Hey there,
I have a question for the people here, that know more about computer technic than me.

Does anybody know, what a decent nowaday's PC hardware can handle as maximum polycount (triangles) per frame ? I'm not even sure what PC hardware most people have. I think, a gpu with 512 MB and a dualcore CPU is not to much to ask for today and can be named "Minimum requirement".
I'm asking because of the mechcommander game. The code has a limit for the maximum polycount that can be displayed per frame. We can increase that, but since I also hope that we can increase texture size, I think we will run into performance problems at one point. I have to admit, I'm not fully sure the Mechcommander 2 engine has a lod system, I rather doubt it, there is just this blurry fog on the end of the viewline.
And with all the trees, and more important if you make a larger city areas (which I like to do), and have a few mechs running around, you run quickly above 100K polygons per frame.
I think it's hard to make compares to other games. I don't think that a freespace or other spacegame can be compared, since the black space and the good lod system can handle the polygons quite well for the GPU. Also I dont really know how Graphic Giants like Crysis 2 handle a GPU, is it really the polycount limit that makes performance bad in that case ? I rather think, there it is the texture amount (which will become a problem for us too, if we go too high) that makes performance a problem, and not the polygon count.
Has anyone infos or suggestion on other RTS games ? What's the one with the highest graphic model ? C+C3 looked good, but it doesn't looked to much poly intense to me. Starcraft 2 can become a performance problem even on higher machines, but I'm not sure if it's because of textures, polycount or the cpu getting problems with to many units.
What do you people think ? What polygon amount for mid range pc's would be handable per frame ? I need a base to plan on the new models