System requirements

[Greebo]

A reminder from Microsoft keeps popping up telling me my windows 10 version is ready for download and upgrade.  It ain't happen'n in my lifetime.

Skuzzy discusses fixes for this issue in his Hints and Tips thread.

[Hajo]

Skuzzy discusses fixes for this issue in his Hints and Tips thread.

Thanx Greebo.

[Skuzzy]

Skuzzy discusses fixes for this issue in his Hints and Tips thread.

Specifically: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,71591.msg4998528.html#msg4998528

[715]

Anyone running Beta on XP?  If so how is it performing?

I run it on XP and it works fine.  My system has been super sensitive to bugs (causing CTDs) that other peoples systems seem to shrug off, but HiTech has found and fixed those bugs.  In terms of frame rates it is quite playable.  I get 60 in flight most of the time, about 30's to 40's on the ground except in particularly dense forests where I get as low as 20 or, in the worst case, the flak base in CraterMA which has many complex objects (flak guns) as well as a lot of dense trees, where I go as low as 10.  However, I have all options turned up to max, except Environment at none and Post Lighting off.  In addition I insist on running 4X adaptive Multi Sampled Anti-Aliasing which anti-aliases not only polygon edges, but some transparent textures as well and which causes a significant frame rate loss.

3GHz E8400 with 4GB RAM, Radeon HD7870 with 2GB graphics RAM, XP SP3.

Of course I don't use XP to surf the web as it no longer gets security updates.  I dual boot to Ubuntu for that.

[Spacy]

FYI Beta:  I have a Dell XPS 8500 mid size case with a Gigabyte mother board, 3.40 GHz i7 quad core processor, 12 GB RAM and I had an Nvidia GTX 650 card running Windows 7.  I had to turn down most of the settings to have a frame rate of 20-45 in Beta.  I just installed an Nvidia GTX 970 card and now I have every texture and graphics settings maxed and my frame rate is pegged at 60 FPS (which is all my monitor will support) no matter what I do in the arena.  It was well worth the upgrade.  See you in the unfriendly skies!

[LCAMerciful]

Why not windows 10?  Personally I'm sticking with 7 as long as possible but if I were stuck with 8.1 I'd jump on the free upgrade in a heartbeat.  It's worlds better than 8.1 IMO.

Windows arghhhhhhhh   I've just got 8.1 running as good as it can for a mobile application system rather than an operating system.

A reminder from Microsoft keeps popping up telling me my windows 10 version is ready for download and upgrade.  It ain't happen'n in my lifetime.

Beta is running fine with 8.1 which I find surprising. I do wish they'd have enhanced XP rather then design new systems for applications.

Anyone running Beta on XP?  If so how is it performing?

[Chilli]

Two things with win 10 that I have been listening two.  1)  The "free" upgrade may have some hidden costs when it comes to later on support, and 2)  Drivers issues may no have fixes yet for all applications or programs, effectively breaking some software.

Do I know that either of the two are still valid, NO.  Do I feel it is worth the risk from 8.1 pro 64bit, NO.  If it were a tablet or touch screen, then maybe the win 10 would have some perks that I am currently not aware of.

Anyone care to add something one way or the other?

[Chilli]

Challenge,

Thank you for pushing this!  My motherboard has 2 PCIe slots of differing bandwidth x16 and x8.  It is an ordeal to get SLI to even work with it, but doable.  In fact, I just enabled SLI again and tried your handy suggestion to use the display tool.  It works great and shows a marked improvement in framerate in AH2.  Now, with Beta,  I actually get decreased framerates with SLI enabled.  I suspect, that the x8 PCIe bandwidth is the culprit.  The question that remains, is should that handicap cost greater than 50%  in framerates, and hopefully there is more in play or even ideas on tweak for HiTech when dealing with slower motherboard / systems. 

Until then, if you have more ideas that I can try with my system, please let me hear them.  I am currently reading about rolling back to 332 drivers, but I have very little confidence in finding huge changes there.

{snip}

My system is older, and so are the video cards (not SLI either; have been told there is no difference).  {snip}

That would be incorrect!


http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,376532.0.html

From another outside forum discussion about decrease in FPS after SLI 2 GPUs.

Question:  You do have two PCIe 16x slots for your graphics cards, correct? There are slower PCIe configurations, and the speed will default to the lowest common speed. AKA PCIe 16x will slow down to match a slower PCIe 8x slot for your 2nd card. That, or it could be a driver problem.


Answer:  Yeah, I'm running a GA-Z87X-UD3H.

 I'm aware one is a PCIE x16 and the other is a x8 but it doesn't explain why my fps decreases so much in games and increases in benchmarks.

[Volron]

With my old machine cooked, getting an upgrade:

Motherboard
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK 2/USB 3.1 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132561

CPU
Intel Core i7-4790K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 4.0 GHz LGA 1150 BX80646I74790K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117369&cm_re=Intel_core_i7-4790K_4.0_ghz-_-19-117-369-_-Product

RAM
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model CMD32GX3M4A1866C9

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233393

VC
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE 3X OC EDITION

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125685&cm_re=Gigabyte_GeForce_GTX_970_4GB-_-14-125-685-_-Product

SSD
SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 1TB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-75E1T0B/AM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147374


These are the parts I have in mind.  How will this machine hold up?  How close can I "absolute max" the graphics?  I'm only getting one VC at the moment but may opted for a 2nd one later.  The reason I ask here is because I'm taking AH3 into account with this build and I figured I'd post into this thread rather than creating a new one.  I'm fairly certain that if she'll run AH3 well, I will have no problems with other games.

[Skuzzy]

If you are running 1920x1080 resolution, the the 970 is a great choice.  Best bang for the buck, for sure.

The computer hardware is ample for AH3, as long as you do not load up 400 processes running in background.

[Volron]

Awesome!   I'm matching my friends machine with 2 exceptions: He's using the Mark S MB and he has a 2nd VC.  Since it's intel (my previous 2 builds were AMD), I was a little on fence.  Who better to ask if parts for a build will work great with a game than the game devs?   As for processes; The most that would be active (aside from a game) is whatever is default by Windows (I'll be sticking with Win 7 64bit Pro), YT on Firefox, winamp, whatever control panel that will be included with the VC, Skype, logitech software for mouse/headset, or TS.


Then I'll go ahead with the order once the return hits.  It'll be good to actually use AA again in AH, and every other program. lol  Thank you.

[49Dallas]

If you are running 1920x1080 resolution, the the 970 is a great choice.  Best bang for the buck, for sure.

The computer hardware is ample for AH3, as long as you do not load up 400 processes running in background.

Would you recommend a 960 for those who couldn't afford a 970? $180 for 2gb one and $230 for 4gb, SSC, ACX2.0+ card.

[Bizman]

The GTX 960 is a very good card, even the 2 GB version. You won't be able to max everything, but you'd get very good frame rates using settings above default and a 1920 x 1080 monitor @ 60 Hz.

The 970 is the lowest nominee for everything maxxed.

[Skuzzy]

The 960 is a good card.  You might need to tweak the game settings a little, but it would be up to you as everyone has their own idea of what they like and do not like as it pertains to performance and visual trade-offs.

[Volron]

A bit dated, but wanted to ask a few things and the build I listed here is what I use:

1)  Can I put the Beta on my SSD, or is it best I used one of my HDD's?

Reason I ask is because search found me this:

You really do not want to run the Beta on an SSD anyway.  With the frequency of updates it will just make a mess of an SSD.

2)  Will the Beta "default" my graphics settings based off of my VC?

I'm going to push it, and MAX everything, just to see what I get, but I'd like to mess around with it's "default" settings a little at first.