So this friday I am ordering a new PC to replace this hunk-of-junk I currently play on. This is also some-what of a budget PC, and I'd like to know peoples thoughts or suggestions for getting Vanguard to run well. Here is what I have so far, ready to order. AMD FX-4100 Zambezi 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor FD4100WMGUSBX ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C9D-8GAB OCZ Agility 4 AGT4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) XFX Double D FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card COOLER MASTER GX Series RS650-ACAAD3-US 650W ATX12V v2.31 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm ... At the moment im going with stock cooling, but do plan on ordering an aftermarket one soon after to OC the CPU a bit. This on newegg totals to only $700. Any suggestions on changes is more than welcome. I know this game is similar to EQ2 in the sense that multi-core CPU's doesn't mean anything, the higher Ghz per core the better. Anything else I should know or suspect? I've also read an SSD will really help Vanguard, so I went with one of those as well. Currently playing on a... 3.6 Ghz P4 (OC'd to 4.1) 2GB DDR2 Ram 7200 RPM HD 256mb Radeon X1650 lol, surprisingly the game runs decent at low settings with what I got, but load times are long, crashes sometimes, lots of hitches.
Looks like a nice system. Two key components you got there that will work miracles on the game is RAM and the SSD. Secondary to that is a nice video card and processor. Overclocking the CPU I would skip as the game barely touches it -- if you want to spend a bit more money just get more RAM and the fastest/largest SSD. I am curious how you find the game after getting the system. Please let us know. Edit: Splurge on a huge 24"+ monitor!
Thanks for the info. I do plan on getting more RAM, but at the moment this is a budgeted build. More RAM incoming next month Also, I only play EQ2 and Vanguard (down to only raiding in EQ2) so I think the SSD currently picked will do just fine. I don't play other games or download music/movies or anything. Picking up a 21.5" monitor for only $100 from newegg. I will probably upgrade that in the future too, can always pass down the smaller one to the older PC heh. Next month will probably get another 8GB of RAM at least. Thats good to know about the not-needing to OC the CPU for Vanguard, however in the future I think I will still OC it just for EQ2, that game is an incredible CPU HOG! It barely touches anything else.
I am always curious if Radeon is better then Nvidia. In the last dozen or so systems I have built, I have always installed Nvidia.
I 2nd the monitor node. Lots of nice large IPS monitors coming down in price. Your eyes will thank you for many years.
Now, first off, I am far from being a tech-guy, but I was recently "forced" into doing a little informal testing, so I thought I would pass along what I saw. The system you are using now is very similar to the one I had at launch, and it drove me to distraction with lag and hitching. Of course the game has been improved since then. The "test" I had to do involved RAM, and it was caused when I had a stick of RAM go bad. My system is i5, Nvidia GTX570, 8 Gb RAM (4 x 2Gb), 2x 6gb/s HD in RAID 0. When the ram stick went bad, I removed it and was down to 6 Gb, and the difference was visible but minimal. Just a few days later, another stick of ram went bad, so I was down to 4 Gb RAM. Going from 6 to 4 seemed like a real turning point, as load times increased drastically, zoning into a rift with a few players sitting around became a lag fest and required the old "loading spin around" to give the comp time to load. Luckily, I did not go down to 2 gigs, but my daughter's old comp was 2 gigs, and it was very slow. I believe you will be amazed at the difference you will see with the new set-up. 8 Gb RAM is very viable for the game, at least on balanced settings, which look amazing compared to low settings. I can run high settings but always run balanced, as it is better in raids, and I hate fiddling with settings.
I think the use of the SSD instead of a more common style 7200 mechanical HD will make a huge difference. I used to run 2-10k Velociraptors in a Raid 0, and believe me they were damn fast. But when I got a 30Gig SSD and copied my VG folder over to it, the performance improvement was amazing. Especially loading a zone, chunking, not lagging out and dropping in raids.
Thanks for all the information everybody. I <3 this community of players. The most helpful I've ever seen. Reminds me of 1999-03 EQ1 days.
So got everything a few days ago, and just an update, everything runs great. First thing I did when I logged into Vanguard is went through all the options and cranked everything up to maximum. It looks beautiful and runs perfectly
