Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: AirFlyer on July 29, 2009, 11:35:43 PM
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Opening
I've been watching the forums the last two days, and it didn't take long to notice a lot of people were having hardware problems. Luckily I myself have a very good computer, and the new version has been no problem for me. I've been trying to help people a bit here and there but it's fairly overwhelming for HTC and others who usually try and provide technical support. So instead I've decided to take a different route, instead of trying to help people from my computer I decided to go to the computer downstairs that is used for nothing but Internet browsing and make it run AHII. I bought this computer maybe 2 months ago for my mother and when I built it I never intended it to even play games, I just built it so it would run normal day applications smoothly and as the title suggest it only ran me about $300 for the whole tower. I want to note that this is in no way a tutorial guiding you to optimize your computer, rather my story and results of trying to make a low-end computer run AH. There are plenty of good tutorials on the forums already and if nothing else this may give you an idea of what to look for.
Hardware
First, lets start with the basic build of this computer, my main goal when building this was for it to be cheap and yet not make to many sacrifices on performance where I thought it would be needed.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 Brisbane 2.6GHz ($50)
GPU: Radeon HD 3450 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 ($30)
Mobo: ECS Geforce6100PM-M2 ($50)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb ($35)
RAM: OCZ (2x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 ($20)
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer PPCS420X 420W ($50)
As you can see there is nothing spectacular running this computer, and IMO would be considered fairly low end for today’s PC gaming market. I know that doesn't total 300 but there are a few other things for the computer that don't affect the performance so I left it out. All the prices are reflected by when I bought the hardware, and I have no idea if they cost more or less now. The computer is also running Windows XP Pro (32bit).
Optimization
Alright, I won’t lie, I’m a bit tech savvy and as such I have a fairly good idea of what I was doing when I decided on this venture, but honestly none of this is hard and can be done by anyone so long as they have a slight clue of what they are doing. I myself learned a lot of this on the AH forums. My first goal was to optimize the computer so it would have more resources to put towards AH when I finally decided to run it. I was never a fan of ATI and when it came to GPUs(Graphics Processing Unit) that I would be using, I always picked Nvidia. I didn’t have that luxury this time and the first thing I went about doing was uninstalling CCC (Control Center Catalyst). For those of you who don’t know CCC is a software program for ATI GPUs that allows you to change different settings on it. Recently I had heard more and more that CCC was a resource hog and that a program called Tray Tools was the way to go. Knowing I would need all the processing power I could get I quickly uninstalled it and replaced it with Tray Tools. A quick Google search will get you the program. My next goal was to limit the amount of process’s running in the background as to free up more resources for the game. The easiest way I know to do this is to run “msconfig” and go to the Startup tab. There is no way to give a one answer solves all as every ones computer is different and requires different process’s and such to run it. What this does though is controls what your computer loads up when it boots, most programs do not need to be started immediately, but rather only when you actually decide to use them. The next thing I did is something that Skuzzy seems to have been preaching for years, and that was to turn the Hardware Sound Acceleration Level down to Standard (3/4). To do this you run “dxdiag” and go to the sound tab. There you will find a slider for it. After this I let a program called TuneUp Utilities do most of the work. They have a 30 day trial that should suffice in getting everything in order for anyone. And to finish it all off I did a HDD (Hard Drive Disc) defrag.
Overclocking
Haha I wish, not on this hardware.
Settings
Alright, now that everything was in order it was time to actually install AHII and play around with different settings to make it work. First thing was to adjust the Video Settings at the main screen. The only real notable things here are AA (Anti-Aliasing), Resolution, and Max Texture. Preparing for the worst, I knew the Max Texture would have to be 128 and AA would have to be set to none. I refused to play at anything but my native resolution for that monitor though so that stayed at 1440x900. Next was to adjust the Graphic Detail settings. This is a bit of trial and error for anyone but I finally decided on this. One thing I refused to do is turn off Detailed Terrain as that really effects how the game looks, so I worked around that the whole time.
(http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu148/Spinnich/Settings.jpg?t=1248928159)
Results
I’m actually surprised, and quite happy. With the current settings I was holding 30 – 50 fps with little to no stuttering what so ever which was completely playable for me. My main trouble was actually using the joystick downstairs as it’s completely different to what I’m used to. Obviously the game doesn’t look quite as great as it does on my own computer, but the difference is about 700$ so it’s no surprise. The game looks about on par with the old AH terrain IMO but I’ll let you decide.
