This is a breakdown of what cards work, what don't, and known issues.

IMPORTANT: This guide does not detail every single version of cards out there. It is a guide to general processor types, and assumes, for example, that all 7900GTX are equal. The key point here is whether it will run or not. The performance scaling is somewhat useful, but can also be misleading, as not all cards are made equal.

UPDATE: I am no longer updating this chart regularly. To the best of my knowledge all more recent cards are capable of running SupCom and FA. New drivers have made the Intel 965 chipset feasible (although only for much smaller maps). All GeForce 8xxx series cards are capable, all Radeon 2xxx and 3xxx series cards are capable. I will review this every month or so, but if you are having issues still, please PM me or make a forum post.



Firstly: A rough guide. The following list shows most NVidia and Radeon cards, (not including their mobile equivalents) with an approximate horizontal correlation to processing power equivalence. Please note that any Intel onboard accelerators are not worth the silicon they were printed on, and are unable to run SupCom. If you have intel graphics you will need to upgrade in order to play.

If your card is above the minimum system requirements, but you still get the system requirements error, there is a known issue after one of the patches with the game preferences file. Info is available here. To quote The Core ommander:






The next list ismobile gaming cards. please be aware that laptop cards will not have equivalent performance with desktop cards of the same approximate model number. In this list the better performers are at the bottom.



* - These cards have had mixed success running the game - some have reported running fine, others have reported no run at all. Likely a driver issue.


Green: No problem, you will be able to run SupCom without trouble. Resolution and detail will depend on the card - higher up the list, the better res you can expect. With mobile cards the lower down the list the better the performance.

Yellow: Your card will run it. most likely you will be quite restricted later in the game, and will likely suffer slowdown once there are a few units milling around. If you are experiencing problems, a driver update will most likely solve the problem. See here if you're not sure how

With the mobile cards, yellow implies that it should run but no-one has confirmed on these forums. Your card meets the system requirements, but performance may well be less than wonderful.


Orange: This range of cards does not support Hardware instancing. You should be able to get the game to run using the /novalidate modifier (see here to find out how)

Red: Your card is unable to run Supreme Commander. Your only option is a hardware upgrade. For help or advice on this, make a post and we'll try to help.

White: There is no data yet available on this card.


UPDATE: Re-posted after forum backup. Cards updated.

(this is a list in progress. If people have any experience which conflicts with this, please let me know and I'll update accordingly).

STICKY!!!!!!!!!!

I dunno if you want mobile card data, but my Go 7800GTX does fine in SupCom at 1920x1200 with AA and AF off, shadows off, and everything else on high. Sometimes slows down with a lot of units onscreen, but I think that's more of a pathing/CPU issue (as it only happens when I've got giant formations pathing.)

And yes, sticky.

Edit: 20-30 FPS, ranging as low as 10 before the pathing issues - with the pathing issues it drops to around 2-5 FPS. 10 is perfectly smooth and playable.

I'll take as much data as I can get. If people post it up, I'll compile it into a new list. I'll probably do it as a third column simply considering mobile cards.

Excellent post Xenoc! I've included it these various stickies:

Minimum Sys Req's: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=1091

SupCom Tech Support FAQs: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=7009



Great work Xenoc.


-Sarimus

As Sarimus said GREAT WORK!

And you have been stuck!

pleased to hear you like it.

There'll be an edit coming tomorrow as I left some really rubbish copy/paste errors in it. Also want to start compiling a mobile card list. However, info is thin on the ground so I'd REALLY appreciate any information from mobile card users as to whether they have had any trouble running, what kind of res's they're getting etc.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Grafic-Cards.130.0.html
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=98&pgno=0
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=442&card2=474

Would all be useful for raw power information on mobile cards, and the 3rd one for desktops as well.

I'll run PerfTest on my card when I get a chance - how long does it actually take?

about 2 or 3 minutes. thanks for the links!

No prob - I'll run the perftest once I'm out of class, good to know it's that quick. I particularly like the third link, since it allows you to specify an overclocked card and also gives 3dMark scores for most cards.

Here we go, PerfTest.

My system:
Clevo M570U, Intel T2400 @1.83 ghz
Nvidia GeForce Go 7800GTX 256mb
1gb RAM

My settings:
1920x1200, Fidelity high, textures high, detail high, shadows off, BG on, no AA, no AF.

With the 7800 at its standard clockspeeds (400/1100):


With the 7800 overclocked (through ATITool) to 430/1230:


If you want me to run it at any other game settings, let me know - that battle is fun to watch *grins*

I see that you have NVidia GeForce 7900 GTX listed in green but I have not been able to run Supreme Commander on this card at all on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+. Perhaps this is an issue with a dual core processor?

I can run it on an NVidia GeForce 6800GT (slow but playable) on an AMD Athlon 64 3500+.

