It has been fun guys...but all things

[{OF}Flying_Dutchman]

Originally Posted by [DvT]UY

IP please

208.224.6.75

It's on the board's front page near the bottom: www.fragonsight.com

[{DvT}JonahHex]

Originally Posted by [DvT]UY

I got a P4 3.2 with 1 Gb of sys ram and a GF 6800.

What do I need to change/add for UT3?

The short, "inexpensive" answer is: another gig of RAM and a new vid card.

However, I'm pretty sure your mobo has an AGP video slot, which means your video card upgrade options are very limited...and limiting. All of the new video cards are PCI-e. To put a PCI-e card in requires a new mobo, CPU, and RAM, as well as the new vid card. On top of this, if your hard disk drives are IDE, rather than SATA, the PCI-e mobos usually only come w/ one IDE connector. Since a single IDE connector can handle 2 drives, one of which would be your DVD/CD drive, this means you could only have one HDD (which may or may not be an issue depending upon what you have now). If you want/need more than one HDD, then a (or more) new SATA HDD would also be needed.

The above are the ultimate Qs regarding what kind of upgrading you need to do: Does your current mobo have an AGP slot for video or a PCI-e slot? and if it is AGP, are you willing to sacrifice the video quality of the game in order to keep the upgrade at a minimum?

Hawk's system is similar to yours. He did the simple upgrade: additional RAM and a 7600GT AGP card (if I remember correctly). In order to play he has to have the game's video settings turned down pretty low. Thus, he is missing out on the "unreal" graphics, but the game is quite playable.

I'm a little hesitant about saying Hawk's game is "quite playable" because I only had the opportunity to play a few maps when I was helping get it set up -- I didn't play for hours at a time for several days. Thus, I'm not sure how valid my value judgement about it may be over a period of time. When going for a minimal upgrade, there always the issue of your feeling about it over the long-term. ie, in the beginning, you say "sure, I can live with this," but you can't know whether you will feel the same 3 or 6 months later. I'm not suggesting that you will be dissatisfied down the road, I'm just say that it is hard to predict how you feel down the road.

[{OF}Flying_Dutchman]

Here's my viewpoint: I enjoy UT3 much more now that I have upgraded my system....

Had a 2.0 Ghz AMD Athlon dual core 2 Gb Ram with a Radeon 1800XT 256 Mb graphics card running XP pro.

Now I have a 2.4 Ghz Intel Duo Quad Core with 8 Gb Ram and a Geforce 8800 GTS with 512 Mb of Ram running Vista 64 bit. Same monitor for both Samsung 22" 226 BW but you don't need to go that far to enjoy it.....)

[{DvT}JonahHex]

Dutchman's comments are very much the direction I was going. ...and he is right in that it is not necessary at all to go as far as he and/or I did with the upgrades.

For example we have Quad Core CPUs, a Dual Core works great. He has 8GB of RAM, I have 4GB...2GB is just fine. He is running Vista 64-bit, I can dual boot to either XP 32-bit or Vista 64-bit - XP is my default and what I usually use when playing. None-the-less, when talking in these terms, we are talking about the new mobo/CPU/RAM/etc route that I mentioned above.

[[DvT]UY]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm thinkin on it.

[[DvT]UY]

Ok, Memory ordered. 2Gb kit which will bring me to 2.5 Gb.

Since I have an AGP slot it looks like a GF 7600 is the best I can do....right?

[{OF}G_Man]

Yep, pretty sure 7600 is it on AGP. I hunted for one, and that was the best I could find anywhere. I upgraded from a GF 6600 to this AGP 8x PNY 512MB 7600 GS. I am not impressed with the 7600. Really didn't do much for my performance, and have been getting little annoying video glitches in some of my games that ran pretty well on the 6600. I played with different drivers, and got it about as good as I could get it. It's OK, but if I had it to do over again, I'd have put my money towards the new rig.

I did a modest new build with a 2.0GHz duo core, 1ghz fsb mobd, 2gb ram, and Vista. I decided to spend a little more money on the video card and went with a GF 8800. There is just no comparison. I have been moving my games onto this new rig now.

[[DvT]UY]

I'm using a GF 6800 now...maybe I should just try the mem upgrade and see how many fps I get with what I have. Since I have a Dell, I can't just pop another sys bd in it. :/

[{DvT}JonahHex]

Glad to hear this is happening, UY.

Suggestion: in the interim how about going to the Maps Page and downloading the custom content? There are only 41 files (not counting the patches) totaling 4,251MB...which takes about 6hrs 20min to d/l with a 1.5Mb DSL connection. I realize this is trivial with your l33t connection, but it never hurts to get a jump on it.

Then, be sure to visit Hex's Unabridged Guide to Installing UT3 Custom Content -- it is quite different from the way it is done in UT2004.

Also, be prepared for tweaking the game: Info here.

Finally (for now), bookmark the Green Glow of Deviance Real-time Stats (our UT3 server) page in your browser. (Looks best @ 1650x1080 resolution on a 22" wide screen monitor. Also, it works fine but looks like sh1t in Foxfire 3...IE6 should be ok...IE7 is probably best.)

[{OF}DMW]

Originally Posted by {DvT}JonahHex

Glad to hear this is happening, UY.

Suggestion: in the interim how about going to the Maps Page and downloading the custom content? There are only 41 files (not counting the patches) totaling 4,251MB...which takes about 6hrs 20min to d/l with a 1.5Mb DSL connection. I realize this is trivial with your l33t connection, but it never hurts to get a jump on it.

Then, be sure to visit Hex's Unabridged Guide to Installing UT3 Custom Content -- it is quite different from the way it is done in UT2004.

Also, be prepared for tweaking the game: Info here.

Finally (for now), bookmark the Green Glow of Deviance Real-time Stats (our UT3 server) page in your browser. (Looks best @ 1650x1080 resolution on a 22" wide screen monitor. Also, it works fine but looks like sh1t in Foxfire 3...IE6 should be ok...IE7 is probably best.)

Now here's a guy who has his together....