(http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu148/Spinnich/SS_3.jpg?t=1248928207)
(http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu148/Spinnich/SS_2.jpg?t=1248928225)
(http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu148/Spinnich/SS_1.jpg?t=1248928445)
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Good post Airflyer. I think over the next few days I'm going to try to get it to run on my old Dell (now 1.2 Ghz PIII, 768 Mb RAM and a 32 Mb AGP video card). I'll post results after I give it a try.
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Good post Airflyer. I think over the next few days I'm going to try to get it to run on my old Dell (now 1.2 Ghz PIII, 768 Mb RAM and a 32 Mb AGP video card). I'll post results after I give it a try.
let us know how that goes Bald :)
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I still don't get it,people are getting good FRs with PCs that mine surpasses,I have a PC with an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 3.5GB of RAM and an 8800GTS and can't get an FR over 19 whenever I up a plane,I'm stuck in gvs with FRs of 25-32. I used to be able to get GREAT FRs
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I still don't get it,people are getting good FRs with PCs that mine surpasses,I have a PC with an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 3.5GB of RAM and an 8800GTS and can't get an FR over 19 whenever I up a plane,I'm stuck in gvs with FRs of 25-32. I used to be able to get GREAT FRs
Do you use Vista? Have you optimized your background processes for gaming?
I run all of those same settings pictured above except with the sliders near-max and 512 textures at about 50FPS on this setup (http://docs.google.com/View?id=dc3smcbq_147g6dnzdhd). Just requires a bit of maintenance.
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He kinda made me want to test it on an old Dell Latitude D800 (Laptop), so while he was typing his up I decided to give it a go.
Dell Latitude D800:
Intel Pentium M 1.8GHz
512MB RAM
GeForce Fx Go5200 32MB
Windows XP 32-bit
I can run the game with up to 1024 Textures and Hi-Res pack, although it's pointless since I can't run Detailed Terrain.
Settings:
512 Textures
1280x800 Res.
>Horizon on, Full Visual Range, Detail Full Slider, Distance Range 1/4 slider
>Advanced: Bump Map ON All other settings off
I get 35+ FR. Now is it pretty? No as much as my Desktop, but I could easily fly with this if I had to.
Also remember the minimum recommended Computer for this Game is:
1GHz Pentium 4 (Running a little higher then this states)
512MB RAM (Running this on the line)
DirectX 9 Compatible Video card with 64MB of VRAM. (Running 1/2 of what this states)
Some may say it's impossible, or I'm lying, but I keep this Laptop So Clean and Well protected that there is no room for a slow down from anything else in the PC. I use Aus-logic Cleanup and CCleaner to keep the junk files low to keep it running as best as it can. I De-Frag after every Install, CCLean every week and run Virus/Ad/Spyware Tests every few days to make sure nothing got on.
As long as you can keep a computer running clean and well, it should do fine for just about anything ya need. :)
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Yes I use vista,and my machine is SOMEWHAT geared toward gaming,I got the power settings all for performance,I HAD nvidia settings cranked all the way up for AH,I close extra processes,etc... Before that setup worked fine,AH ran GREAT FRs at maxed settings,now I can't even get good frs with low settings
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Yes I use vista,and my machine is SOMEWHAT geared toward gaming,I got the power settings all for performance,I HAD nvidia settings cranked all the way up for AH,I close extra processes,etc... Before that setup worked fine,AH ran GREAT FRs at maxed settings,now I can't even get good frs with low settings
What monitor resolution are you running at?
There's a huge difference between getting good frame rates running at 1280*1024 and doing the same at 1600*1050 or 1920*1200.
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Finally!!! A post that is approaching this upgrade in a productive manner. :aok
Great posts and great information to help others.
You guys deserve a BIG salute.
(http://99thastag.com/forum/Smileys/default/salute.gif)
capera
99th Aggressor Squadron (Tactical Air Group)
Officer Commanding
"Promptus ad Vindictam - swift to avenge"
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Ran CC cleaner for windows and apps, lowered vid card to performance, not quality setting, defragged.
All processes off except 2 to run game.
Frame rate 16-20
Shutdown water (didn't like new water anyway)
Frame rate 24
Shut down terrain (bummer cuz its cool)
Frame rate 25-40 depending on what was in the area, the bigger the fight the slower the frame rate.
