c&c red alert

hi guys, i have just ordered my new laptop please see sig for specs.

can't wait till it comes, i wanted to order a couple of games. i am new to pc gaming as i have always been a playstation man.

i have seen some old games which i like e.g command and conquert red alert ,will my laptop be able to handle this game, i am quite happy just buying some of the older games to play now and again and they are cheap, 3 for £10 at play.com.

any advice what this machine could cope with would be much appreciated.

also this may sound a daft question but what do you guys play these games with?do you use the keypad or is there such a thing as a hand held controller for a pc, sorry if i'm way behind but as i say its all new to me.

thanks folks

 

Yes, dont worry. C&C Red Alert will run great on a x1400. Even C&C3 will run. Since you have XP and not Vista I see no problem (or was C&C Red Alert made for Windows 98?) anyway should work.

I just use an external mouse to play games. If you want to play jump and run games or drving games you might want to get a game pad. But for almost all games keyboard and mouse is enough.

 

Isn't it the other way around? Any game three or four years ago or older will play at max settings. You should worry more about the newer games. But if the older games are your thing, then you've got nothing to worry about except for compatibility problems with Vista, sometimes even games like Command and Conquer (as in the first one) and Red Alert 1 have compatibility problems with Windows XP.

 

you don't even need a dedicated gpu to run games like red alert.

however, after installing the game- you will most likely need to run red alert in "compatibility" mode. right click the icon, click properties.

you will see.

 

thanks,

any ideas for doom type games that will run well on my machine ?
i dont want anything that is going to run slow.

also can i buy any type of game pad and just plug and play,how does it recognise that you are using one and which buttons to use.

 

I would try Doom 3, Quake 4, FEAR, HL2. As for the game pad, Im pretty sure it will automatically detect it and install plug and play drivers that came with XP or you will need to install drivers off a CD that should come with the game pad.

 

Doom 3 / Quake 4 / especially Fear might need to have settings and resolution adjusted to run fast.

Half life 2 will run great.

 

ok, by the way my graphics card is 256 hypermemory, not all dedicated, if that makes much of a difference.

 

LOL, C&C Red Alert ran on my old Dell

Dell Latitude
Intel Pentium 663MHz Processor (or something like that)
256MB RAM
Graphics Savage card (had about 8MB of VRAM)

 

They will run probably at medium type settings. I ran Quake 4 on my x300 at lower setting and it wasn't too bad at all. FEAR was a struggle though.

 

Also, I have no doubt you can run Medieval 2 Total War on Medium/High setting. I could run that game on highest setting (turn off anti-aliasing and texture-filtering, which are completely useless) with my X1400 512MB Hypermemory card.

 

thanks guys,
the one thing missing from the specs of laptop i bought was the cache,
does anyone know from the specs what it will be or does it vary.
and what does it do?

 

Doesn't matter, your system is TOO GOOD to run that game.

 

As was mentioned previously, your card will have no problem handling C&C Red Alert. The trick may be trying to install it under SP2, as the installer may unexpectedly quit when started. If this happens & compatibility mode does not work, you will have to disable MS startup services in msconfig first. Once the game is installed you can return to normal boot in msconfig.

 

You can get XP patches for Red Alert fairly easily, or if you buy the First Decade set, which is definitely worth it if you like C&C, its automatically XP compatiable.

There's also patches to get it working Multiplayer in XP, I got C&C original working this way but just couldn't get RA to work...

Oh, and RA will run on a 1mb Video card....and a 486 PC. Still looks kinda cool even today though, I love the visuals.