DW and RAM and Time Acceleration

[LoBlo]

I have a 2.gGhz Dell with a 512MB of RAM and a 128MB Radeo Graphics Card. It runs DW great... except in those very busy missions with lots of civillian traffic I can have some trouble with the 16x time accelerations...Not really a big deal, the 8x time acceleration still work great even when the missions is packed.

But my question is... do you think that upgrading to 2Gigs of RAM will improve the game performance when I'm time accelerating in those busy missions? Anyone else have problems with this?

[Looney11]

I don't think increasing your RAM will aliviate the problem. This has, in my view, mostly to do with raw computing power. With the time-compression set to high levels, the CPU of your PC is running a marathon calculating every position of each vehicle in the game. On top of this, it has to calculate, speed, course, depth, altitude and if this wasn't enough, with each movement made, the CPU has to calculate every single units doctrine to see if it will make a decision based on those doctrine files.

Needless to say, if all chucks along with TC set at 1, your CPU is in no hurry and can keep up with all of it without a hitch. Turn on the TC and you turn up the heat for the CPU, turn it really high and the CPU has some serious work to do and show you the results of that.

I run DW on an AMD 3800+ with 2Gb of ram and have not noticed a lot of performance boosting from it when cranking up the TC in a target rich enviroment.

[LuftWolf]

And here I thought this was about IR guided anti-missile defense systems... :p

Cheers,
David

[LoBlo]

I don't think increasing your RAM will aliviate the problem. This has, in my view, mostly to do with raw computing power. With the time-compression set to high levels, the CPU of your PC is running a marathon calculating every position of each vehicle in the game. On top of this, it has to calculate, speed, course, depth, altitude and if this wasn't enough, with each movement made, the CPU has to calculate every single units doctrine to see if it will make a decision based on those doctrine files.

Needless to say, if all chucks along with TC set at 1, your CPU is in no hurry and can keep up with all of it without a hitch. Turn on the TC and you turn up the heat for the CPU, turn it really high and the CPU has some serious work to do and show you the results of that.

I run DW on an AMD 3800+ with 2Gb of ram and have not noticed a lot of performance boosting from it when cranking up the TC in a target rich enviroment.

Thanks:up:

And here I thought this was about IR guided anti-missile defense systems

heh. Nope, just a plain jane computer question:)

[Pisces]

Are you sure you have 'quit' or 'exit'-ed every unneccesary background process. For example the little icons near the windows clock(bottom right). Keep them as few as possible. No need to have like MSN eat up CPU cycles. Winamp probably eats up alot too. But there are also some running without a visible icon there. You can see which proccesses are running (in Win XP) by pressing ctrl-alt-delete and look at the processes tab. You can sort the list by pressing the CPU collumnheader to see which ones are most frequently run. But be carefull about killing them, some are required for a stable running windows. Search for their name and info on the web before actually stopping them. But sometimes I just risk it. :D