[Gollum]

Hello,
I am able to play offline such as a quick mission 4 on 4 with all settings maxed out including the perfect landscape offline. This basically means stock settings without messing with the Confi.ini. However, when I go online and there are more planes flying around than normal my FPS drops drematically causing me to turn down video settings.

Just out of curiosity so I know what to upgrade or if upgrading is even possible for me without buying a new comp. What would be the area where the bottlenecking is occuring. Ram? Video Card? Processor?

1) I have an outdated AGP video card. I belive NVIDEA 6800 GT? I think, its been a while.

2) 1 G of ram. I may buy another 1 G stick to see if it helps. What do you think?

3) No idea what my processor is but its relatively old. just not that old. I used to run HL 2 with no
problem.

Any Ideas? I cant get a new Vid card without a motherboard because everying now is PCI Express. Is it possible that I just need more ram? My buddy runs his version on a laptop and it runs better than mine.

Thanks for your Help,
Dustin Hickey of EMTG Consultats

3)

[JAMF]

At first glance, your system would benefit from extra RAM and that's a cheap upgrade. The larger number of different aircraft and different skins will need to be kept in the system's memory. The 6800 should do well enough in IL2, but you could experiment with the Anisotropic filtering and the Anti Aliasing. Depending on your motherboard, the CPU upgrade could be a matter of replacing the CPU. OTOH, if the CPU is already on the motherboard/socket limit, you'd be looking at a more invasive mobo/CPU/RAM upgrade.

You'll need to know what you have in your system at the moment. A utility that will give you an exhaustive overview of components (and everything else) without opening your case, is System Information for Windows. You can download "SIW Standalone (English-Only)" from this page here.

From that you should be able to tell what type of DDR(2)-RAM is installed and what specifications it has (timings, frequency, etc.). That is for when you want to add another stick of RAM next to it. If you want to replace it, you might want to look at what maximum memory specs can be handled by the motherboard. Maybe you can get memory with a higher frequency and lower latency.

The reason your friend might be able to run it more smoothly on his laptop, could be that he has a dual core CPU with more RAM and a lower resolution.

You've got some digging to do, in the details that SiW gives you and on the Interweb for motherboard details.

[Gollum]

Ok,
Yea Ill buy some ram first. Hopefully it helps. Thanks again for your help.

-Gollum

[Eexhaton]

First thing to check would be "Skin Download" under Network settings in your IL2Setup.exe.

If you have'nt disabled that already, try experimenting with it, see if it improves performance.

Another thing to try, is selecting a different net speed (which in some cases is also cause of slowdowns).


Online play is a slightly different ballgame then Offline play. Especially the number of aircraft.
Does your computer also slow down during offline play if you do more then just a 4x4?

Adding some RAM memory is for most applications a welcome addition aswell.

[Gollum]

Ok,

I will try these. What net speed should be selected? I am at work so I do not know what is standard.

-Thanks

[Eexhaton]

Ok,

I will try these. What net speed should be selected? I am at work so I do not know what is standard.

-Thanks

I'd say; experiment, see what gives the best speeds.
If your connection is a high speed one, try the Cable/xDSL or LAN.
Being a bit "off" is'nt much of a problem, but having your speed selected completely wrong, could cause unnessesary slowdowns.

Just experiment, and see what setting matches your netspeed the closest.

[WindWeapon]

Nice call on the SIW app. Really comprehensive for a view of the entire system!

Quick question for any hardware gurus out there. I am also thinking of a memory upgrade. I have 1gb installed, and would like to go higher, but I have read conflicting info on how much memory my laptop will support. In SIW the max capacity states: 8192 mb, but for the ABS Mayhem G3 (AMD 3700+), which I have, most sources say that 1GB is as high as this machine can go. Heck if I could drop 4gb into it, I would, but I would like to at least get to 2gb by replacing the two 512mb sticks in the system now.

Any suggestions/experience with realistic max capacity regarding RAM and motherboards, or at least what was reported from SIW?

[JAMF]

Well, ABS also says it has a 1GB limit: http://www.abs.com/app/g3_specs.asp (specifications)

I think that SIW shows what's theoretically possible, from stored details on the SiS 755 and SiS SB 963L chipset. Laptops are engineered in such a way that it fits in the housing. This sometimes has the effect that they have to drop features so the motherboards stay small enough. If it would be possible to try out two sticks of 1GB,who's stopping you? One possible solution to the memory limit could be a newer or a hacked firmware and/or BIOS, but if that's available will require deeper investigation.

[Pirate]

I just upgraded from an amd 2.4 with 1.5gb ram and a 6800 - and like you, with only a few aircraft in the air I could get it running quite smooothly on 'perfect' offline. but as I spend most of my time on IL2 online those settings were impractical and tuned it down to 'excellent' due to horrible frame rates. You should notice a difference adding some more ram, but in my experience with a similar setup perfect graphics are beyond what you can acheive with your setup.