[Capt. D]

Originally Posted by Skweetis

A culmination of processor, graphics card and memory will determine end performance. Not just RAM which is a common misconception. I only have 1GB ram, and it runs silky smooth, but combined with a more recent processor (though not current), a fairly decent video card , high speed hard drive and decent motherboard work together to produce a decent experience.

As painful as it sounds, try this, reduce all the graphics settings to minimum and uncheck all the effects features. THen by process of elimination, move the sliders forward to higher settings and try the game again and check the performance. keep doing this until you hit a point where you are happy with how it looks. Don't even consider the checkboxes yet. If you can get them all to full, and you are happy with things, then one by one, check off the boxes, and test your performance in game.

Unfortunately, video card manufacturers prey on the fact that most users equate memory size of the video card (i.e. 32mb, 64mb, 128mb, 256mb etc) with performance of the video card. It was only by trial and error, and many uninformed purchases, that I learned that GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) speed, pixel pipelines (Important!) Shader version (very important for advanced graphical effects like post processing, reflections, enviromental effects, etc.) have a much greater impact on performance than how much texture memory ( the MB size your vid card has) can handle.

To summarize, its more important what your vid card can do with all that memory, than how much memory you have. This is why you will find some high end cards with only 128 MB of memory that cost up to 5 times as much as a "starter video" card with 512MB of memory. There are whole diatribes on the internet about these inconsistancies, I'll let you research them on your own. Hardware manufacturers are MUCH more sneaky than software developers!

Hopefully this will help you, and give you more insight into the evils related to graphics hardware! But please remember, I only speak from personal experience and my own opinion. There are people here that are much more qualified to answer in more detail and more
and from Vois2:

Thanks shipmates!!

Will look to try these suggestions. Has anyone also found that - and I know there has been many comments on audio issues - the crew seems to be talking in whispers all the time - even though you have the vol. control for that feature all the way up. It seems when on the surface and on the bridge the voices are louder and clearer, yet in the sub they are at a whisper????? I too have found the strange confirmation of only "rudder" when hitting the "hot key" for rudder amidship (as mentioned in another thread), but can learn to live with that if I could only hear it.

Also the degree marks in the periscope - very dark even against a blue sky can not read them well????

One other comment - the scopes. In SHI and I believe in 2 and 3 one could raise and lower the scope even if you were not in the scope "screen". This is not the case in SH4 as far as I have found. Is this part of the game or a glitch also? I have a habit of checking out my nav map and the ship indicators while at the scope and do not care to leave it up all the time. I can not lower or raise it when at the nav map. This feature was great in SHI. Would use the nav map as more a plotting board. Would go to the map then hit the raise scope hot key see the indicatores and then quickly lower the socpe. Kind of cheating maybe but then some like to use the "free camera" to see what is going on and that is about the same.

Another thing I liked in previous versions - you could raise the scope at one time rather than have to keep pushing the key down until the scope was fully raised or lowered as is the case for me anyway in SH4. Is this another glitch or just part of the game? I know one had to use the "pickle" to raise or lower the scope in actual use but you either had someone doing it for you as you "rode' the scope up or down or you were not in a hurry.

Anyway - thanks for the input. It does look like the devs still have a long way to go to stop the "sinking" feeling we all seem to have at the momment.

Happy hunting