Small Form Factor Solution

[Ooopsy]

On Thanksgiving I sent a mssg to a cousin if he had a low profile card, he brought the extra he had and a couple of spare RIPJAW RAM sticks, overkill. Its a friggin' monster, SAPPHIRE GRAPHICS CARD R9 280X 3GB DDR5 OC. lol Thanks but i dont need a supercharged Yugo   He gave it to me so i guess I'll build around it someday unless fleabay takes it 


ANYWAY, I got an MSI GT730 1G GDDR5, $50 from Amazon. The safe power consumption was a big selling point for me. The Afterburner AP is a nice bonus. I have been running it on a second screen while playing and notice that its' graphs spend less time at MAX while gaming, (both CPU&GPU) than while surfing or watching videos. If I am reading it correctly it shows that a surprising small amount of RAM is actually being used, under 2G.
I had a couple of crashes using the DX11 version but none using DX9 (knocks wood) so am I missing anything not using DX11?

Using native monitor res. of 1440X900.
Max Texture @ 1024
If I turn the options to max it drops into the mid to high 20fps online, everything to min it goes high 60s+. These #s were in busy situations.
Biggest determiner seems to be "Post lighting" ~15+ fps difference, I find it to be a bit distracting to my eyes most times.
I am settling into max on object detail and range with about half the options enabled and average ~55+fps in traffic.

Im looking for a suggestion on  settings to ID enemy planes better. Anyting over 1.5 and I cant tell nose from tail and even closer I have a hard time telling top from bottom of plane, as in roll orientation.

Lastly, i remember from previous versions there was a slight advantage to having graphic options off or at low setting for GV play and seeing them easier. Can i be assured that I am not disadvantaging myself by have tree detail or anything else at a higher setting?


BTW, I was able to uncover that this comp was a retail POS system originally leased to TJMAXX, there are tons of these types of rigs available and even with the extra GPU $$ it shows you can easily have a usable gaming box for well under $200.

Thanks

[Drane]

Hi Ooopsy glad you were able to get it working.    

[Bizman]

I'm afraid you won't get it looking much better than you have it now. Despite the GT 730 being superior by a huge margin to the Intel chip you used to have, it's still a low end card. The Sapphire being a high end card would have given you much more oomph, but as has been discussed the case and power supply are inadequate for such monsters.

One hint, though: Have you changed your FOV to a higher value than the default 90? If so, try with smaller values. You'd loose some peripheral vision which means you'd have to look around more. But you'd also get a lot more pixels to draw the planes near you.

Edit: Oh, dx9 is most likely better for that card.

[SysError]

I am more or less in the same boat (I have the tower version of this PC with very similar specs.)

Been trying to get back into the game but my 4650 video is just the pits.

Two questions:

Is the 750Ti still a good "standard" AH3 video card?  Or has anything taken its spot in the past 8 months?

Just grab the video card model you are thinking about buying,....  The 750Ti is considered to be a decent cost/performer by many players.

Also, I see 2 different 750Tis.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125813

and

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125882


Is there a noticeable difference between 1GB vs 4GB in AH3?

many thanks

[Skuzzy]

1GB is on the edge of being too little.  You almost have to reduce one of the heavy graphic details (shadows or detail) to prevent the game from running out of graphic memory.

On the other hand, the amount of RAM, while important i snot the end of it.  The speed of the RAM is also important.  More, slower video RAM, may not yield good results for overall game play.

It is a balancing act.

[TequilaChaser]

Skuzzy, just out of curiosity, I was wondering which exact  512MB model of Video Card does HTC use for finding/setting the minimum requirements for video?

Back during the closed Alpha testing and closed  beta testing, I was using a very old ASUS HD3870 512MB of GDDR4 video memory, and was using the games default video settings at 1920 X 1200 res and was able to fly with nearly 38 to 41 fps for the most part, except for flying into furballs of 35 to 40 planes and the super-sized  ities, etc.... Never dropped below 26 to 28 fps on that particular test PC

I think I had 5 different computers I was testing back during the Alpha and Beta testing ( 5 hooked up for testing flying online, had another 4 PCs I was testing sparingly offline only)

I know I just like you and HTC really get in to tweaking and cleaning our OSes and systems and take it very seriously more so than most

TC

[Skuzzy]

Our base line performance video card is the NVidia 9800 GTX+.  It has 512MB of video RAM.  You have to disable everything and setup short distances in order for it to be playable, but it works.

[SysError]

Just a quick note on what I ended up doing and thoughts on outcomes.

I went and bought the 4GB "GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 750Ti 4GB WINDFORCE 2X OC EDITION"

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125813

That did not work out for me.  Card requires an external 4 PIN power input which I couldn't supply with my PC. 

I ended up with an upgrade to the 750it (at almost the same price):
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1050 2GB GDDR5 128 Bit PCI-E Graphic Card (GV-N1050D5-2GD)

The 2GB has worked out.  (So far I have seen RAM usage of around 1.1 to 1.2 GB)

https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Geforce-GDDR5-Graphic-GV-N1050D5-2GD/dp/B01MEGB6LK/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1502643251&sr=1-1&keywords=Gigabyte+Geforce+GTX+1050+2GB+GDDR5+128+Bit+PCI-E+Graphic+Card+%28GV-N1050D5-2GD%29

The game plays very well now.  It really is a different game with the new card.

AH3's graphics are really very good.

Thank you for the help.

[Bizman]

Thanks for telling. There's many players struggling with their old rigs so firsthand information about low budget solutions is very valuable.