Nividia Ge Force 7300Le 512MB
Dell E520 machine
Going to try a few more things -suggestions appreciated - this is fustrating but I'm sure fix able.
Whats the best resolution?
Thanks
HP51
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maybe a sticky? at least for a month or so?
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Yes I use vista,and my machine is SOMEWHAT geared toward gaming,I got the power settings all for performance,I HAD nvidia settings cranked all the way up for AH,I close extra processes,etc... Before that setup worked fine,AH ran GREAT FRs at maxed settings,now I can't even get good frs with low settings
That right there is a mistake on the new version. Turn all those settings to application controlled.
Nice post AirFlyer. Good job.
Ran CC cleaner for windows and apps, lowered vid card to performance, not quality setting, defragged.
All processes off except 2 to run game.
Frame rate 16-20
Shutdown water (didn't like new water anyway)
Frame rate 24
Shut down terrain (bummer cuz its cool)
Frame rate 25-40 depending on what was in the area, the bigger the fight the slower the frame rate.
Nividia Ge Force 7300Le 512MB
Dell E520 machine
Going to try a few more things -suggestions appreciated - this is fustrating but I'm sure fix able.
Whats the best resolution?
Thanks
HP51
7300LE is a very, very low end video card.
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:aok
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What monitor resolution are you running at?
There's a huge difference between getting good frame rates running at 1280*1024 and doing the same at 1600*1050 or 1920*1200.
I run at 1440X 900
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great thread :aok
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Glad to hear people like the thread, and even better are getting some useful information out of it.
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Great thread.It's very important to get processes down as much as possible.I even shut down explorer after I'm in the game.Running 13 processes.I ran AH fine on a AMD 5000.Like to see community coming together to help others!
IronDog
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Glad to hear people like the thread, and even better are getting some useful information out of it.
Great post, sir...deserves "sticky" status. :salute
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Thanks Skuzzy for the reply , I know your busy as hell so we appreciate the quick replies.
Okay if the GeForce 7300 le is a low end card - what to upgrade to is the question?
I have no problem replacing the card if that will fix it - I'll try latest drivers tonight - although I think I need a new card for my Dell E520. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
THANKS ALL AH2 and this thread.
HP51
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macdp51, hit the hardware forums. I am sure there will be a few folks have a discussion about that very thing. If not, start a topic. I am pretty active in that forum.
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mac,I upgraded from a 7300GT to an 8800GTS,it worked FLAWLESSLY with the last patch,this one is giving some problems but hopefully patch 2 will fix them.
FRs are good in just about every game you will run,AHII and Vista just aren't clicking with me right now
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I'd recommend a $50 Radeon HD4650 or a $90 GeForce 9600GT (based on Tom's Hardware "Best Graphics Cards for the Money, July, 2009": http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2362.html ).
Graphics card:
nVidia Geforce 9600GT with DDR3 vid. mem and 650 MHz core, specifically:
eVGA version from Newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130424
cost from Newegg.com = $90
or
Radeon HD4650 with DDR3 vid. mem, specifically:
Sapphire version from Newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102838
cost from Newegg.com = $50
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Well, I gave it a try.
The guts of the system
- Dell XPS T600 circa 1997 with Intel SE440BX-3 motherboard and a 250W Foxcon power supply.
- Intel Pentium III Tualitin 1.2 Ghz Celeron processor (upgrade from the original PIII 600 Mhz) in a Slot 1 slocket adapter with a 100 Mhz front side bus and a 256 Kb L2 cache.
- 768 Mb PC100 SDRAM (3 dimms) @ 2 cas latency.
- eVGA Geforce MX-440 GTS 64 Mb AGP 2x video card.
- Soundblaster Live! Value sound card
- Dual boot Win98SE/XP Pro (AHII resides on the XP Pro partition)
Preparing for AHII 2.14
- First I went to blackviper.com and printed out the services list so that I could double check my current services. I've done this before but every once in a while when Windows updates it will re-enable a service on me so I want to be sure I've got the most obvious things turned off. I stick mostly with the "safe" list as I've got this machine relegated to file server duties to my other two machines for the most part so I haven't cut even close to the bone. Sure enough I find one or two more processes I can turn off.
