Supreme Commander - post-release discussion.
Troy, I think that's better than me right now.
AMD 3500+
7800GT
2GB Ram
I don't know the specs of your video for comparison. But, your CPU is obviously better.
The game always ran good for me. I played all skirmish mode though. Didn't do any missions/storyline stuff. Also, I beat the enemy pretty quickly, or he beat me. So, I never had a 10000 unit battle running or anything. So, don't know when the system would have actually stopped running good.
Also, last time I looked, SC didn't use the extra cores in the multi core CPUs. So, unless they patched that in, people didn't see a big increase in performance upgrading to multi core CPUs.
In closing, I don't think you'll have to upgrade your stuff to play.
I'm waiting till I want to play the Crysis stuff before I buy new hardware. Everything I'm playing now, or is in line to be played, will run well on my current system.
AMD 3500+
7800GT
2GB Ram
I don't know the specs of your video for comparison. But, your CPU is obviously better.
The game always ran good for me. I played all skirmish mode though. Didn't do any missions/storyline stuff. Also, I beat the enemy pretty quickly, or he beat me. So, I never had a 10000 unit battle running or anything. So, don't know when the system would have actually stopped running good.
Also, last time I looked, SC didn't use the extra cores in the multi core CPUs. So, unless they patched that in, people didn't see a big increase in performance upgrading to multi core CPUs.
In closing, I don't think you'll have to upgrade your stuff to play.
I'm waiting till I want to play the Crysis stuff before I buy new hardware. Everything I'm playing now, or is in line to be played, will run well on my current system.
Actually, I'm pretty sure SC is a game that uses multiple cores.
I swear I read that somewhere.
I swear I read that somewhere.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
Tried the demo last night.
It was fun.
Game was fine until there were 150 or so units on the screen. Then there was some lag on the zoom in.
I'm considering ordering it off of Newegg now. It was fun, but I've been devoting an hour a night to replaying Oblivion as a thief, so it'll probably have to wait until I'm bored with that.
It was fun.
Game was fine until there were 150 or so units on the screen. Then there was some lag on the zoom in.
I'm considering ordering it off of Newegg now. It was fun, but I've been devoting an hour a night to replaying Oblivion as a thief, so it'll probably have to wait until I'm bored with that.
Don't forget to zoom in. That makes them bigger. 
Also, did some quick searches about the multi core capabilities of SupCom. It does have them. It does indeed run better on Multicore cpus. You have to turn the settings down on a single core cpu when running with 7 AIs with 1000's of units. At those levels, a single core is unplayable. Quad handles it as does Dual to a lesser extent. As far as OS versions, Vista loses. You have to turn down some of the settings to run 40kx40k maps with 6 AI and 1000's of units. XP, you don't. So, as far as hardware and OS, quad core on XP is best. SLI in Vista had little impact. SLI in XP had a measurable impact.
The above was measured using fps. Many people were arguing that in an RTS, fps means less. They were pointing out that the game will automatically throttle back game time to keep fps up. In other words, when the shit hits the fan and 1000's of units collide, fps will stay high, but the battle occurs in super slo-mo. The action slows way down. But, you can still zoom in and out and move around the battlefield smoothly with your higher frame rate. So, with large scale battles, a 1 hour game time game, will take 2-3 hours of real time. No one mentioned a comparison between CPUs/OSs/etc taking game/real time into consideration. So, many still question to true value of cores and os versions. Everyone agrees that bigger is still better, but to what degree, as far as game time, is still in question.
Also, all tests were done against AI. So, 7 humans with 1000's of units is still a mystery. Dual monitors was never tested as well. But overall opinion is that it impacts things greatly at the video card level.
So, kill your enemies quickly, and single core cpus will hold their own. Let things get long and protracted, single cores will show their weakness.
It was interesting to see the CPU utilization too for quad/dual/single cores.
Core 1 at 80%, core 2 at 20%, core 3 at 40%, core 4 at 15%.
Core 1 at 90%, core 2 at 40%.
Core 1 at 100%.
Also, did some quick searches about the multi core capabilities of SupCom. It does have them. It does indeed run better on Multicore cpus. You have to turn the settings down on a single core cpu when running with 7 AIs with 1000's of units. At those levels, a single core is unplayable. Quad handles it as does Dual to a lesser extent. As far as OS versions, Vista loses. You have to turn down some of the settings to run 40kx40k maps with 6 AI and 1000's of units. XP, you don't. So, as far as hardware and OS, quad core on XP is best. SLI in Vista had little impact. SLI in XP had a measurable impact.
The above was measured using fps. Many people were arguing that in an RTS, fps means less. They were pointing out that the game will automatically throttle back game time to keep fps up. In other words, when the shit hits the fan and 1000's of units collide, fps will stay high, but the battle occurs in super slo-mo. The action slows way down. But, you can still zoom in and out and move around the battlefield smoothly with your higher frame rate. So, with large scale battles, a 1 hour game time game, will take 2-3 hours of real time. No one mentioned a comparison between CPUs/OSs/etc taking game/real time into consideration. So, many still question to true value of cores and os versions. Everyone agrees that bigger is still better, but to what degree, as far as game time, is still in question.
Also, all tests were done against AI. So, 7 humans with 1000's of units is still a mystery. Dual monitors was never tested as well. But overall opinion is that it impacts things greatly at the video card level.
So, kill your enemies quickly, and single core cpus will hold their own. Let things get long and protracted, single cores will show their weakness.
It was interesting to see the CPU utilization too for quad/dual/single cores.
Core 1 at 80%, core 2 at 20%, core 3 at 40%, core 4 at 15%.
Core 1 at 90%, core 2 at 40%.
Core 1 at 100%.
Finally had enough units on screen tonight to slow my machine down. First mission of the expansion campaign. 4 giant experimental units, 1 brand new unit that makes the giant units look small, and a couple hundred regular units in a big battle. Slowed down to about 2 frames per second.... but still not as bad as it used to be on my old system.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."