Technical Help & Questions, Guides and Trainings: TDC, Radar, Sonar and More...

[Woxor]

Thank you for your quick responses, very interesting and helpful!

[Tony845]

After having two power supplies go bad and ruining my video card in the process, I need to upgrade my PC. What I have is a home built that I bought almost 14 years ago. What has someone bought (fairly) recently that plays the game well? I'm not looking for a top-of-the-line gaming machine just something that will give the best graphs and play experience for the money. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[HertogJan]

Originally Posted by Tony845

After having two power supplies go bad and ruining my video card in the process, I need to upgrade my PC. What I have is a home built that I bought almost 14 years ago. What has someone bought (fairly) recently that plays the game well? I'm not looking for a top-of-the-line gaming machine just something that will give the best graphs and play experience for the money. Any suggestions are appreciated.

That's not a easy question...

Main question is… what’s the price range, what’s the main usage of the rig (although I think I can guess that one), do you want one that’ll keep you going game wise for a long time.
Most pre-built PC’s will be outdated after 1 or 2 years and you’ll end up having to buy a new PC because it can’t handle the newer games and graphics.

What I used to do is set two price ranges and look for a pre-built PC in the top and middle of that range Then I take a look at both hardware specifications. Why is PC one cheaper then PC two?

Now the hard part starts… Can I do better than the best pre-built without too much extra costs if I buy a custom built.

Motherboard:
I’ll check different brand motherboards and compare them:
Chipset, what CPU can it handle (can I upgrade to a better one later (when they are cheaper)) and what kind of memory can it handle (can I add memory, or better yet, can I change to better/faster one’s later on).
While you’re looking at the spec’s don’t forget to check the BIOS version of the new mobo (go to the manuf’s site for that and check the upgrades, read about the different versions on the forums, one might be worse or better then the other) ask what BIOS version is on it when you buy it at your computer store and don’t let them tell you it has the latest version, you need proof!
A good salesman (computer nerd) will be able to tell you what version it has and when and if you want to upgrade or downgrade they should be able to do that for you (for a little extra).

CPU:
AMD or Intel? (check clock and bus speeds)

Memeory: (RAM)
2GG, 3GG, 4GG, 8GG whatever (always compare brands, check the clock and bus speeds too)!

GPU:
AMD or Nvidia (AMD is cheaper but run’s a bit hotter so you’ll need a good airflow inside).
PS_ Its always better to have excessive airflow, good for cooling when overclocking.

HDD:
What kind of harddisk do you want (I haven’t bought a new PC in a long time but I heard there’s a new type of HDD chip onboard which makes HDD (in its old form) obsolete and is much faster aswell.


One thing you have to remember which is very important.
The PC you buy (either pre-built or custom built) will only be as fast as its slowest component.

For example:
You could have the best mobo with a CPU monster and a great GPU but your RAM is crap, the rig will be crap.
You could have the best mobo with the best RAM and a great GPU but you CPU is crap, the rig will be crap.
You could have the best mobo with a CPU monster and the best RAM but a crap GPU… your system will be ok but game wise it will not be what you expect it to be and will not be able to play a game at its highest settings.

And to be honest, a ‘gamers rig’ isn’t a gamers rig if you can’t set everything to MAX.


Good luck and let us know what you've decided to buy.


HJ

[aanker]

If you don't want to spend a ton of money plus sell your soul for a 'gaming machine', for about $400.00, you can buy a desktop off the shelf with 8 Gigs of RAM, plus buy a Radeon graphics card to put in it, and SH4 will run fine using Large Address Aware on a Win 7 or Win 8 64 bit Premium operating system.

That's about what I have and I don't have any complaints.

Happy Hunting!

[bybyx]

Hello
I got the infamous BSOD atikmpag.sys. Never had this on sh4. I have a clean install of win7 with the latest drivers.
Any advice?

[aanker]

You didn't say what OS

Check this out, and the possible solution mentioned:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...2-97c62dbb3d66

....... plug "atikmpag.sys" into Google, include "BSOD" and Win 7 or Win 8 - whatever you have.

Good luck.

[aanker]

You didn't say what OS

Check this out, and the possible solution mentioned:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...2-97c62dbb3d66

....... plug "atikmpag.sys" into Google, include "BSOD" and Win 7 or Win 8 - whatever you have.

Good luck.

[bybyx]

Originally Posted by aanker

You didn't say what OS

Check this out, and the possible solution mentioned:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...2-97c62dbb3d66

....... plug "atikmpag.sys" into Google, include "BSOD" and Win 7 or Win 8 - whatever you have.

Good luck.

It is with win 7. I already tried a lot of things but all failed. I hope is driver related and not a hardware problem as i am in no position to buy computer parts. I am surprised to see this in SH4 as i played recently all 3 S.T.A.L.K.E.R games with mods and no BSOD and i know those 3 games can push to the limits most PC's. Another game that gave me headaches was BF4 and even now after so many updates i still got BSOD.
I will try a clean install this weekend an will see.

[HertogJan]

Have you tried guru3d.com?

