Is there any real dif in video cards?

[Dr. Merc]

Greetings, all -

I just picked up this marvelous game a few weeks ago, and, like apparently many people, it gets real sluggish at times, especially when speeded up.

After reading forum comments on the matter, it appears it all boils down to the video card. I just have a stock onboard chip in my Lenovo. It does, however, have an x16 slot, which is what I believe is required for a 'hot' video card.

Digging through the UbiSoft 'requirements' page, I came up with this:

*Supported Video Cards:
ATI RADEON 9600 / 9700 / 9800, X300 - X850, X1300 - X1800
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 / 6600 / 6800 / 7800

Almost all of these are available on Amazon, some of them 'used' for as low as fifteen bucks.

The question for the group is, are any of these particularly better when it comes to game play, or is it really just a matter of "either you have one of these or you don't"?

If the latter, I'll just go ahead and buy one of the cheap used cards, but if some of them are definitely better than the others, I wouldn't mind spending the bucks to get it.

Much thanks for any info,
Doc

[fireftr18]

Welcome aboard. :salute:

Check the screen door. I thinks it's a little loose.

There is a difference between video cards. To make it simple, the more money the better. I have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6370 with 256mb dedicated video RAM. It is a mid level card and I can run the game at full settings without any problem. My old computer had an onboard card with shared RAM and I had to have the settings set low. There are others on this forum that are able to give much more information on different cards.

More RAM also helps the game run smoother.

[Dr. Merc]

Thanks for the info. I have four gigs of mem on a 64-bit system. One of the first experiments I tried was lowering all the graphic settings and it didn't make any dif. I also tried various game resolutions, including changing the Hertz, as well as some background tests, like closing down every running Windows program and reducing the screen res to 640 x 480 to reduce video memory usage, but none of it made any dif.

In other news, I sank my first airplane this morning. And the game didn't even give me any tonnage credit for it! It was a big 8-engine seaplane located in some harbor I was raiding, Taipei. Even at the shallowest depth setting, the torp I threw at it went under.

So I rammed it.

It was actually pretty cool. The wing kind of got hung up on the conning tower for a bit so I was actually dragging it along as it slowly disintegrated. Everybody on deck had a terrific time.

Like I said, I didn't get any points for it, but it sure felt good.

[les green01]

can't help you on the card issue but wanted to say welcome aboard

[Webster]

short answer is yes there is but the harder question is if the differences will be that noticeable or if they will matter to you and the way you use it.

in most cases any decent quality card will give you all you are looking for from it

[Dr. Merc]

I decided to go through Amazon and price every card on the list. Here are the ultra-bargains:

ATI Radeon:
X850 (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Radeon-256MB-DVI-VGA-TV-109-A47401-10/dp/B0045JT4KO/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364160835&sr=1-2&keywords=ati+radeon+x850) - $15 (used)
X1300 (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Windows-Profile-Express-Graphics/dp/B0046O5CZ4/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364161073&sr=1-10&keywords=ati+radeon+x1300) - $17 (used)
X300 (http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-X300SE-128MB-Express-DMS-59/dp/B004LYYDXG/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364160694&sr=1-3&keywords=ati+radeon+x300) - $20 (new)
9600 (http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-9600-128MB-DDR-DVI/dp/B0000DK6CX/ref=sr_1_22?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364160986&sr=1-22&keywords=ati+radeon+9600) - $20 (used)

The NVidia cards were too crossreferenced and such and were hard to track down. Besides, I've had ATI cards in the past and they worked fine, so one of the above should do.

Any thoughts, gentlemen?

Doc

[Fifi]

SH series seems designed for ATI cards...
I own good Nvidias, but have troubles running SH4 or SH5.
Go for an ATI if you are SH fan...
Other games are great on Nvidias though!

[les green01]

if it was me I would buy new on everything on computer stuff when you buy use your asking for trouble,unless it was from a person from subsim

[Webster]

I decided to go through Amazon and price every card on the list. Here are the ultra-bargains:

ATI Radeon:
X850 (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Radeon-256MB-DVI-VGA-TV-109-A47401-10/dp/B0045JT4KO/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364160835&sr=1-2&keywords=ati+radeon+x850) - $15 (used)
X1300 (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Windows-Profile-Express-Graphics/dp/B0046O5CZ4/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364161073&sr=1-10&keywords=ati+radeon+x1300) - $17 (used)
X300 (http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-X300SE-128MB-Express-DMS-59/dp/B004LYYDXG/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364160694&sr=1-3&keywords=ati+radeon+x300) - $20 (new)
9600 (http://www.amazon.com/Radeon-9600-128MB-DDR-DVI/dp/B0000DK6CX/ref=sr_1_22?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1364160986&sr=1-22&keywords=ati+radeon+9600) - $20 (used)

The NVidia cards were too crossreferenced and such and were hard to track down. Besides, I've had ATI cards in the past and they worked fine, so one of the above should do.

Any thoughts, gentlemen?

Doc

in reference to my other post, I was not talking about the minimum game listed requirements I was referring to a mid level video card in the $100 range vs spending $200-$300 for one.

if you go with the ones you listed then those cards will be not very good and the game will look very bad for you but it "may" run "ok" with them.

its like saying you can get around town on a bicycle but if you get a car your life will be so much better for it.


if you cant possibly spend $100 on a decent video card then you wont be happy with anything you buy on your list.

buy the way what video do you have right now?

[Armistead]

I still use a 9800gt, works fairly good, at high settings get about 40 FPS, enough that it all looks smooth.

[Dr. Merc]

Webster - Why would it run worse with one of the recommended cards?

[fireftr18]

A lot of these recommendations are for minimum specs. They'll work, but only if your video settings are set low. Like les green stated, I suggest buying new and at least going with a mid level card.

