Quick spec query

ambro25

Hi Soldiers,

You thought that was the end of "Will it run on..." threads? Ha! How wrong could you be!

I've just got a hold of a Gateway '1600' (or somesuch) free, and it's a P4 1.4GHz, 512 RAM, mobo unknown (for now). Installing XP Pro on it at the week-end and I was toying with the idea of running BF2 in Crappy Mode™ as well.

Graphics card is on the way out ASAP anyway (TNT2 32MB - I mean, yay!), but here's the killer Q: any point in getting hold of a 2nd-hand 9600XT or equivalent to run BF2? Or will the game just not start, considering the CPU?

Spear

ambro25 wrote:

Hi Soldiers,

You thought that was the end of "Will it run on..." threads? Ha! How wrong could you be!

I've just got a hold of a Gateway '1600' (or somesuch) free, and it's a P4 1.4GHz, 512 RAM, mobo unknown (for now). Installing XP Pro on it at the week-end and I was toying with the idea of running BF2 in Crappy Mode™ as well.

Graphics card is on the way out ASAP anyway (TNT2 32MB - I mean, yay!), but here's the killer Q: any point in getting hold of a 2nd-hand 9600XT or equivalent to run BF2? Or will the game just not start, considering the CPU?

It'll start, but it's gonna have to be minimum details for everything, and there'll be loads of disk thrashing with only 512MB.

ambro25

Spear wrote:

It'll start, but it's gonna have to be minimum details for everything, and there'll be loads of disk thrashing with only 512MB.

Not to worry re. details, it's only for co-op with a few bots on 16-maps over LAN with the D600 lappie (which also runs it in 800x600 Crappy Mode™, so no competitive advantage ). I use the main 'decent' rig for the eye candy and online play . Not even going to bother patching it.

Disk thrash still a prob with the HDD as a 120 Seagate Barracuda 7200/8MB cache?

(overkill for the base unit spec I know, but the HDD was spare and getting dusty, so in it went... you should see 98SE run on that puppy :eek: under 20 seconds boot, near-instant 'clean' shutdown, it's so fast it's like the darn thing reads my mind before I click on anything - if only I didn't have to XP-it to run BF2 )

Spear

ambro25 wrote:

Disk thrash still a prob with the HDD as a 120 Seagate Barracuda 7200/8MB cache?

(overkill for the base unit spec I know, but the HDD was spare and getting dusty, so in it went... you should see 98SE run on that puppy :eek: under 20 seconds boot, near-instant 'clean' shutdown, it's so fast it's like the darn thing reads my mind before I click on anything - if only I didn't have to XP-it to run BF2 )

BF2 will happily eat 2Gb of RAM, so it's gonna swap loads. Might want to get another 512Mb for sake of your sanity.

spooky donkey

I hate the way my Bf rig with 1 gig behaves. My worse machine with 2 gigs runs a lot smoother. 2 gig is the way to go, the gfx card is less important imo.

ambro25

Thank you all

After a few minutes "under the hood" this weekend and my trusty, well-thumbed Googleator, I've finally managed to narrow down what beast this PC actually is... and it's one of them.

400FSB, PC800 RDRAM (384 of it, to be exact, 128 x 2 and 64 x2). Still don't know what mobo exactly is, but upping the card to a 9600XT and RAM up to 2 GB (allegedly doable) just to see if BF2 will run decently offline sounds like buying €000s of aftermarket performance parts for a 20-year old Micra, methinks :rolleyes:

Still... it was free, and you don't look a gift horse in the mouth as they say