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=363233

Not sure if thats the solution for your problem but you can always check or search the forum for similar problems.

When I have any sort of problem GPU wise I go to that forum, they cover a wide range of other stuff too, basically, anything with a chip in it.

[bybyx]

It seems everything is ok now after a formatting the hdd and a clean install of the os. I moved to win 8.1 and so far no bsod.

[Hjalfnar]

Hey guys!

Just changed from SH5 to SH4, after getting really annoyed by these persisting bugs. Now at the beginning I thought of this as a feature, but now I think its a bug. Normally the direction of a ships movement is shown by as small line protruding from the contact marker, right? Like on this picture:



Now...these are missing! Makes it a bit difficult to intercept ships precisely...

Could this be because I'm using OM and OMEGU? Is it a feature of these mods? Or is there another reason? Only did training missions so far to learn the controls, but now I don't know if I should start a campaign.

Complete list of used mods:



Thanks for every info on that!

Hjalfnar

[hunter301]

I bought wolves of the pacific when it was first released so I'd have all the maps, guides, etc............Haven't been able to play it since the first day I got it. My Desktop computer was to slow and the brand new $600.00 Dell HD laptop I had just bought didn't have the graphics capability to run the game. Needless to say I was "freekin" pissed.
You'd think after all this time especially when you see formatted games like X-box, PS3 and 4 we're still screwing around trying to get PC games to even run on our machines without having to upgrade our parts or tweek our settings.
I just find it amazing in this day and age with apps and tablets that this is still going on.

[hunter301]

Originally Posted by HertogJan

That's not a easy question...

Main question is… what’s the price range, what’s the main usage of the rig (although I think I can guess that one), do you want one that’ll keep you going game wise for a long time.
Most pre-built PC’s will be outdated after 1 or 2 years and you’ll end up having to buy a new PC because it can’t handle the newer games and graphics.

What I used to do is set two price ranges and look for a pre-built PC in the top and middle of that range Then I take a look at both hardware specifications. Why is PC one cheaper then PC two?

Now the hard part starts… Can I do better than the best pre-built without too much extra costs if I buy a custom built.

Motherboard:
I’ll check different brand motherboards and compare them:
Chipset, what CPU can it handle (can I upgrade to a better one later (when they are cheaper)) and what kind of memory can it handle (can I add memory, or better yet, can I change to better/faster one’s later on).
While you’re looking at the spec’s don’t forget to check the BIOS version of the new mobo (go to the manuf’s site for that and check the upgrades, read about the different versions on the forums, one might be worse or better then the other) ask what BIOS version is on it when you buy it at your computer store and don’t let them tell you it has the latest version, you need proof!
A good salesman (computer nerd) will be able to tell you what version it has and when and if you want to upgrade or downgrade they should be able to do that for you (for a little extra).

CPU:
AMD or Intel? (check clock and bus speeds)

Memeory: (RAM)
2GG, 3GG, 4GG, 8GG whatever (always compare brands, check the clock and bus speeds too)!

GPU:
AMD or Nvidia (AMD is cheaper but run’s a bit hotter so you’ll need a good airflow inside).
PS_ Its always better to have excessive airflow, good for cooling when overclocking.

HDD:
What kind of harddisk do you want (I haven’t bought a new PC in a long time but I heard there’s a new type of HDD chip onboard which makes HDD (in its old form) obsolete and is much faster aswell.


One thing you have to remember which is very important.
The PC you buy (either pre-built or custom built) will only be as fast as its slowest component.

For example:
You could have the best mobo with a CPU monster and a great GPU but your RAM is crap, the rig will be crap.
You could have the best mobo with the best RAM and a great GPU but you CPU is crap, the rig will be crap.
You could have the best mobo with a CPU monster and the best RAM but a crap GPU… your system will be ok but game wise it will not be what you expect it to be and will not be able to play a game at its highest settings.

And to be honest, a ‘gamers rig’ isn’t a gamers rig if you can’t set everything to MAX.


Good luck and let us know what you've decided to buy.


HJ

WHY CAN'T I JUST LOAD UP A GAME AND PLAY IT!!!
WHHAAAAAAAA!!!!!!:wa h:

I never wanted to be a computer tech. Gives me a freekin headache.
ALL I WANT IS TO PLAY THE GAME!!!!
WHHAAAAAAAA!!!!!:wah :

[TG626]

I have a Dell Inspiron 570
http://www.overstock.com/Electronics...7/product.html

With SoundBlaster X-fi audio card and an nVidia GTX 550 graphics card, running Win7 64bit and SH4 runs fine.

Only FPS hiccups I've seen is when using max time compression.


( and its "till you understand who's in RUTTIN' command" ) :-)

[HertogJan]

I can understand the frustration when buying hardware, specialy computers. But it might pay off to check the spec's and compair them on the internet for cheaper and maybe better hardware.

You're paying $***,- my guess is you want most out of it and not have to buy a new rig after 1 or 2 years... $400,- for just Silent Hunter is a lot of cash.