- Next I take a moment to update both Windows and my security suite as long as I'm doing system maintenence then I shut my entire security suite down. I'm behind a router so I'm still firewalled.
- Now I go and download the game and install it. I want to do this before cleaning up my machine so that if anything gets left behind in the temp folder I'll take care of that during clean-up.
- After the game is installed (but hasn't yet been launched), I run disc cleanup on all of my hard drives and partitions (I have a total of 5 partitions on 3 hard drives in this machine).
- Disc clean-up done it's time to defragment. I haven't done this in several months on this machine (normally I do it about every two months) as I've been moving a lot of files on a consistant basis and been hoping I'd be done soon. Oh well, no time like now so I defrag all my drives and partitions which takes several hours.
- Next it's a check of the video card settings. I open the Nvidia control panal and immediately turn everything to minimum. I can always turn stuff back up later if I need/want to (which I will as you will see).
The moment of truth
- The moment of truth has arrived. It's time to go test video settings off-line. After several times jumping in and out of the game tweaking my video card settings, the games video settings and the games graphic settings this is what I end up with as the best balance between playability and graphics:
My video card settings:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/cardsettings.jpg)
My game settings:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/gamesettings1.jpg)
The only thing turned on in the advanced settings below is bump mapping. It was my only selectable option. I also later selected disable other players skins.
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/gamesettings.jpg)
*Note: I'm not too worried about low frame rates off-line as they seem to always report about 1/2 what they run on-line. They do this on both my machines.
So, I'm testing off line. Not great but playable. I'm not allowed to select detailed terrain so this is the best I get (remember... double the frame rates in this series of pics to equate to on-line):
Off-line world view:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/flying.jpg)
Off-line explosion:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/explosion.jpg)
Off-line world from tank:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/gv.jpg)
But now comes the moment of truth. How will it play on-line?
On-line world view:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/olworld.jpg)
On-line furball:
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/olfurball.jpg)
My frame rates on-line ran anywhere from 15 in the biggest furballs (see the open map) on the deck to 75+ in open air. 25-40 were the most typical frame rates I was getting. Setting ground vis range to 1 1/2 miles adds about 10 fps.
I was getting some slight stuttering and noticed that it happened as I had to load new textures. Furthermore, textures (i.e. trees from alt) that had already been loaded would appear occasionally as white blobs and cause a stutter as they re-loaded.
While not anything like playing on my other machine the game was playable. I was actually having a harder time adapting back to my old (sloppy) MS Sidewinder 3D Pro than I was adapting to the game graphics and minor stuttering.
The game without detailed terrain reminded me a lot of playing Air Warrior. If this was the best machine I had I certainly wouldn't let this stop me from playing. It is all about the fight after all isn't it?
All that said I'm disappointed that HT won't alow you to turn on detailed terrain and turn other things down to compensate. I'd be willing to drop my antialiasing and anistopic filtering settings for detailed terrain. Running 40-75 frames on-line I'd be willing to give up 25 fps but I'm not allowed that option. I also think pre-loaded textures need to return. I know for a fact that's what was causing my minor stuttering because I could literally see the textures re-loading each time it did so.
In conclusion if this ancient machine can play the game I think just about anything can.
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My laptop is a Pent 2.2 (single core) with 256meg ram and a 64meg mobility radeon 9000. It runs the new version of AH without any problems, although it is pretty ugly graphic wise, sort of like my mother in law naked.
My desktop on the other hand has everything maxed (detail, AA, at 1920x1200, all the skin, custom sounds), thankfully I bought a TilDeath system a few months ago.
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BaldEagl is the man! Cool experiment! :aok
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The guts of the system
- Dell XPS T600 circa 1997 with Intel SE440BX-3 motherboard and a 250W Foxcon power supply.
- Intel Pentium III Tualitin 1.2 Ghz Celeron processor (upgrade from the original PIII 600 Mhz) in a Slot 1 slocket adapter with a 100 Mhz front side bus and a 256 Kb L2 cache.
- 768 Mb PC100 SDRAM (3 dimms) @ 2 cas latency.
- eVGA Geforce MX-440 GTS 64 Mb AGP 2x video card.
