Supreme Commander Hardware Performance Guide @ Gamespot

MIG-31

Source: Gamespot
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Supreme Commander pushes the real-time strategy genre forward by introducing gigantic maps and new unit-design concepts to transform mere battles and skirmishes into epic conflicts. The size of the maps forces players to use the game's camera control to zoom in on the map to watch over a single battle or to zoom out for the big picture. You need all the information you can get when the enemy has artillery that can hit targets from across the map. Multi-monitor support lets you keep track of two separate areas on the map--one view on each screen.

DudeBoyz

Man, that game is just a huge resource hog. I hope patches make it more efficient, but I kinda doubt that. Patches usually just fix bugs and maybe do some balance changes.

At least folks that don't have the super-mega systems can still play games like Company of Heroes and BFME II.

Zardon

yeah its a total system killer. I need a new gaming system to play it. my conroe 2.33ghz T7600 cpu and x1800 just about grind to a halt on some of the levels when you build a ton of units.

Zardon

Supreme Commander Hardware Performance Guide - Features at GameSpot

erm page 2, roll over second image. thats the difference between medium and low settings?

testing the differences between 2 and 4 gig of ram on a 32 bit OS? no wonder it shows no differences. typical gamespot "hardware" article. rubbish.

DudeBoyz

For my Battle for Middle Earth II game, I found upgrading to 2 gig of RAM from 1 gig made a big diff, particularly when closing out of a game. Much less disk thrashing.

Zardon

ive already 2 gig of DDR2 in this system, doesnt help much with Supreme commander. well it maybe does, but I havent tested it with 1 gig, but id dread to see it running with less memory, it already runs like crap.

DudeBoyz

Wow. Kind of a bummer. How does Company of Heroes run on your rig?

BTW, you have some intensely disturbing Avatars. I'm thinking I might have to turn Avatar viewing off if I want to avoid nightmares...

Woah!

OmegaRED

There's also not many RTS that let you build up a 1000 units (CoH has a unit cap a fraction of that) so it isn't suprising it takes a beast to run it. My system can handle the game with most details and AA/AF on and it's smooth; mine is not exactly a killer gaming rig these days.

Zardon

The more I play the game the more I like it, however it really is a system killer. I also know you love it so relax

As for your system handling it with AA and AF im pretty amazed (I just read your system specs and yes its not really a high end system by todays standards I agree) ... it is well known that if you max this game out to the hilt it can drag even the highest end systems to their knees - im guessing you have a few IQ settings turned down within your in game panels. Even that rubbish analysis on gamespot would verify that. All I know right now until I get my Quad core Intel rig with a 8800 up and running is that ..... the system I can play everything else on at 1680x1050 (even dark messiah with high IQ) runs exceptionally poorly with this game once you get into mass unit building and thats with AA and AF off. If your system is running that game well at a high res with 1000 units AND aa/af ON then I strongly suggest you dont upgrade it for a long time to come !

Interesting I hear from a few people that those running this game in VISTA are getting 15-25% performance GAINS. ill be checking this out next week.

BlueMak

I have a serious question to ask to the players of this game. What is the point of having full details on, when you have to spend most of the time on zoomed out eh zoom? It's not like you see any graphics details, right?

Zardon

Well I guess that depends how the end user plays, some people prefer playing closer rather than out on the mini map overview.

Also those with dual monitors can play it with both if they desire (and have the power).

OmegaRED

Most of the time is spent zoomed in so you can play with upgrades and manage your engineers. If you have to sacrifice graphics DO NOT lower the water details as they are some of the prettiest in the game. Most vid cards should be fine by lowering the shadows to low.

DudeBoyz

I think that's a pretty fair question. When you zoom out that far it looks like an X's and O's football diagram. Not sure it would be too fun to do from way out there.

I know in BFME II and ROTWK, I like zooming in close enough so I can see the animations and stuff. That's half the fun when you have AA and AF cranked up.

OmegaRED

You mention BFME2 every chance you get don't ya Dude?

DudeBoyz

It's the only other modern RTS I know much about. I don't know what else to compare things too. Sorry about that.

I have the Supreme Commander demo installed, but I just can't get that going well. However, Company of Heroes seems to perform in a more reasonable manner and the built-in tutorial is helpful.

I was familiar with Star Craft, and I tried War Craft but was kinda bugged that the interface took up like 1/3rd of the whole screen and could never really figure out the part where you have to go capture ports and get on ships and stuff. I did play that demo for a week or so and it felt kind of "cartoony" to me besides.

I tried some others but I think I'm just having trouble with that standard interface. For whatever reason, the different interface in the BFME line "clicked" with me and I was able to figure it out. Even from the very first BFME I game I had it nailed in a few sessions.

It was logical to say "Oh, ok, you build a farm to generate resources. Then you build a Blacksmith shop to generate resources and build armor." All the icons were easy to identify, and just about everything was context sensitive, so hardly any of the interface elements had to stay on the screen at any one time. Plus, that resource system was so bone-stock-straight-forward that I didn't have to spend time trying to balance things out so much. It was like "Set it and forget it" and then I could move on to building walls and equiping them with Archer Towers and Trebuchet's, which also made perfect sense. I didn't have to worry about 7 different "classes" of weapons or some such thing.

It's a bummer my brain is so "thick" that I can't seem to pick up the other interfaces for RTS. Maybe the BFME series is the only modern RTS I'm smart enough to figure out.

OmegaRED

You'd love Medieval 2: Total War because it has calvary, pikeman, catapults and all sorts of other stuff in BFME2. Also, instead of Elves you have France

I'm not wild about Supreme Commander but I do enjoy it slightly more than CoH.

Sandok

Imho, that's saying alot