Is there any real dif in video cards?

[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

Originally Posted by Dr. Merc

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 they only thing I would call accurate in the specs is the CPU since those listed (while outdated) are just fine for running the game.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...
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...

[Yoshiki]

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

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by 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

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