Curunir on 24/6/2006 at 16:34
First of all, I'd like to apologise for making a new thread, I checked and saw a couple similar ones existed but my question is somewhat different.
It's probably funny for someone to ask about MW's requirements, now that people are playing Oblivion but there you have it!
I'm considering an upgrade to be able to play MW smoothly and I wanted to ask people who have extensive experience with the game whether what I intend to buy will suffice.
I'm planning to run MW with a solid, probably hi-res retexture, player model high poly mods, a couple of other more serious graphical tweaks modifying trees, three pretty large landmass addition mods (Silgrad Tower, Sea of Destiny, Ald Vendras) and a slew of minor tiny mods that modify the little annoying aspects of the game (magic item glow, crosshairs, magic item inventory icons, gold coin models etc) which shouldn't inject a lot of processor-intensive variables into the game.
The (sadly very low budget) upgrade I'm planning is from a 1.2 ghz Celeron, 256 ddr ram, geforce 2 mx to what would hopefully run MW much better: 1.2 ghz Celeron (no motherboard replacement), 512 ddr ram, geforce 5500FX 256 vram
My biggest concern is what ON EARTH happens if I buy the extra ram and new video and I find that it still won't run MW at pretty framerates. I don't expect 100+ fps, I expect it not to drop below, let's say 30 too often.
Advice from anyone who has used mods before and has an idea of how they influence fps or has a good general idea of what sort of hardware gets MW's gears oiled up will be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
cyrano on 25/6/2006 at 19:38
I don’t usually respond to hardware posts; there are others who have (or imagine they have) much greater knowledge than me. But I notice that you are back around and I wouldn’t want you to leave this forum never to return because you thought us inattentive or indifferent about your situation. :angel:
What you are proposing by way of an upgrade is about the same as my present system, except perhaps the graphics card. I went the other way (Radeon), but there are so many species of both architectures that I am at a loss at to what the designations mean or how they compare. In advance of the release of Oblivion there was a helpful thread linking to some card comparison. I thought it was pinned, but clearly it is not. To the point: my system runs Morrowind adequately, but I do not plug-in very many mods. I still have moments of slowdown. The types of mods that will tax your system the most will be those that add new high poly-count meshes and more creatures and NPCs. When I was trying to test the framerate hit generated by a couple of my mods, I found that it was rendering animated NPCs that had the greatest impact, and not the complex scripts that I was running. For me, it was about 1 fps loss for each additional NPC or creature that was in my field of view. Of course, that will be different for every system, but it gives you an idea. There was not measurable loss of performance associated with a 1400-line script running in the background. If you avoid mods like Morrowind Comes Alive and Children of Morrowind that add many new NPCs to cities that already cause your system to bog you may be alright. I would also avoid mods that expand existing towns and cities physically (Balmora Expanded, Suran Expanded). They add many new statics to render that consumes processor as well as graphics card resources. Weather can also take a toll on very low systems. I wrote a mod to address that issue, but I doubt that a blizzard or ash storm is going to bring your system to its knees.
I wish I had more useful advice to offer about specific system upgrades, but I expect that some one will chime in soon.
RyushiBlade on 25/6/2006 at 21:35
Curunir, you needn't worry. Your GeForce 5500 should be good enough to play Morrowind fine. But if you want my advice, I'd tell you to dish out the extra dough for something with a bit more power. When I got into gaming and had to upgrade (Morrowind!), I went for a Radeon 9600. When I realized that games could actually look beautiful, I regretted my decision. If I had bought a better card, I could have played even
better games.
Anyway, you can get good cards surprisingly cheap now. Back when Morrowind was released, I bought my Radeon 9600 Pro for ~$100. Nowadays, for just about the same price, you can buy a (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130232) GeForce 6600 (I think this card can even run Oblivion, though you may need Oldblivion to do so). I was also surprised to find a Radeon x1x00 series for that price, the (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161007) Radeon x1300. If I have managed to sway you--probably not, I'm no good at swaying--buy from (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+4017+1069609639&Subcategory=48&description=&srchInDesc=&minPrice=&maxPrice=) Newegg.com. They are the best online store for computer components without a doubt. Everyone says so.
Curunir on 26/6/2006 at 17:26
Thanks for your replies!
Cyrano - I have done my homework and I figured mods like MW Wilderness and MW Comes Alive cause drastic framerate drops, ludicrous city expansions likewise. What I have sifted through and kept for installation is relatively fps-safe. As for weather, I just downloaded a tiny little mod that actually lets you cast a mana-cheap weather changing spell to stop/cause ash storms. :p
Ryushi - for some reason, though every person I know has repeatedly told me that ATI cards are better in many ways, I stubbornly refuse to buy one. I know it's stupid but I just don't want to. :erg:
As for buying a GF6, I simply cannot afford that (it's twice as expensive as a GF5) and even if I did buy one, the added power would tempt me to play Oblivion which would of course mean mobo and cpu upgrades and OH GOD I CAN'T DO THAT :D
Palantir on 5/7/2006 at 14:02
Pentium 4 CPU 2.4GHz
768MB RAM
356M Geforce FX 5200
Anyone tell me why the game always crashes to desktop when I'm starting a new game?
Palantir on 6/7/2006 at 00:29
Sorry, I've posted it in a wrong place.
