[peabody]

Well, my suggestion goes along with Rockin Robbins, first thing to do is defrag, it made an unbelieveable difference to my game.

Secong if I get anywhere near a harbor the studdering is MAJOR. I am only running a 7600GS which is slower than the 7600GT that Rockin has. You running a 8600GT should be a lot better than we are. And some of the 8xxx cards are actually faster than the 9xxx cards. So I wouldn't rush right out and spend money on a new card right away. Around harbors you don't usually need to go much more than 512. I would play the game for a while in "open sea" and check it out and see if it is the harbor that is the problem.

And as commented, when you get a contact you will either get studdering or slowdown to about 8X. So as commented if you are in open sea and are going along fine and start a studder, you can be sure there is a convoy or task force nearby. I have heard some in here actually use this as a way to find the enemy. They patrol at high Time compression until they get a studder and then try to figure out where the target is.

You have to realze that you are using a program that although not anywhere near the worse for grapics intensibe it is a heavy user, and then try to run it 2000 times the speed it is suppose to run, you are putting quite a load on your system.

And AVGWarhawk I am partially disagreeing a bit with your comment and I mean no insult to you at all !!!!, since I am running a 7600GS which is a LOOOOOOOG way from a 9800GT. I can not run with everything maxed out I will definately admit that, but I can have great graphics and great game play if dropped a bit from max. Harbors are definately a problem, but I am not a harbor raider.

To OP if you can afford it and want one then go for the new card, but if you can't, it should be able to get the game going quite well with what you have. So my personal opinion is try some other options first if you can't afford a card.

I have made this comment before and nobody beleved me, the biggest increase in speed I got was a defrag. The little things sometimes make a big difference on a slow card. And it also depends a lot on how many Mods you load it up with, If you are the type that needs everything, then you may need to go for the new card.

Another thing not considered is the motherboard and settings. With the information given it is not a definate that a new card will solve the problem..There is no info on the RAM or FSB which can make a difference.

Now I will admit I am not a big time gamer, I play SH4 and Falcon, that's all. But I only post this because I am not going out and spend $200-300 (new card and Power supply) to play a $30 game. I can't afford it, so just offering suggestions for those in the same boat as me. And there will be a lot of people that will be discouraged from buying this game if they read that they have to build a totally new system to play this. Some had to wait until the next pay check to buy the game.

So if you can afford the best (read-expensive) then go for it. I would love a Ferrari. But if you can't you can still have a great time playing the game within the limits of your equipment, by tweaking settings and play the way it plays well. If harbors give you a problem, don't go there. Usually there isn't much in most of them anyway. If you sink a lot of ships and get studdering, it may not be the ships you sank. You may have a couple DDs that were not sunk and everytime the game gets a contact, it drops you to 8X. So it may not be the sunken ships causing the problem it may be the ships you didn't sink. And you don't have to go very far to get away from them.

Just my 2 cents.

Peabody