How to get started

[cimmaronjim]

I just found this site and I am jacked. It will probably be spring before I can get a powerful P.C. and a high speed connection. Yep, still on dial up.

Iv'e seen the minimum system requirements but what do I really need to be happy?

Should I look into having a custom gaming machine built?

Any laptops capable of running this game?

A new Laptop might be easier to justify to the "powers that be" than a new desktop, even if it was ridiculously more expensive.

Also, any less system demanding P.C. or console(ps2, xbox) games I could play to give me a little experience in the meantime?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[porkfrog]

Well, If you can afford a custom gaming machine, I'd say GO FOR IT!!! then again I love computers and built mine myself about a year ago. While not crazy good, I find it handles the game very nicely.


ASUS SLI MOBO (A8N i think)
amd3200winchester(oc'd)
2x 1mb OCZ Platinum RAM
35gb Raptor 15k rpm HD
1x nVidia 6600gt (softmod'd to an FX540)
forget which sound card i bought


This tax return season I plan on getting another Raptor for Raid 0, and a new Video Card or two.

[68Dougal]

As for laptops, I'm on a 1.5 year old Dell and the game plays fine.

2.0 GHz Pentium M
1 Gb RAM
ATI x300 mobile

Detail sliders in the middle & hi-res skins, and frames are pegged at 60 (max refresh).

So, anything the exceeds these specs should perform just fine.

[Rocket]

Until recently I played on a 1ghz amd with about 386mb mem and a really crappy vid card.  Oh yeah and a modem.  You don't need high speed to play.  It is more important to have a steady connection not a fast one.  Don't let anyone but Skuzzy (support@hitechcreations.com) tell you about the networking end



S!
Rocket

[cimmaronjim]

Good info guys. keep the suggestions coming!!

[The Fugitive]

post what you have for a machine now, maybe these gurus have enough tweaks to get you flying now. oh and btw, many still use dial-up and have no problems with the connection

[FX1]

If you can build a system then its around $500 for a good starter. Not to bad for a gaming machine.

[BaldEagl]

OK guys don't laugh at me but I'm still running a 600 meg PIII, 512K PC100/PC133 SDRAM, 64 Meg G-Force 440 MX2, 2 X 120 Gig HD and Win98 with a 10 year old MS Sidewinder 3D Pro.  I have absolutely no problems running the game unless i get around LARGE bomber groups or furballs of say 50 or more players.  Then my frames will drop and a couple of times a year I'll just have to go find another place to do someting else.  Besides that, up until about 4 years ago I was still on dial-up.  High speed made no appreciable difference.

Wish I could afford a new machine but I don't really need it to play AHII.

[Schatzi]

cimmaronjim, what you need will basically depend on what you would like to have from the game and what you can afford/convince TPTB of.


If you just want to play with decent FR and low graphic/detail settings, you can look at machine like FX1 suggested, or a medium performing Laptop.

If you want full graphics and top FR even in multiplane furballs, then youll need to invest some more money into a gaming desktop or a high end Laptop.




This is my Laptop:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz, ~2.8GHz
446MB RAM
RADEON IGP 345M
SoundMAX Digital Audio

It runs AH, but barely. Non-playable really in online mode. With everything tweaked to performance, i get 10-15 FPS when sitting in tower. Encountering another plane (even the drones) kill anything that resembles remotely a FR.


My current desktop is a

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+,  MMX,  3DNow, ~2.2GHz
2048MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
SB X-Fi Audio [A000]

It runs AH at full detail with 75-85 FPS and cost me about 800 EUR building from scratch.


Whatever you get, make sure it has external graphics, not onboard graphic chip and at least 1024 MB RAM.

[Schatzi]

Originally posted by BaldEagl
Wish I could afford a new machine but I don't really need it to play AHII.

I thought that too while playing on my old Laptop the firsth months. Whatcha want? I got 30-35 FPS and the game is running. OK, closeing up on bomber formations is a problem, but i do not care i only want to kill fighters anyway. Who needs all that pretty graphic detail yadda yadda....

Boy was i wrong. The first time i played on my new desktop PC, with the ground detail and distance sliders to 3/4 eye candy..... whoa! You can actually SEE the ground guns at a base when they are still up? Needless to say the first days i kept augering left and right because i was simply so amazed at what i could make out in the "distance". Also needless to say that my gunnery and fighting "skills" made a sudden leap to aforemost unknown realms.


You might be missing out Bald .

[cimmaronjim]

Tell ya what guys, both my desktops are crap. one is a e-machine with 500 Celeron and about 256mb ram and the other is a hp with 400 Celeron and about 319mb ram. Don't know about graphics, Whatever came in em I guess.

The only reason I don't have anything better is because the lady of the house has a pretty good machine, which I use, but I really don't want to clog up her machine with programs, wouldn't want anything that goes wrong for the life of that machine to be blamed on my game.

So I'm thinking that after the holiday bills get paid, a major expenditure on a high end laptop is in order.
I don't know much about tech, so by external graphics you mean a card and not something that is really external like a usb drive or something right?

[BaldEagl]

Yep, that's what they meant.  As long as it's a card and not built into the motherboard.