Need help in finding out which version of Silent Hunter will work best on my laptop.

[Sailor Steve]

WELCOME ABOARD!

Originally Posted by Kodika

I am new to gaming, but I am interested in playing the submarine simulation game Silent Hunter. From reading several forums I notice that gamers experience problems when playing the game using the Vista operating system (which is what I have on my laptop).

I still use XP, but it is my understanding that both SH3 and SH4 run fine with Vista. You just have to put them outside of the Program Files folder.

SH3 and SH4 will run with the specs you listed, but you might want 4 GB of RAM to run either of them at its peak.

As to which one is preferable? SH4 actually runs a little better than SH3 on most systems. The resolved some of the earlier problems.

Which is easier to learn? Both are similar, as 4 is developed from 3. SH4 uses a security system called Securerom. I never had any trouble with either Starforce or Securerom, but a lot of people did so I was just lucky. Newer versions of SH3 do not have Starforce. SH4 Gold has several improvements over regular SH4. Having the u-boats added in is gravy.

While SH4 does have better graphics, it suffers from neglect. Many cool graphics mods have been made for SH3 and have never been ported into SH4, so that's a negative. There are awesom mods for SH4 both in the Pacific and Atlantic, but the coolest stuff has never been done. On the other hand SH4 has some gameplay improvements that go a long way to offsetting that.

SH3 does have one more asset that hasn't been done for SH4 yet. It's called SH3 Commander and it heightens the immersion by fleshing out your captain's career and the crew names and skills, plus it gives a name, cargo and crew report for every ship you sink.

SH4 has a supermod called Operation Monsun, which gives a full-blown Atlantic U-boat campaign.

Both are currently very cheap, so making a choice isn't too difficult. You can actually afford both if you like. For SH4 definitely get the Gold version.

Oh, and SH3 is hardly the "original edition". I still play SH1 from time to time.