The fastest CPU I can put on my motherboard (A7N8X) would be a Athlon XP 3200+ (i think). Would that make enough difference to make it worthwhile? If I have to change my motherboard this is going to turn into a very expensive game.

Current Rig

Asus A7N8X 1.04
Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton)
1 GB OCZ DDR400
PNY 6800 GS 256MB (unlocked to 16p 6v)
84.56 Rev 3 drivers

Average fps is around 25. That dips to below 10 when things get hairy. If I could get it to stay over 20 I think I could live with it.

ps another question... does running multiple displays affect performance noticably?

well gaming is a very expensive hobby, specially pc gaming,
for pc gaming you have to upgrade your pc every 2 a 3 years
i have google a little and i think the highest cpu for your board is AMD Athlon XP 3000+ - AXDA3000DKV4D this version you have two versions,
i think with this the game will run much better,
and also you need 500 mb ram extra,
you can buy this second hand to reduce the cost,
but if you dont want to spend much money on pc gaming then wait for ps3,
they say it support mous and keyboard, if it is working like pc gaming, then i also quit with pc gaming becouse of huge ammounts of cost,
about the multiple monitors i think it does reduce fps but,
but why dont you test it?, disable the monitor in your settings and get your average fps with fraps

ok birdy, lets get a few things strait.

pc gaming is expensive and requires upgrades every half year. not 2-3 years unless you are talking bout scrappin everything and just building new rig. that would make slightly more sense.

with your ram, you either scrap your current ram and buy 2x1024mb sticks or stick with what you got. your mobo and CPU will not allow you to run stabily with 4 sticks of ram. it will most likely downclock your ram and you will end up losing all the possible performance gain you got for the extra ram you bought.

your CPU is a big bottleneck. .5ghz rating up wont help tremendously but it will help some. with prices like they are right now, it shouldnt be too expensive to upgrade.

last but def not least. those who think that ditchin PC for PS3 are absolutly retarded. might as well upgrade your PC cause the PS3 is gona cost you 650-750 when it launches. and think about it. when going with a game console to replace your PC, you also replace the ability to do anything but gaming which makes the PS3 obsolete compared to the PC in that sense. those who use PC's solely for gaming are retarded as well. what a waste of hardware.

quote:

ps another question... does running multiple displays affect performance noticably?

i have tested numerous time to see the difference between one and two monitor and honestly i dont see a difference either in BF2, DOOM3, Quake4 or other game

well things are very strait for me,
first of all ps3 not conna cost 650-750, it will be arround 400-500,
even when it will cost 1000 then the cost of pc gaming are much higher,
for a high end game pc that comes a little close to the ps3 you pay at least 3000-3500,
my videocard only is almost the cost of a new ps3, my cpu 4800 + have cost 1000, now they are some cheaper but, i mean my system cost thousend of dollars or euros, and over 1 year i need a new videocard for dx10, and maybe more ram, at the end in 5 yeard i spend so much money that i could buy 9 ps3,
so you pay at least 9x more if you want to come close to the power of the ps3 for 5 years
also i am not meaning to replace the pc for ps3,
use ps3 for gaming and ofcourse you need your pc for other things but then without the cost of a high end game machine
i think if the mouse and keyboard of the ps3 is working like pc then the end of pc gaming is in sight
you say that you have to upgrade every half year,
i realy want to no what are you upgrading every half year in your rig

I was wondering if anyone had tried to set "high" to "extreme". I did it after i saw that my sound was at extreme, but it seems to work for just a few options, if u type "extreme" in all, the graphics will suck.

birdy, Sony has confirmed it to be my pricerange rather than yours. research buddy.

i dont no where your buying but it does not cost that much for a smoking rig. why would you trash your entire build for a new one? just upgrade part by part gradualy. the PS3 has some features that mainstream PC parts do not provide like their number of processing units. but PCs have more ram and much more capabilities.

when i upgrade every half year, its usualy minor components like a new HDD, ram, ocasionaly PSU. stuff like CPU, GPU, sound card and etc, i hold until im 2 gen behind. then i upgrade. i always try to future proof my PC so i dont end up spending monstrous amounts of money to upgrade. smart buying is a good skill to have.

i also expect the ps3 to blow my senses but i will never give up PC gaming for console gaming. expecialy since you have to pay 60 for a PS3 game while i get my games for free. those games do add up to quite a bit.

in reply to black dragon. silly lil moder. extream is only for sound. no such option in the rendering xml file. if you do, the graphics revert to low as the game does not understand what your telling it to do. extream for sound is not ment for all either. if you do not have Xfi sound card, setting sound quality to extream will most likely cost you some frames.

I did relize that at least the textures went down to low, but at the video menu , everything that said high says extreme, and by the way, if i type in "apple" my settings in the game dont say apple. Why would extreme appear?

specs:
geforce 7800pcie
2gb RAM
3.2GHZ
XFI card

i dont no what you are thinking about a high end game machine but this is what i thinking
remember that whe want to come as close as possible to the performance and quality of the ps3
Here is your high end game machine, no keyboard mous or monitor or extras included

