CPU lag

[commanderdrvr]

Lately I've been hitting a wall during team games. I have a home built box with an AMD Athlon. The weakest link in the chain is the RAM(4gb). I've pissed off a few players over the last couple games so I'm abstaining until I can get some more ram. Has anyone done an up-to-date analysis on what minimum hardware requirements would be to run the game smoothly? Will 8gb ram do it?

[uberge3k]

More RAM won't help, as FA is a 32bit program and can't use much more than ~2.5GB anyway. It would simply crash if it ever ran out of RAM, not just slow down, so it's highly unlikely that it's your limitation.

Your real problem is this:

AMD Athlon

FA is dependent on clock speed, the higher the better, and AMD simply doesn't have that. I would recommend instead swapping your board and CPU for an i5 2500k or better, and OC'ing it if possible. This will give you the best improvement in sim speed.

As for what will run it "smoothly", it's entirely dependent on what games you play. The fastest CPU on the planet will still eventually meet its match if you throw enough AIs at it. For most average teamgames, an i5 2500k will ensure that you aren't the bottleneck. If you have more to spend, get better cooling and OC it as high as you can handle.

[commanderdrvr]

good info, thank you.

The CPU is oc'd now to 3.2ghz with good liquid cooling. I ran a 4 day stress test on it last week and all parameters appear normal. A new chipset/motherboard is a bit beyond my means at the moment but I'll start pushing in that direction. i guess it's just ladder games for me till then.

[greatgm]

AMD Athlon? . Wow...that is like having an Intel Celeron processor. That is not a good CPU to have. It is way out of date. Heck it is single core. You can hardly do anything with single core processors except check e-mail. Heck I don't think you can run windows-7 efficiently with an Athlon.

AMD have good processors, therefore, I would not recommend an Intel processor because Intel are a bunch of rip-offs. They are too expensive. I just say just get a good AMD processor such as a 6 or 8 core. Here is a link to a good AMD processor right now,.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103727. If you want more power than this processor will do the trick.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103960

I recommend the first one. It is cheap, has good speed and is very good. When getting a motherboard I recommend an Asus, or Gigabyte motherboard. For a video card, I recommend a XFX brand Radeon GPU videocard.

Nothing against Intel but they are too expensive and they are rip-offs. Also I find it very insulting from Intel they they are offering so-called "new generation" dual core processors. Why the heck I want to buy some what..."new generation" dual core processor when I can get a quad, 6 or 8-core processor?

AMD is good. Get another AMD. I have and AMD Phenom-II X4 940 for 3 years right now. It is 3 years old and it can still compete with some of the current processors in terms of performance. By the way, it runs Forged Alliance and Forged Alliance forever with no problems.

[Voodoo]

I'm using an AMD phenom II 1100T X6. I bought it for 140 € more then one year ago and i'm realy happy with this cpu.
But yes pentium powns AMD but who cares if i havn't the slowest pc

[greatgm]

Great point Vodooo,

As stated Intel is good. Nobody is taking anything away from Intel but have you seen the prices that Intel asks for its processors? It is ridiculous. Not only that they are trying to fool the public with so-called "new generation" dual core processors. What they do for improvement? What...put a few more pins for so-called "better connection" to the motherboard that will so-call "improve speed". I mean really Voodoo, do you really believe that? Not me man.

As stated and I agree with you AMD maybe slower. However the difference in speed is so negliable that in reality you won't realize it unless you are using the computer to run the country's defense department. LOL.

Great post.

And yes, I'm bias to AMD. AMD rocks bigtime

[Mr Pinguin]

This is what I use when I'm shopping for new CPUs:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

Intel really has the best processors these days, but I'm also not building my own computers anymore. If I was building a desktop I might opt for a cheaper AMD, but when it comes to prebuilt laptops (which is what I use), I never see that AMD discount passed on for some reason.

FYI: It's clearly not *just* about clock speed. My laptop uses a Core 2 Duo P 8600 (2.4ghz), and I can play big games pretty well, much better than my old Desktop that used an AMD single core with a 3.xx ghz cpu.

[ToejamS]

As everyone else has said, this game is about pure Ghz and Intel are the daddy of Ghz, now thats not to say you cant play with AMD, as a lot of players do but you will need to spank that puppy and get it running hard. If you can find a cpu that will fit your motherboard for cheap that offers more Ghz, grab it, it will help.

But as for Intel being too expensive, I have a 2600k that runs at 5.0ghz 24/7 and hes a happy little chappy, thats darn good value I would say.

[Voodoo]

This is what I use when I'm shopping for new CPUs:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

Rank 117 High End CPU's

[rabidradish]

AMD Athlon? . Wow...that is like having an Intel Celeron processor. That is not a good CPU to have. It is way out of date. Heck it is single core. You can hardly do anything with single core processors except check e-mail. Heck I don't think you can run windows-7 efficiently with an Athlon.

AMD have good processors, therefore, I would not recommend an Intel processor because Intel are a bunch of rip-offs. They are too expensive. I just say just get a good AMD processor such as a 6 or 8 core. Here is a link to a good AMD processor right now,.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103727. If you want more power than this processor will do the trick.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103960

I recommend the first one. It is cheap, has good speed and is very good. When getting a motherboard I recommend an Asus, or Gigabyte motherboard. For a video card, I recommend a XFX brand Radeon GPU videocard.

Nothing against Intel but they are too expensive and they are rip-offs. Also I find it very insulting from Intel they they are offering so-called "new generation" dual core processors. Why the heck I want to buy some what..."new generation" dual core processor when I can get a quad, 6 or 8-core processor?

AMD is good. Get another AMD. I have and AMD Phenom-II X4 940 for 3 years right now. It is 3 years old and it can still compete with some of the current processors in terms of performance. By the way, it runs Forged Alliance and Forged Alliance forever with no problems.

First, there are many different Athlon's, some with up to 4 cores. Second, sorry to break it to you, but AMD is not good, at least not for this game. Unlike all those crappy fps games this game is purely cpu limited. It needs good single threaded ipc, exactly what's lacking in AMD cpu's. An FX-8150 is especially bad since it has worse ipc than Phenom II. And 6 (semi)-cores will be sitting around unused.

Lastly, seriously Intel too expensive? Come on man, 200 euro/dollar for a quadcore you can easily overclock to 4.5Ghz? Ok if you really can't afford that then get second hand i3 530 and clock it to 4.5GHz.