I'm presently running an AMD X2 4200+ processor (2.2 GHz) with an nvidia 7300 GT video card. I've already upgraded to 2 GB system RAM, and am wondering what the next best upgrade would be for running IL2. I can already run in perfect mode, but I do get slowdown in many situations - heavy flak, cities, lots of planes, etc.
The IT guy at my work recommends a new graphics card - based on the ATI Radeon HD 3870. Currently I can get a 512 MB card from Gigabyte using that chipset for $130.
On the other hand, with $130 I could also upgrade my processor to a 6000+ (3.0 GHz).
Which would make the biggest difference running IL2? Or should i just be happy with what I've got?
Others may not agree with me on this one, but I would upgrade the graphics card...
...because even the dual or quad cores do not get used by il2 8)
The 7300GT is a budget graphics card and your current CPU greatly out classes it, I say get a new graphics card.
Yeah, so a new graphics card seems to be the consensus with everyone I have talked to, in my case.
Now, how do I justify this to my wife? :?
You know, I've always said that the best people to befriend at the office are the people who process your paychecks, and the IT guys.... The IT guy accosted my wife on Friday and gave her this long, confusing talking to that ultimately convinced her that my computer is hopelessy outdated and I desperatey need a new graphics card.... so, after work, she offered to let me buy one "for my birthday". 8) The other IT guy simultaneously hit her from the other side, and started trying to convince her that I needed to get on-line to play IL2 against him, and that he had been trying to talk me into this for months, but it was my damn outdated graphics card that was keeping me from it....
I just wanted to close this out with the final report on the effect of this upgrade - from an "old" nVidia GT7300 card, to a "new" ATI HD3870.
Frame rate has improved substantially - everything seems much smoother now, which has improved my gunnery. Being able to max out antialiasing and anisotropic filtering has significantly imrpoved the visuals, especially the amount of detail I can see in the distance on maps, such as airfields from several miles away.
Water changed slightly for the worse. The nVidia water (water=3) looked a little better overall than the ATI choices of water=2 . But it's not much of a difference. For the price, this was a good upgrade.
I did have a couple of installation issues, though. For one, the ATI card re-set my sound card defaults to some HD sound functions on the new graphics card, instead of my motherboard-based Soundblaster Audigy. So I had no sound in-game until I set everything back under the Windows controls. The other problem was the graphics card shutting itself off a few seconds into flight - not kidding - just going dead. This went away after I tried the new DLLs I downloaded here at AAA, and has not happened again.
Glad the upgrade helped, I thought it would. Unfortunately, only Nvidia cards allow for Water=3 or 4. There are two reasons I opted for a 8800GT with this new computer. First, the water thing, second was the fact that at the time of this build, ATI couldn't keep up with Nvidia.
hock: