8600gt and Supreme Commander

Hi

Just wanted to know kind of fps can i expect playing supreme commander with this system, since i hear the game depends more on the cpu.

E4400
4gb ram
8600gt

Thinking about 1280x1024 with medium settings no AA.

Can i play this game well in that res in medium settings?

you might want to turn on AA to gain a few fps.

From personal expirience aslong as you arent zoomed right in it looks alright at even 15fps. Zoomed in it can look choppy at even 40 or so though.

with 3ghz quad mine never hardly slows down though

I have Supreme Commander, and it is very "sensetive" to CPU power. It's one of the few games out there that can actually show the real power of a quad-core vs. dual-core.

The E4300-4400 are quite decent CPU's, and can OC alot, but they still can't quite compare to a similarly clocked E6XX0 processor (non-quad). It has a lower FSB, less L2 Cache, and doesn't include alot of the nice little improvements of the E6XX0 (core2duo) series (including a stronger FPU unit).

Plus, the 8600 isn't exactly a top-of-the-line video card. More like a (further) stripped-down version of the 320MB 8800GTS. Yeah, it's DX10 capable (in theory), but it's still the (so far) lowest end 8X00 card out there. A 320MB GTS would have been a better choice, for a few more bucks.

With that all said, you should be able to play @1280x1024 on small and med maps and stay in the 30-40 FPS. Large maps/forces will still probably drag you down to the (upper) 20's.

Supreme Commander is one of the more taxing games that I've run into with my rig. I think that it has to be that the CPU gets bogged down especially with a lot of units on the map at one time. The RAM on your system is great, the video card might be a little bit of a problem, and your CPU seems to be up to snuff, so my only reservation would be your GPU from what I've read. I'd expect somewhere near 10-20 at the low end, especially on the larger maps with more units near the end of the campaign and on multiplayer.
I wouldnt expect any performance issues at that resolution with your setup. Don't worry, though... even high-end systems get bogged down on that game with a lot of enemies on the map at one time.

well, technically, thats not true is it? I thought it was based on an entirely different core from the 8800's

You are correct, the 8600s are not only stripped of shaders, but also a different core (I believe it's the G84).