New SHIII player

[mike_espo]

Wow! What an awesome sim!! I just started the tutorials and by far, it is the most realistic sim experience I have encountered. Game seems to run fine with the limited tutorials, except when a ship is on fire and smoke, where 3d really slows down...

When I tried a single mission, Happy time I believe, the game slowed down noticebly!

Budget wise, I cannot afford a new system, but I gotta play this sim..I am adicted and have not even started campaign mode yet!

My system is Win Xp, 1.7 Ghz P4, 512 RAM, 128meg Nvida Gforce 5000 vid card.

Any advice to run better? I most probably will add 512meg more RAM, but any other useful advice would be appreciated...

Thanks.

By the way, is there a mod for simulating the diving alarm? Don't seem to hear one when I dive...

[GlobalExplorer]

A GeForce 6800 won't cost much and will run Sh3 very well. Your processor is a bit weak, but I think you should get it should run ok if you add more RAM and use less details. Remember that you can always remove the quality options for the GeForce, like AA, anisotropic, etc.

[HW3]

The addition of Ram will do wonders for the game. Next would be a newer graphics card, you don't need the latest to run the game well.

[nervouspete]

Yep, if you buy 512 megs of ram it will set you back about £30 - £45. Make sure it's at the same clock speed, be it DDR333 or DDR400ish. It'll speed up load times a lot and stop annoying pauses in game.

Next up buy a video card, many of which are quite cheap now. Expect a 9800pro for about £50 - £60, and a Geforce 6600GT (which is what I have, lovely mid-ranger) for about £80 - £100. If you shop online at www.microdirect.co.uk you should find a cheapish one. Don't buy any from the big computer stores like PC World, they rip you off with old cards. I share your processor speed, it should serve well with the above.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the game though! It gets even better! Don't forget to download the latest patch, you'll find a link on the big sticky thread at the start of the forum, and you can add some top 1930's - 1940's pop/jazz gramaphone sound packs to the game. Check them out in the forums. You can also add your own sound files to the sound folder, wav. or ogg. - ogg. seeming to work more frequently.

Have fun!