article: gaming hardware

[CSN NewsBot]

LuftWaffle has written his first article here at CS-Nation. You may know LuftWaffle from his short stint as "Crazy Mailbag Luft!," but now he's taking to the streets. Anyhow, his first article covers a guide to gaming hardware. It's basically a short rundown of what you need to play CS. Here's the tidbit:

Hello, readers. At one time or another, we've all brought home the latest, "kewlest" piece of software home from EB, only to be disappointed that our computers were not capable of running them, or they ran terribly slow. Hence this article. I will attempt to learn ya'll a thing or two about setting up a killer gaming machine capable of sucking away any trace of a life you have left in mere nanoseconds.

Aww, go read it, Chuckie!

[SnowdenPlugOne]

www.pricewatch.com



Kicks the living bejeezus out of everything ever and even after that.

[l33t Goon]

um... i find this article correct but incorrect in a way... i am running on a 450mhz amd k6 with 3dnow, 20gigs, 128sdram, voodoo3 and my cs runs smooth on my 3meg dsl connection... in this article it states u need an amd 800mhz or higher ... i can see how that is recomended but then y does mine run smooth? the only thing i use that changes around graphics n stuff is WickedGL. i get like 25fps with 5 - 6 guys on the screen, and like 40 in a wide open area like the front of militia. i sometimes use the weapon models that take the gun away like r_drawviewmodel which have given me an extra 15 - 20 fps... i don't see why you guys make the recomendations so high for cs. oh yea i also have voice com disabled.

[Sublyme]

I use pricewatch all the time for my hardware, but very well written article luft. I applaud thee.

[Aibohphobia]

Edited by [user="3096"] @ [time="1012335601"]

When playing cs (professionaly) u never want to drop below 60 fps @ 1024x768. Personally 1280X1024 @ 75 fps is where u want to be at. And that's with 16 guys on the screen in de_aztec with a couple of lag nades. I'm running a 1Ghz Tbird w/ 384MB of 266Mhz RAM and a Geforce2 Pro on a 1.5MB cable connection (6 people on my node) which is enough for cs (ping of 15 to T1 or T3 servers within 500 miles or so). :-) I think people need to understand that one of the major reasons why so many people suck is that they are playing with less than the above-stated specs. Face it - its hard to ak snipe on aztec if u are playing 640x480 @ 15fps. :-)

[pinchet]

I've currently got:



-AMD Athlon XP 1800+

-512MB DDR (PC2100)

-GeForce2

-WinXP



@ 1280x960 resolution I get 100FPS.



It's nice

[LuftWaffle]

Thanks, sublyme.



Aibofhpahiiobia is right, his system is ideal for playing CS. Goon, you're playing on the bare minimum. I used to run a similiar system. Your FPS findings are about the same as mine were, and they are not adequate. You need to take away the gun rendering just to get good FPS? The idea of the article is to show the reader what s/he needs to run the game at pretty much the maximum settings, at fast speeds.



After all, the article is called "Gaming hardware" - and gaming hardware is by nature the fastest hardware available. You can never have too much speed! I do try to limit my recommendations so that the price is reasonable, however.

[entity]

Aibohphobia, you have yet to see me play..

dont mean to brag, but ive gone wif 5:1 ratios on de_dust2, on servers with above medium skilled people with a deagle and maybe the occasional ak or awp.

my computer specs: p233, 64 ram, voodoo2. tweaked the hell outta it. get round 40 fps wit no1 on screen. drops to round 15 when 2-3 guys come in. mind you, ive also been playing this game ever since it came out, (mid beta 1 stages)

i get round, say 12 fps in aztec when out in the open but once you get used to it, it isnt so bad. unless ofcourse your gun "jams" while you're in a firefight

[Sikkibahm]

Explain how a gun jams on a computer game, please.

[Half-Pint]

Nice article Luft.



I'm actually planning on upgrading, I have a:



P3-450, 384 RAM, Geforce 3



My big problem is the processor, I got a top of the line video card but my cpu can't keep up :) Unfortunatly when I get a new CPU my old ram and motherboard are useless

[LuftWaffle]

If his computer pauses - probably a result of memory swapping, due to his low amount of RAM (64 megs).



CS is an almost entirely different game when you're running a fast rig. I learned this when I upgraded my celeron 450 to a P3-700.

[Roady]

I got a P III 733mhz 384mb of RAM, Geforce 3 Ti 200 and everythin runs well for me, but I may as well get a new motherboard because im greedy :p

[puffycloud]

I have a good computer, but cs still lags quite a bit because I suck! baaaaaaaaai

[Aibohphobia]

entity wrote..

Aibohphobia, you have yet to see me play..

dont mean to brag, but ive gone wif 5:1 ratios on de_dust2, on servers with above medium skilled people with a deagle and maybe the occasional ak or awp.

my computer specs: p233, 64 ram, voodoo2. tweaked the hell outta it. get round 40 fps wit no1 on screen. drops to round 15 when 2-3 guys come in. mind you, ive also been playing this game ever since it came out, (mid beta 1 stages)

i get round, say 12 fps in aztec when out in the open but once you get used to it, it isnt so bad. unless ofcourse your gun "jams" while you're in a firefight

obviously its not impossible to do very well with a bad computer (i used to have a p200) it's just much harder. Obviously u suffer the most when u come up to multiple enemies. I almost never was victorious when i came up to more than 2 people b4 I got my new computer. Even though HL used to be the "low-spec" fps, its just not the case anymore since CS taxes HL to it's limit with the high textures, models and very complex hitbox system.

[Goo5ey]

entity wrote..

unless ofcourse your gun "jams" while you're in a firefight

I've had that too - it reloads but then the hud still shows the weapon's clip as 0 and the bullets stil in reserve to be reloaded.



i run on p450; 384mb sdram; geforce2 gts; winxp, i get a regular 75fps- 40fps in extreme cases with my cable connection ...