- Soundblaster Live! Value sound card
- Dual boot Win98SE/XP Pro (AHII resides on the XP Pro partition)
looks like we have a low-spec champion for playable AH! :lol
just goes to prove that if you're methodical about it any fairly recent PC will play AH. reminds me of those guys who do the Paris/Dakar in cars which cost less than £1000. they dont just drive to the start line and expect to finish, they change all the fluids, fit new brake pads, spark plugs, ignition leads, filters etc. and rip out all the stuff which doesnt need to be there (back seats, stereo etc.)
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Hello All,
Great thread, for the GeForce7300le downloaded the latest drver pack from Nvidia site 80+mb, Screen res on the game settings to 1024x768, max tex size 512. Run CC cleaner prior to start, start game booster (to shutdown unwanted processes) from I think iboit. I set graphics on the game to default went to advanced and turned off water(uncheck box)and so far so good - Frame rate 40 -59 and I have terrain on.
This is the best thread yet, Thanks again to AH2 and the players, I still will probably upgrade to the 9600gt card. The bright side is I learned alot about my computer (whole new world in there- tweak tweak) and as said above, sometimes you just gotta slowly work thru the problem without the hysteria of the sky is falling. When I upgarde the card even though my current card is low end, I'll post it here for anyone who wants it for free. Not the best card as Skuzzy says but for someone who can't play or can't get a new card it may help out. I know it's not much , just trying to help out in repayment for the help received.
Thanks to all. :salute :rock
HP51
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Nice addition BaldEagl, kinda amazed you got something from circa 1997 to run the game so well. Ashame ya couldn't get Detailed Terrain to work but even then.
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A couple of notable things regarding that experiment:
I had system overhead to spare. I could have trimmed processes much further than I did. I could have turned off antialiasing and anistopic filtering and I could have reduced ground vis range. Beyond that I had Paintshop Pro open in the background as I alt-tabbed in and out of the game pasting screen shots and with each additional picture more of my memory went into use. You'll also notice I had the film recorder running adding yet another process to the load. I'd have also been willing to give up frame rate. Other than the texture load stutters as I changed views the game was fluid even at the lowest frame rates.
I can see why HT doesn't want low end users to jump into the game with all the graphics cranked up. I just think they should default low but still give the user the option to turn what they want on/off/up/down. Skuzzy always talks about Microsoft's "big brother" functionality (specifically tageted at Vista). This is no different. "Power users" should be allowed to make individual choices.
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I don't think the issue is that they are baby-sitting you when it comes to the settings, rather then the GPU itself just does not support the feature. If it's grayed out it's very likely that your GPU just can't do whats required for that settings. Sort of like trying to run DX10 settings on a DX9 card for example.
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just out of interest have you guys tried 2.13 on these machines?
Only because I hear people saying "AH used to be playable on my PC and now it isnt, so I need a new PC" or similar, and I'm sceptical that this is the case.
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just out of interest have you guys tried 2.13 on these machines?
Only because I hear people saying "AH used to be playable on my PC and now it isnt, so I need a new PC" or similar, and I'm sceptical that this is the case.
Just because you asked I went and installed the newest patch on the old Dell outlined earlier in this thread. Frame rates seem about the same but the terrain looks a little better, the minor stuttering is greatly reduced, and texture loading is not perfect but improved.
I didn't actuall fly but took a couple of shots from the towers.
In this one I tried to find a place with a lot going on. There were a ton of planes in this sector, a CV on fire, AA guns firing, a small furball in view, planes taking off, etc. All in all I was quite pleased with the machines performance (that's 36 fps BTW).
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/Newpatch1.jpg)
In this one I wanted to get a look at the new ground terrain. Again we have some fires, a plane fying overhead, a flack firing, etc. 24fps but you'll notice that there's supposed to be a river there and with the lower graphics setting it goes away turning entirely into beach sand. I didn't try but I now wonder if the water appears as you get closer or not. If it doesn't can you roll over it or do you get stuck? I guess I'll have to test that another time.
(http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww72/imbe/Newpatch2.jpg)
I would think this would be totally playable and an improvement over the initial releases.
Compare these screenshots to the earlier ones and there's no comparison. This looks much better.
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yup big improvement, and utterly amazing for a 12yr old Dell :aok
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lol
The beginning pictures show exactly how my graphics look when playing AH
the only difference is that i put everything way down because my video card is basically made out of silly putty, crazy straws and copper wire.
Oddly enough my game runs extremely smoothly and the planes still look excellent so im happy for now.