Worth getting now?

[renohol]

i just upgraded to 1.5 gbs of ram and an ati radeon hd4550 but my AMD Atholon 64 only runs at 2.2 ghs, will the game run at all on my pc or should i wait to get it when i get my dream gaming rig in november?

[Durallan]

a few people seem to be getting dream gaming rigs in november ^^ I probably will be too! personally I suggest waiting, mainly because it will be more magical with all the graphics turned up, and seem more exciting than just having the graphics at a lower level. To be honest I'm not sure how that card will run, mainly because ATI kept changing the name and numbers of their cards till anyone couldn't recognise it, for example ATI radeon 9600, X1300, and now they are HD 4550's or 4890's or 4350's, which just utterly confused me completely, I at least get where NVIDIA went on the graphics card thing, Geforce 6800, 9800, Geforce GTX 260's although even they are doing this confusing thing by releasing less powerful cards than older high end versions with new numbers, all a bit silly, some standardisation would be nice over cooler sounding names.

Anyways! where was I, heres a good way to figure out how well your card performs against all the others ATI or NVIDIA,

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0

hopefully you can find a review of either card that will tell you how your card goes in a few games which might give you an idea of how well it performs on ETW

[Babblearossa]

I like tom's graphic charts, google for that 'toms graphic charts'

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...R.-2,1357.html

and higher end cards at

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...ut-3,1443.html

I have an 8800 GTS and it's playable on that but the 4550 is usually listed at 1/3rd the speed - for 1600x1000 resolution -. if you have a smaller screen resolution it might be playable but I think it might be a bit slow. I think a 4770 would play this great, better than my card, and the 46xx would be ok but 45xx it just doesn't look like it has the oomph. Just my opinion based on those charts and knowing where my card is on them, haven't played with 4550.

One thing about waiting, they might have the 1.4 patch out by november.

Oh and 1.5 gb is enough, well if your running XP. the athlon is probably a 3500 or so? It'll probably play it, might be boggy in large battles. There were people complaining about low end athlons of about that speed in the troubleshooting thread.

[Tsavong]

You could try the demo if that the battles in that run the game should run on your PC.

http://www.totalwar.com/empire/demo/

[mountaingoat]

1.5 gb ram .... that would not be running in dual channel then ?

do u have 3x 0.5gb sticks?

[pevergreen]

Possible he is going off system info, which means 2x1gb just showing 1.5 because rest is reserved.

[Krauser]

You could try the demo if that the battles in that run the game should run on your PC.

http://www.totalwar.com/empire/demo/

The demo is not a good measure of performance in the actual game. The demo was unstable and my fps was around 20 less than the patched released game.

[Beskar]

You should probably wait for Napoleon and skip this game.

[Servius]

I agree with Beskar. It's still not clear if NTW will include improvements to ETW that you can ONLY get by getting NTW. That would be a really jerky thing for CA to do, but I think they've done that once before. In that event, you may also see ETW sold at a good discount when NTW comes out, like a bundle. That would be the most cost-effective and logical thing to do.

ETW is a good game. IMO, it's the best since the shift to 3D. If NTW will not include exclusive improvements to ETW, then there's less reason to wait as any potential bundle discount probably wouldn't exceed $20. The value to you of $20 over the amount of time between now and when NTW comes out is probably pretty small.

[Beskar]

I got a native American turn ctd, so having games just frozen pretty much sucks greatly.

[Seyavash]

I would at least wait a few more weeks for the next patch. then check these forums to see how it is performing in terms of both stability and AI. If the reviews are generally good, give it a go.

given the info coming out of CA it is possible that Napoleon will be completely separate from ETW. In addition, given their stated plans to continue to support ETW and add downloadable content I am not sure it will be discounted quickly. A bundle will probably not come out until at least 6 months after NTW launches.

[Didz]

Its also worth noting that with the NTW launch, ETW will probably be considered a pointless purchase by most wargamers, so the price of ETW is likely to drop rapidly. In fact, if you hang on long enough you will probably be able to pick up ETW and NTW as a combined set for the price you would pay for ETW now.

So, if I was in your position I'd hang onto my money a bit longer, or actually purchase one of the Excellent MTW2+Kingdoms sets instead to keep me going.

[A1_Unit]

Well there are some mods that fix ETW and when more tools come out more bugs can be fixed.