AMD Athlon 64 FX60 BOXED (Socket 939, 2.60Ghz, 2x1MB) 1015 Euro
XFX Nvidia 7900GTX XxX 512MB DDR3 (PCI-E) x 2 1128 Euro
Corsair 2x1GB PC3200@233 TwinX DDR SDRAM 198 Euro
Western Digital 74GB (WD740GD, 10000RPM, 8MB, SATA 2x 306 Euro
PSU Seasonic S12-600 retail (personal choise) 124.99 Euro
PC Case Silverstone Temjin TJ05S zilver 139 Euro
motherboard Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe 191 Euro
total:3101,99

in 5 years you need for sure 1 or maybe 2 high end videocards and 2 gig extra memory what brings you easy to 4000 and above
and after 5-6 years you can start all over again
i got a case almost like this myself and i think like i say before that i could buy 9 ps3 when 5 years are over for the price of 500 each,
i think closer than this to the ps3 you cant come with this system in this time
All Prices you can find here
if you can do this cheaper then let me no,
nice to no for people who want to build a rig
also i realy like to see your reference(research) to the prices of your ps3 becouse i cant find it in the range of 650-750,
highest i can find is 500-600
also you say you got your games for free, then you talk for yourself,
the games are not free for the regular gamers,

i can easily cut that down to 2k USD. no wonder your paying so much. ****ty stores like that.

www.pricegrabber.com

have fun

and the prices your getting for PS3s...euros or usd?

i dont think you can get that price to 2000 inclusive tax, i would like to see that,
these prices are regular prices in whole europe,
also you cant give me the link to the prices of ps3,
the price of the ps3 conna cost arround 500-600,
Euro, in dollars i dont no,
but even when its 1000 dollar or euro its stays cheap if you compare it with the price of a high end machine and the power and quality that you get, instead of that laggy pc cases,
look at this forum only,
always you see tons of topics with people with performance problems on every forums,
and that is not always the fault of the developers,
i dont think you got that with a ps3,
so like i say before, if the keyboard and mouse are working like a pc then alot of people including myself make the step to the ps3,
pc will never be gone, but will only be used to email surfing and working with other apps,
maybe working with the ps3 toget'her

hah...comon misunderstanding. euro 500-600 is aprox USD 650-750. there we on the same page on that now.

yea, in US online retailers dont charge tax unless you live in california. so, the only thing that adds money here is shipping which im sure any online retailers charge unless theres a special or a sale.

if you believe that ps3 is gona be a better choice than pc, so be it. tis your opinion and thats all that matters, im not even gona argue with it anymore. PC gaming will never die. its still an expanding market and hopefully continue to be.

ps3 topic ends here.

those who have real tech probs continue to post plz.

I hate to say this but...
All I hear about the consoles games are they suk to look at and the box is loud and can over heat easy!! I also hear about bugs bugs bugs and more bugs!!

You want to talk about cost?

OK when you buy that console you have to play it on your TV right? Well I hope you have 2 TVs cuz the rest of the fam will not let you on when there shows are on!!

You have to pay to play, this means you buy the box and pay so much each month to play your game.

If your box breaks down??
Get ready for an 8 week turn over time, if you’re lucky!!

Price of the console games are on the rise!!
get ready to pay higher prices!!

Mods??... HAHAHA what Mods... there is NO Mods in console games!!

Want clan members? Well think again, the amount of players who play console games and join clans are small due to the fact that it now becomes too much to get on line to go to your site so they never get around to doing it.

Console hacks, easy, there are machines that you stick your console game into and it will break down the code and transfer it to a disk, from there the hacker uploads it to his /her computer and edict’s the file for speed,aim,anti death ect and more!! Then all he dose is re-upload it to disk and then re-uploads to console game and BAM his hacking all of you!!

So if you think console gaming is a much better way to go... dream on!!

perhaps i should have said all CONSOLE rants stop here.

I edited the xml as drako outlined, left the texture on medium, though, but changed everything to true, and got no FPS increase whatsoever. I just stay in the mid 20's no matter what I do, even on the highest resolution, regardless of texture filtering settings or low vs medium textures. Would be nice to get an increase somehow. Maybe a patch will make things a little more efficient and less taxing on the processing power? Who knows...

if lowering quality and doing other stuff to improve performance does not improve frames, you have some sort of bottleneck in your system. cant say what it is right now. sys specs plz.

1024x768
Medium Textures
everything else HIGH

ran thru demo level (coup d'tate?) for about 5 minutes

-Standard XML settings
min: 35
Max: 85
Avg: 49.795

-All texture_managed settings TRUE
-effect quality HIGH
Min: 34
Max: 84
Avg: 46.285

my average dropped 3fps, but the look improved dramatically, I think. The colors seem not as washed out (why is it so blah??) and the details are more pleasant.

I can handle a 3fps drop in average! I can always drop it back if needed.

I'm curious how many people have tried tweaking or even know about their *Image Settings* under Video Performance and Quality settings tab (in your display properties advanced windows setup)

I know if I drop IMAGE SETTINGS down to HIGH PERFORMANCE I get a dramatic FPS boost but with bland looking textures and graphics.

Vice versa...if I jack it up to HIGH QUALITY...everything looks crisp, but my low end system chugs along slowly.

just another thing to check in case you peeps don't already know about it.

well...nvidia dont lie that often, if it says high performance you gona get high performance at the cost of really ugly graphics.

to swiss, nice settings and specs. if you get the full version, your gona get better results.

if you have an creative sound card, update the openAL files. also update your drivers. download the newest ageia physx drivers even if you dont have physx card.

you will see improvement after those upgrades as well.

The Textured Managed Tweak is not a FPS wonder... it just increases overall performance. Since the game preloads more info to your system's RAM, this means fewer trips to the HD and less stress on the video cards ram. The tweak also improves mouse movement as well as smooths out overall frames...eliminates the Stutter effect. This tweak will also let most play with all settings High and a minimal loss of FPS. If you try running everything on High without this tweak the game will stutter more often and mouse speed will decrease dramaticlly.