Matrix Games Forums

Thanks for the numbers!

I would be very surprised if the RAM makes a difference.

Look in Task Manager and you will see the EXE not using more than 200Mb of memory.

BFTB600: 12 minutes
BFTB250: 43 minutes

Pentium Dual Core T4200 @ 2GHz
4GB
Vista 64 bit
On-board Intel 4 Series Express Chipset

Runs just fine for me at the pace I go!

Sorry to butt in with a dumb question, but where do you go in Windows XP to devote cores to an application?

If you do nothing, XP will make whatever cores are available to an application like BFTB.

However, if you want to mess with core assignments, then use the Task Manager and right click on the particular process.

If you really want to tweak the profile of how things are assigned automatically, get this free utility. I basically separate my cores by OS, application, game background utility (and multi-threaded), and games. Thus, my games get one to two dedicated cores themselves while they are running. Email, browsers, ... run on something else.

http://www.bill2-software.com/processmanager/

Thank you, MarkShot. I will check out that utility. Glad XP automates the core assignments, though. Also, thoroughly enjoying the game.

Sadly, the various versions of Windows do very little to utilize multi-cores in the way of load balancing. Load balancing means that the OS would seek to balance processes across various cores such that those demanding a lot of CPU would not all reside on the same cores while others sit idle. With load balancing, processes would be dynamically reassigned based on their CPU usage profile.

From my tech days with mini-computers that type of load balancing was fairly typical of proprietary OS and flavors of UNIX. As best I know, Windows still doesn't really load balance. It just tosses something on to a free processor when it launches it. It is quite possible to have one maxed out while others sit completely idle. As such if you have a good sense of how you use your PC, you can craft one or more profiles by hand.

Myself, I like to play games while leaving email, browsers, and other things running. By separating games from these other things, I can prevent my games from taking periodic FPS hits.

With my wife's PC (she trades), I was able to make sure that certain CPU hog applications which are critical to her have their own processor separate from everything else. Thus, she always gets snappy response when she needs it.

I finally got COTA in my march to BFTB! The test are as follows:

Desktop: Cota 250, 57 min.
Pentium 4, 3.06ghz, 1gig shared ram, Windows XP, Service pack 3

Laptop: Cota 250, 81 min.
Intel i3 Core, 2.16ghz, 4gig shared ram, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. Game run under XP service Pack 2 emulation! Wouldn't run under Win 7???

How did I do Mark? I'm afraid that my desktop will struggle with BFTB?

I have to add, this series of games are great! I can't believe that I passed them up for years....

Tony,

There are no right or wrong answers here. It was mainly intended that people could have some understanding of how BFTB and HTTR/COTA perform on various platforms. What is acceptable performance really depends on each individual. The UI is going to be smooth no matter how fast or slow your machine is because of the separate thread implementation. The games will never get jerky and unresponsive like a flight sim or FPS would.

As some people have chosen here and I have done myself in the past, you can always start by playing the smaller scenarios. When you get around to upgrading your hardware, you can move on to the rest of the scenarios.

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

Tony,

There are no right or wrong answers here. It was mainly intended that people could have some understanding of how BFTB and HTTR/COTA perform on various platforms. What is acceptable performance really depends on each individual. The UI is going to be smooth no matter how fast or slow your machine is because of the separate thread implementation. The games will never get jerky and unresponsive like a flight sim or FPS would.

As some people have chosen here and I have done myself in the past, you can always start by playing the smaller scenarios. When you get around to upgrading your hardware, you can move on to the rest of the scenarios.

Shhh! I've been telling my Wife that "Our" six year old Destop needs replaced!!! [;)]

I am anxiously awaiting the Demo to try that on my equipment....