expense of some graphic detail though. I don't see any need to go that far.
So, those of you gents who are having trouble running AH2, you can certainly build a monster machine for minimum investment if you shop around for the best prices.
My regards,
Widewing
