Does WC4 run better in Win95 or DOS with XP?

C

Corvus Corax

Spaceman
I'm about to install the CD version of WC4 and wonder weather it'll perform better in DOS (via DosBox) or in Windows (via the Win95 patch) with XP? I guess what I'm asking is whether WC4 has problems with XP? Thanks for any info.

EDIT: Whoops! Wrong forum. Sorry about that.
 
It does. I used a win95 patch and the patch update. It worked swell after that. You can start it in dosbox but it is very resource demanding... My experience at least, can't guarantee what will happen, or what the pros will say :D
 
What kind of resource is most important to improve the performance of DOSBox? CPU, Memory, GPU?
 
I can't run it at all via DOS, it bogs my computer to a crawl. Through windows with the Win95 patch however it runs beautifully.
 
I'm currently playing DOS WC (could've gone with the KS Win version, but wanted the original experience) via DosBox on a P4 3.4, 2 gigs RAM, GF6800GT, and it's choppy when there's lots of ships present. In fact, WC's performance is similar to what I experienced when I first played it on a 386sx 20, 2 megs RAM, back in 1992.

If I had to guess, I'd say DosBox really sucks up CPU. To be fair, I've made no attempt to fine tune DosBox, just left the default settings. Strangely enough, I don't seem to see a framerate drop when I fire up WC3 under DoxBox. As for WC4: I'm going to go with Windows. Thanks for the info.

Now if I could just save that Ralari in Kurasawa 2...... :)
 
Delance said:
What kind of resource is most important to improve the performance of DOSBox? CPU, Memory, GPU?
Click to expand...

CPU, definitely. A 3.4 GHz processor should be fine for all the WC games, but you should tune it to eliminate the chopiness. The Windows version of WC4 runs pretty well in XP though, so that's a fine method to play it as well.
 
What dbox are you using?
Newer versions have an auto and max mode(after 0.70) which is very useful...
If you have those my suggestion is to do the following:
open the dosbox config file and change the cycles to "max" and core to "dynamic". That should all but eliminate your problems on that computer.
If you have an older version do the same for the core but set cycles on around
50,000... Or just download newer version, it pays out :)

Ps. I think you can check all the details in the gude on the cic site...
 
ChrisReid said:
CPU, definitely. A 3.4 GHz processor should be fine for all the WC games, but you should tune it to eliminate the chopiness. The Windows version of WC4 runs pretty well in XP though, so that's a fine method to play it as well.
Click to expand...

I have an Athlon 3.0+ here, so how can I tune it to Run WC3 and WC4? It's been having a somewhat hard time to run even the low-res TIE Fighter.
 
Ricochet said:
What dbox are you using?
Newer versions have an auto and max mode(after 0.70) which is very useful...
If you have those my suggestion is to do the following:
open the dosbox config file and change the cycles to "max" and core to "dynamic". That should all but eliminate your problems on that computer.
If you have an older version do the same for the core but set cycles on around
50,000... Or just download newer version, it pays out :)

Ps. I think you can check all the details in the gude on the cic site...
Click to expand...

I'm using .71. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a shot.

EDIT: Heh, heh, tried it, but no go. If I substitute "max" and "dynamic," it runs waaaaay too fast. I'll leave the settings on "auto" till I RTFM for DosBox. Thanks anyway tho'.
 
Delance said:
I have an Athlon 3.0+ here, so how can I tune it to Run WC3 and WC4? It's been having a somewhat hard time to run even the low-res TIE Fighter.
Click to expand...

An Athlon 3.0 is a bit on the slow side for WC3/4. Dynamic core and 35,000 to 50,000 cycles is a good place to start. You shouldn't have any problem at all with Tie Fighter though. I think normal core and 8000 cycles or so should do it. These are all the manual figures too. As people have said, DOSBox 0.71 also has the automatic cycle settings which work for some people. It's still limited by your CPU however.
 
If it runs to fast, my suggestion is this:
use the settings i gave you before BUT scale down the cycles number using ctr-f11. The difference with using this in the max(and auto) mod, unlike the standard mod is that it gives you a percentage value instead of the cycles number. Much easier to get the feel of the amount of speed you need...

Scale it down until it runs good for ya...
Either put it in the normal or dynamic core depending of the success of scaling down... That should solve your problem...
 
Thanks, I'll try the games with the new version of DOSBox. Maybe if I run WC3 on low-res mode, like the good old days?
 
Ricochet said:
If it runs to fast, my suggestion is this:
use the settings i gave you before BUT scale down the cycles number using ctr-f11. The difference with using this in the max(and auto) mod, unlike the standard mod is that it gives you a percentage value instead of the cycles number. Much easier to get the feel of the amount of speed you need...
Click to expand...

You can change Control+F12 so that it increases by a certain percentage amount too. Change cyclesup= from a three digit number to two.
 
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