On the 7900 GTX I simply get:
-----------------------------------
c:\work\rts\PATCH\code\src\libs\gpggal\DeviceD3D9.cpp(382) Ran out of memory
Module : C:\Program Files\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander\bin\SupremeCommander.exe
IncidentCount : 1
IgnoreUntilIncidentCount : 0
Exe timestamp : Feb 28 2007 10:38:44
top=4, count=3
Callstack :

This happens with low, medium or high fidelity. In safe mode or not. Nothing seems to work. THQ advised to disable the loading of all drivers and services. Same result. I know that card is ok as all the DirectX SDK samples all work fine as do all the NVidia SDK samples.

There is 2 Gb of RAM and at least 1.5 Gb are free. No other user software running.

Anyone else struck this problem? I would love to play this on my better card and faster system.

You will get more answers if you post this in your own thread.

Thank for posting that info if i hadn't found this i would of traded it in for something else

7900gtx definitely works as I have it working

I have a evga 6800GT cooled with a Schooner Fanless working OK on a P4 2.66GHz machine with 768MB RAM, got all textures/details/shading set on medium, vsync off. Only slows down on when there big numbers of units.

It's already confirmed as working fine on the chart (it's in yellow).

... P4 + 6800 GT runs fine wiht mid settings. ????


Maybe... SupCom supports more the Intel and Nvidia Stuff... than the AMD and ATI Products...

I have a 4000+ and a Ati X800Xl... and everything on Mid... I cant play above 16 fps in the Middle of a 1Vs1 AI game !

I'm confused.

I've been playing Supreme Commander since Beta 2.7 and the only issues I've ever had were the desyncs that showed up in a later build when playing against people with older CPU's. I started out on an Athlon64 3000 with a Radeon 9700 Pro, a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS and 2 gigs of RAM on an ASRock 939 DualSATA II mainboard and had a perfectly playable experience at 1024 x 768 and medium-to-high settings.

I later swapped out my CPU for an Athlon64-X2 4800 and my video card for a Radeon X1950 Pro 512 and waited for the retail release. When playing against people with older CPU's (AthlonXP/Pentium4) the game slows down after a while, but it's a Matrix-like slow-motion that creeps up so gradually you don't notice until it becomes "bullet-time". No dropped frames and not a single sound issue ever.

And pretty much everyone else I game with in my area (Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA) has about the same experience. My brother-in-law's machine is an Athlon64 3000 with 1 gig of RAM and a GeForce 7600GS on a Foxconn GeForce 6100 mainboard, and 1280 x 1024 at medium settings is just fine. We're all running Windows XP SP2 on Athlon64/Core 2 Duo architecture so against each other the slo-mo hardly crops up at all - except maybe toward the end of 4-way games where we've all hit the thousand-unit limit, and even then it's not that bad.

But in every forum I see people - knowledgeable people! - talking about mid-to-high-end rigs that completely choke on Supreme Commander.

What the hell is going on?

Depends entirely on what you're running and what maps etc you're playing with.

SupCom is generally CPU limited, and you'll need a very good processor indeed to play a 2v2 on a 40km+ map without any slow down once you're all booting 1000 units around the map.

Of course, when you play against someone with a slower computer the game speed steps down to accomodate the slower computer.

[edit] Oh, and incidentally - I've had a load of work come up, so probably won't get round to updating this table again for a couple of days. keep the information coming though

The 7600GT should be a 'Yellow'. It's about the same speed as a 6800GT most of the time, maybe a tad faster, but not enough to warrant a 'green'.

Hello there,

My specs are as following :
Athlon 64 3500+ Socket939 2.2GHz L2 512Ko
Motherboard : A8N5X - nForce4 | Socket 939
DDR CORSAIR - 3 x 512 Mo - PC3200 - 400 MHz (1.5Go)
SAPPHIRE ATI Radeon X1800 GTO - 256Mo - PCIE

I have a 20' LCD Wide (Acer), which native resolution is 1680*1050. But I have to run Supreme Commander in a lower resolution, with low details, and it becomes unplayable (<3 fps) in 2v2 games after a while, and in some long 1v1 games.

I'd like to upgrade my config, but I am wondering : do you think one element (CPU ? the X1800 ?) only is slowering every others ? Could I upgrade only one thing, and which ? As you may have noticed I don't have a AM2 socket. Any suggestions for an upgrade worth ~200$ / 250€ ?

Your CPU is what slows things down over long SupCom games - have a look on ebay for a cheap dual core 939 chip and you should get quite a boost. After you've done that the graphics card is the next limit, though you'd have to spend a bit more to get a noticeable improvement. I would go with the CPU upgrade first if SupCom is your primary game.

Yeah, your mobo supports the 939 X2 chips so if you really want an upgrade, get one of those.

EDIT - Now updated with mobile cards. I need feedback from people on what cards they have and whether they work / don't work / only work with /perftest / only work with driver update etc

Thanks.