[Dr. Merc]

FF - Well, the question is, why would it be worse with a dedicated video card than a stock onboard chip? It's just a medium-grade Lenovo, so I wouldn't expect there to be anything 'special' about it.

[Bilge_Rat]

I use a ATI 6950 1 gb card. SH4 looks great, even at 8xFSAA/8xAA although I usually play at 4xFSAA/AA. FPS is always in the 60-70s except in the conning tower where it is in the 30s, but I use Nisgeis 3d TDC mod which is a notorious resource hog.

[Dr. Merc]

BR - Hey, we both have 'bilge rat' in the sidebar! I guess that makes us brothers somehow.

The real question here is why this thing needs any kind of help at all. For a game where the only on-screen action is a ticking stopwatch and a little boat icon moving in a straight line, you'd think this thing would work flawlessly on a Tandy TRS-80. I'm guessing the Romanians just weren't up to speed on their coding techniques.

[AVGWarhawk]

Dr. Merc:
it gets real sluggish at times, especially when speeded up.

Just about all systems will run sluggish when you are speeding up time. Especially in high traffic areas.

I run X4 CPU AMD Black Editions 2.5, 8 gig of RAM and a GT9800. The game is sluggish when using time compression or speeded up as you have stated.

You really do not want to go lower than a 9800 series.

[Dr. Merc]

Warhawk - The problem is that it's sluggish even when the only moving thing on the screen is the boat icon huffing its merry way across the Pacific. And the pointer is even a bit sluggish when watching a boat burn in real-time.

As an update, though, I cruised over to the official ATI forum yesterday and asked them what they thought of the four cheapies I listed, and the verdict was that the X850 was, by far, the best of the bunch, as long as it's the PCI Express version, which it is. So, for $15, it's worth a shot and I ordered it. I'll report back here when it arrives and I test it out.

Thanks again to all for the input,
Doc

[Webster]

The real question here is why this thing needs any kind of help at all. For a game where the only on-screen action is a ticking stopwatch and a little boat icon moving in a straight line, you'd think this thing would work flawlessly on a Tandy TRS-80. I'm guessing the Romanians just weren't up to speed on their coding techniques.


what you are not taking into account is the game is constantly generating the whole world around you so everything you don't see is what the card is doing so while what you see doesn't seam like much the constant world wide traffic of ships planes and everything else is still being processed by your card even though it only renders them at a set distance. this is why the minimum specs are a joke and the "real" minimum ram memory and video card specs to run the game normally at normal settings should be double of what the game says they are. they only thing I would call accurate in the specs is the CPU since those listed (while outdated) are just fine for running the game.

hope that helps

[Armistead]

I take it you're using a laptop? My laptop has higher specs than my DT, but DT will always run games better.

[Dr. Merc]

Arm - It's a desktop, 2.8 GHz, 64-bit, 4 gigglebytes of Ram, Intel onboard video chip.

Webs - The reason I called it a 'coding problem' is that "the whole world around you" can be nothing but empty ocean as far as the eye (or radar) can see, yet it's the exact same sluggishness as if you were surrounded by 35 destroyers. If it's because it's busy 'building' the plot of 300 Japanese freighters 3,000 miles away, that's a coding problem.

But, as I noted, for a crummy $15, the first step is to try a dedicated card and see what happens.

[Yoshiki]

I'm running the SH series on a 64-Bit system with 12 GB and a
ATi Radeon HD5700 card.

Now - I believe that most of you laugh at the fact that I'm running
the games with such an antiquated video card...:oops:
But it works perfectly.

I have this rule of thumb: If it works with the latest FPS then
it must run with a subsim.

From a programmers point of view: The guys from Romania
are good in wasting resources - a subsim is not exactly
an application that should require a top notch card.

Heck - the first sims back in the 80's were subsims - because
they didn't require too much resources...:03:

[Yoshiki]

P.S.: It has been said that all SHx games run sluggish when
using time compression - and I agree...:salute:

[AVGWarhawk]

Warhawk - The problem is that it's sluggish even when the only moving thing on the screen is the boat icon huffing its merry way across the Pacific. And the pointer is even a bit sluggish when watching a boat burn in real-time.

As an update, though, I cruised over to the official ATI forum yesterday and asked them what they thought of the four cheapies I listed, and the verdict was that the X850 was, by far, the best of the bunch, as long as it's the PCI Express version, which it is. So, for $15, it's worth a shot and I ordered it. I'll report back here when it arrives and I test it out.

Thanks again to all for the input,
Doc


I could run SH4, modded. on a 2 gig, AMD? and AGP video card. It ran ok. I would imagine the X850 should help your sluggish running game.

[fastfed]

Had some crappy duel core AMD, and a 9700GTS video card.. played at max max settings, although I think the resolution was only 1024x768

Now I have a GTX570 card and an I5 cpu..

max max @ 1080p 60FPS ALWAYS, limited by Vsync

That said, yea it makes a difference, but you don't need much, any card @ 100 bucks will run this game on max settings

[Dr. Merc]

Greetings, all -

For what it's worth, the ATI X850 card made zero difference. Since that was one of the hotter video cards around when the game was released, I'm figuring the sluggishness problem isn't video-related. Since it gets more sluggish as a patrol progresses, and especially when a 'Replay' is in effect (that is, if you've saved the replay every time you've saved the game since you left port), my best guess is that it's the reason for the sluggishness. The only flaw in my little theory is that if you save a game without the replay, then load that game and continue, the Replay feature is now kaput, so you'd think the game would be smart enough to recognize it and stop making a replay in the background.

Regardless, it's a fabulous game and I'm having a ball with it.

For example, I didn't know until recently how lovely Tokyo Harbor is in the spring.

Thanks for the feedback,
Doc