I'm totally completely absolutely and irrevocably disgusted with SC 2013 to the point after I paid my $80 and played for a few hours I just threw it in the back of my closet never to be dug out again. That's one nice dinner with the wife I donated to EA in exchange for a big pile of poop. Thanks, EA. I hope to celebrate your landing in bankruptcy court soon.
Now on the positive side. I want to go back to SC4 which I haven't played in many years. However, I'm running a hexocore i7 3930K which is kind of like taking an F1 Ferrari onto a skateboard track. So what I want to do is to configure a SINGLE CORE completely separate PC to do NOTHING but run SC4. Here are my questions:
For the CPU, something along the lines of a Athlon 64 3800+ or 4000+. I'm sure I can find the mobo somewhere for it. Any better single core CPU suggestions?
1 or 2 GB RAM enough?
Do I need an optical drive or can I buy SC4 online and download it so that I can install it directly?
Is there an easy way to have the single core PC be connected to my main 27" monitor without plugging and unplugging? I figure that even though I only have one HDMI port in the monitor, there has to be a switch box available where I can switch between the PC systems. So if I was gonna play, I would turn off my main system, turn on my SC4 system and run it on the same monitor.
The monitor runs 1920x1080. I understand that SC4 does support that resolution. Do I need to apply any patches?
I can run any OS, so XP SP3 ok?
I want STRICTLY unlimited, unfettered city building. Don't want disasters, limited money, etc. I have the list of the cheatcodes and the plugin URL, etc. Any suggestions on setting up the game so that I can just build and build and build without distractions?
Anything else I should know?
Thanks in advance for all the help!