Question: Older computers

[DRG]

We are curious to know what the slowest computer anyone running either winSPMBT or winSPWW2 is.....and what OS you are using so this question is aimed at anyone with a computer > 10 years old

What is it rated at and what OS are you using ?

[Suhiir]

I have an old laptop (Dell GM965 with XP) I run it on when I'm traveling.

[Wdll]

Eh, I have a couple of atom cpu based computers. I have winspmbt installed but I am not using the computers very often.
One is a tablet with a quad core atom cpu.
The other is a desktop Shuttle XS35GS V3L with a dual core D2550 CPU (and a radeon 7410 gpu).
The tablet runs Windows 8.1 (not using any more recent windows version anywhere) and the desktop has Windows XP.

[Imp]

Got rid of an old Dell around this time last year so may have been the previous patch rather than current one.
Cant remember model but basic running XP used for email & documents while away plus of course WINSP.
Worked fine after fiddling with settings, move delay etc. AI turn took considerably longer as in do something in earshot & come back when the fan had come off overdrive but it never faltered.

[Oche]

Currently, i have both WINSPWW2 & WINSPMBT installed on 3 desktop machines.

The oldest (desktop clone) packs an old (10 years old or more) motherboard and a Dual Core Pentium 4 HT 3.00 ghz CPU, Windows XP, the games work marvellously on that one.

I sometimes experience some short slowdown or delay in battle animations and sound effects when games are running on an HP Core 2 Dual Core with Windows 10 32 bit, but that just happens in the first 1 or 2 minutes when loading a battle. I suspect this is related to some motherboard integrated graphics BS delay.

I also had the games installed on a machine that had Windows Vista 32 bit. Very good experience as well.

I'm a "Retro" PC collector so i'm sure i'll eventually go on installing and loading up WINSPWW2 & WINSPMBT on other older machines, when i do so i'll rate them.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Oche

Currently, i have both WINSPWW2 & WINSPMBT installed on 3 desktop machines.

The oldest (desktop clone) packs an old (10 years old or more) motherboard and a Dual Core Pentium 4 HT 3.00 ghz CPU, Windows XP, the games work marvellously on that one.

I sometimes experience some short slowdown or delay in battle animations and sound effects when games are running on an HP Core 2 Dual Core with Windows 10 32 bit, but that just happens in the first 1 or 2 minutes when loading a battle. I suspect this is related to some motherboard integrated graphics BS delay.

I also had the games installed on a machine that had Windows Vista 32 bit. Very good experience as well.

I'm a "Retro" PC collector so i'm sure i'll eventually go on installing and loading up WINSPWW2 & WINSPMBT on other older machines, when i do so i'll rate them.

The game loads assets on an as-needed basis. So the first time you are on say a summer map and scroll around then it will be busily loading the SHP files required for terrain tiles to memory from disk.

Once they are loaded into memory then they stay there till you exit the main game. All zoom levels are loaded if any one zoom is called, as I recollect.

So on an older computer if you see this sluggishness at the start then I would try a quick zoom out of the map to zoom 5, and back again. Zoom level 5 should result in all the terrain tiles needed being loaded. Alternatively, when deploying, scroll round the entire map for the same effect. The terrain tile SHP is only loaded the first time it needs to be displayed - that should as I say, force it to load the assets needed.

if you stay with the same terrain type for the next few battles (say playing a campaign) and in the same game session then the tiles are in memory. Changing to another scenario with say snow terrain after say desert would probably need a quick zoom out or a scroll around the map again to force tile loading.

If you have an older lesser horsepower machine that initially lags, try that technique out and let me know if it works.

[DRG]

This is all good info. If anyone else is running the games on anything older we would be interested to know how far back we can go before all we have added bogs it down. A point to remember is on loading the game reads and stores info on ALL the icons in the SHP files....and there's a lot more than there used to be.

But it doesn't seem to be causing any issues with older computers

[Imp]

Okay thats intresting cant test but one thing I tended not to do on it was buy and deploy because that caused it to work very hard & killed the battery life.
Seem to remember purchase screen also was pushing it.
Could verify CPU memory usage by running a log in task manager or playing in a smaller window so you can see task manager in real time.

[Warwick]

I have two netbooks, Asus 901 and 900HA and the games run fine on both, which I hook up to external monitors.

Regards,
Warwick

[WilliamB]

I have an old Sony VAIO desktop with a 1.5ghz Athlon processor and 256MB of memory, Windosw XP, that I keep for running older programs. Both games run fine on it.