Graphics Cards

[Flipper]

Does anyone know what graphics card would be the minimum required such as to not be a bottleneck at 1080p rez with max graphics options on dual monitors?

I currently have a Geforce GTS 450 paired with an i4670 cpu. I've been considering upgrading the gpu, but if it could not be a bottleneck for Supcom with max graphics options, then I don't want to waste the money. I realize that the game is 7+ years old so it may be cpu bound for me as Supcom will ALWAYS want more cpu.

Another consideration: does having 2gb+ of graphics ram help when running a dual monitor Supcom setup? I have no clue how much graphics ram FA uses for textures, buffers, etc.

[Aurion]

Does anyone know what graphics card would be the minimum required such as to not be a bottleneck at 1080p rez with max graphics options on dual monitors?

I currently have a Geforce GTS 450 paired with an i4670 cpu. I've been considering upgrading the gpu, but if it could not be a bottleneck for Supcom with max graphics options, then I don't want to waste the money. I realize that the game is 7+ years old so it may be cpu bound for me as Supcom will ALWAYS want more cpu.

Another consideration: does having 2gb+ of graphics ram help when running a dual monitor Supcom setup? I have no clue how much graphics ram FA uses for textures, buffers, etc.

Even with my old 8800GT I could max out everything in this game without fps drops (except for CPU related ones at the time). In SupCom there was absolutely no difference between 8800GT and GTX570 and your card falls somewhere in between so I wouldn't worry about your GPU if you only play SupCom (it's quite weak for newer games of course).

[Lionhardt]

I use a Radeon 6950. And when zooming into a busy crowd of engies or a drone swarm my fps crash through the floor; down to 14 or so from 60. That is with 8 times AA. Zooming into any bigger number of simultaneous particle effects, or mushroom clouds causes massive frame drops as well. So...

[da_monstr]

Most graphics card can now run Supcom/FA without much problem. I guess 2 GB of VRAM would help for multiple monitors, but most cards have that much any way. Which one do you intend to buy? (or, what is your budget?)

[Aurion]

I use a Radeon 6950. And when zooming into a busy crowd of engies or a drone swarm my fps crash through the floor; down to 14 or so from 60. That is with 8 times AA. Zooming into any bigger number of simultaneous particle effects, or mushroom clouds causes massive frame drops as well. So...

SupCom does run a bit better on NVIDIA cards (allthough with newer cards AMD cards are good enough).

[Plasma_Wolf]

Really? I can't remember that being discovered. I do know that nVidea cards had a lot of trouble with artefacts - It's that what they're called? I'm talking about the squares you get when you're looking at a nuke from the side. If you looked carefully, you could see them with an Ati card but a blind person could see it with an nVidea card.

Anyway, whichever one is best doesn't matter much I think. Ati and nVidea are very close to each other at the moment.

On the matter at hand: what is the speed of your cpu? I can't really make sense of the names of cpus anymore. If you could give the speed (amount of cores is less important here, since you have more than supcom can use).
Whether or not a cpu upgrade is useful, is easy to test. Go watch a 4v4 game and see if you can still run at 0 speed after a certain time. Buying a better cpu will make running at nonnegative speed possible for longer and in bigger battles. The final decision is up to you: if a 4v4 game can run at at least 0 speed for half an hour or a 2v2 game can do that for at least an hour, I'd say that buying a new cpu is a bit of a waste. It also depends on what you like to play. No 4v4 games? It's probably not necessary, but it's completely up to you to decide if you're happy with the speed you can run the game at after a certain time.

More than 2GB Vram is absolutely useless. For a 1920x1200, 512 MB will do. For smaller resolutions, 256 MB will do. I've had an ati 1950 Pro with the first computer I built (which was also the first to play supcom on). I had one with 512 MB Vram and one of my friends had one with 256 MB Vram. My profit was at most 0.5 fps at moments the fps was above 30 and 0 fps when it really mattered.

For a dual monitor setup, I'd say that 1 GB is more than enough. The speed of your graphics card is more important. My current graphics card is a 4970 of ati (I think, it's been a while) and it's perfectly fine when zoomed out or when there's not much on the field. Zoomed in with lots of fighting at a heavily assisted air factory, it's of course a different matter and if the framerate is low there in your case as well, then upgrading the graphics card is a good idea.

[IceDreamer]

High Anti-Aliasing will always kill the FPS in SupCom even with the very newest cards. Additionally, I have seen three machines on NVidia GFX cards (This Laptop, one friend's Desktop, and my old Desktop) exhibit artefacting and SIGNIFICANT FPS drops when selecting units when Range Rings are displayed, and seen four AMD GFX machines (My Brother's Desktop, my previous old Desktop, another friend's Desktop, and our main Family machine) exhibit much, much smoother FPS and no Range-Ring related problems.

Curiously, three of the AMD powered GFX machines also run AMD CPUs (Which many see as inferior - clearly not when it comes to SupCom FPS!) while all three of the NVidia machines run Intel CPUs, yet still have problems.

Current GFX card wise, NVidia lead at the very very top of the pack in real terms, with a 10% performance advantage for an extra 15% cash, while anywhere under the £300 mark AMD come out on top in the majority of tasks. None of this is relevant to SupCom really though: All cards will run the game fine, some will artefact and slow down with Range Rings, some will not, and turning up the AA will kill the FPS no matter how much money you spend.

Dual monitor SupCom will need no more than about 1GB of VRAM. Dual monitor on other games may require a hell of a lot more: 2*1080p modded Skyrim, for example, maxes out the 6GB VRAM on my Laptop when I'm running two screens.

[Cynic]

I used to run an ATI 4830 (which was on par with the NVIDIA 8800GT at the time). It ran fine at 1920x1200 and had no frame rate issues, but I didn't have the AA turned up. I have since upgraded to a NVIDIA 650ti. It also runs great, but since I had no issues with my previous video card I can't really say that I see an improvement.

HOWEVER, Regarding multiple monitors and Supcom:
I used to have dual monitors set up with my ATI 4830 and it was great when it worked. But it caused freezes and lockups. After much troubleshooting, I eventually disabled the second monitor to prevent the game crashes. I have not even attempted it with my newer NVIDIA 650ti. There are many forum threads about the dual monitor problem. If you have dual monitors working now without any crashes, then I would say leave it alone and keep your current graphics setup. Don't poke the hornet nest.

And regarding your CPU, your Intel 4670 is great for Supcom (as I am sure you already know).

[Flynn]

Well I have the same CPU as the OP, 8GB Corsair VENGEANCE RAM and an Nvidia GTX 760 (the latest gen) 2GB MSI OC edition (factory overclock) and even I get low framerates when I zoom into an engineer and queue up manual reclaim orders, so I wouldn't worry.

[D4E_Omit]

Newer nvidia GPU's have problems with dual monitor, 6xx randomly crashes and 7xx just rejects dual monitor..