Hardware V WiFi

[Chalkarts]

I'm running on an older laptop so Lag in Atlas is horrible.  

 

I'm in line for another Laptop in the near future and since this is the only MMO I really care to play I wanted to make sure my next one had some good juice for this game.  I want to run it smoothly on maximum graphics settings.  

 

How much of a beast am I gonna need for top tier, low lag play?   Or is my lag just an issue with my connection and there's nothing I can do to fix it?

[tidge]

I run the game on three different rigs, at different times. The desktop with a relatively modest video card (NVIDIA GeForce) and the 'gaming' laptop with a AMD Radeon graphics set do fine. The 3rd rig is an 'office' laptop without a dedicated video card and it is extremely poor in terms of game performance.

 

Wifi or wired don't have much of an effect, as near as I can tell.

 

My gaming laptop wasn't cheap but it wasn't really high-end... although it has been powerful enough to do a lot of audio and video processing that take the other rigs more time. For CoX, as long as you get a laptop with a dedicated GPU, you should be ok.

[biostem]

1 hour ago, Chalkarts said:

How much of a beast am I gonna need for top tier, low lag play?

I picked up a used Ryzen 7 laptop on eBay for under $250, and it runs CoH quite nicely.  If you're good with computers, and know what to look for or to look out for, then that's a solid choice, (check that seller has good reputation/ratings, etc).  I could even run it semi-decently on my previous Ryzen 3 one, but I had to make a lot of compromises on graphical quality in that case.

 

This is just an example.  Please make sure to do your own due diligence:  https://tinyurl.com/Ryzen-7-laptop-example

 

Another note:  You can add the -usetexenvcombine command line parameter to the Homecoming launcher to use a simpler rendering method for the game, to extend the life or up the performance a bit with your current laptop.

Edited October 7 by biostem

[Psyonico]

It depends at least partially on what resolution you'll be running. 

 

Since the game hasn't had a graphics update in > 10 years it shouldn't be too hard to run on something at 1080p.  1440p you'd need a little more horsepower and 4k will need the most power.

 

I've got a laptop with a 4k screen and an Nvidia 4070 mobile GPU.  In windows I was able to crank it pretty high in ultra settings, however, now I'm running linux and I have to run at "recommended".

 

Knowing that, assuming you're buying new, something with an Nvidia 5060 or higher would run 1080p no sweat in ultra and you'd likely be able to run 1440p as well.

[Maelwys]

I'll echo @biostem's Ryzen 7 recommendation.

My current Laptop is a reasonably recent Ryzen 7 (the exact CPU model is listed as a "Ryzen 7 7730U") and it runs COH just fine. I picked it up last November for ~£430 new.
Whilst its GPU performance isn't stellar even compared with my rather old Desktop rig... CoH really isn't that taxing. It'll run 3x windowed instances quite happily.

[Captain Fabulous]

Pretty much anything with an add-in video card will play the game just fine. It is after all 21 years old. Integrated graphics is what will get you. Avoid it if possible. Wifi is fine, the game was designed to run on dial up.

[tidge]

On 10/7/2025 at 5:47 PM, biostem said:

Another note:  You can add the -usetexenvcombine command line parameter to the Homecoming launcher to use a simpler rendering method for the game, to extend the life or up the performance a bit with your current laptop.

 

I wanted to post a public "thank you" for sharing this command line option for the launcher. My travel laptop (with no dedicated GPU) performs a lot smoother with the simpler rendering method.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Something that you might want to keep in mind is how you use your computer and what else you have running at the same time.  I am a unrepentant multi-tasker, I've got a browser up with about fifty tabs, and I'm running about 5-10 applications at a time.  Some are more intensive than others and yeah you nailed it a lot of the time the bottleneck is internet connectivity.  I have recently started using Obsidian and although I love its functionality, it cuts my connectivity to a bare minimum so I try not to use it while I'm also playing something like coH.

 

Edited October 13 by Yomo Kimyata
none of your business you nosy nellie

[Jacke]

Sometimes the bottleneck is a bloated web browser who's current support don't seem to have been introduced to any sort of time and space efficiency in programming from any decade.

[Six-Six]

I play on an ancient Mac (yes, I know, I know... every new one I buy gets commandeered by my kids, so yeah). There was a time when we just moved and hand had yet to secure an ISP. I was playing on my mobile hotspot (<4g over wifi) and this is on third world internet. The game played fine as long as I turned all the visual effects to low or a notch below mid settings. The point is, you can play this game on dial up I reckon. There was also some time when I played on a stock Macbook Air (for work) in starbucks and KFC while waiting for my daughter. played fine except for distractions.

What I noticed that factored in terms of lag was 1) server population, and 2) local internet traffic. Odd times when most regular people were not sharing their lives and fake food photos, it played beautifully. high internet traffic times and high population times (like MSR, iTrials and certain times in the US -- I'm in Asia) would result in rubber-banding or being downright unable to play. 

[srmalloy]

11 hours ago, Jacke said:

Sometimes the bottleneck is a bloated web browser who's current support don't seem to have been introduced to any sort of time and space efficiency in programming from any decade.

Not to mention the current fad of "You're using [insert program name] and it doesn't have AI functionality? We'll have to fix that! Here, have a bunch of AI features you don't want that bloat your software, can't be disabled, hoover up your information, and send it to our servers so we can sell it!"

[Snarky]

Dude, ditch the dialup!