The M2TW hardware thread: please post all hardware queries here

[econ21]

The Citadel seems to be getting clogged up with hardware threads right now.

Please remember, we have the apothecary forum to deal with technical support issues. Do not post technical support queries in this thread.

There is also a hardware/software forum to discuss wider issues, like which graphics card to upgrade to. Members should post general hardware queries there.

Junior members cannot post in the hardware/software forum, however, so I am creating this stickied thread that they can post non-technical support hardware questions in.

I will merge any further hardware threads into this thread.

If juniors would like to start a thread in the hardware/software forum, they could still post in the Citadel and PM me to move it over. That way, their thread will get moved into the hardware/software forum, but unfortunately they will not be able to post any further in it.

Note: a very nice website to tell if your computer is good enough for M2TW is:

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srl

[econ21]

First query of the thread (I'm having to quote it, otherwise it would be the first post in this thread):

Hiya Everyone

I will have Medieval II arrive soon, but I don't want to ruin it, by playing it with my current graphics card.

After getting lost in a world of Rome : Total War I visited these forums, I realised how much more awe inspiring the battles would have been if I had more than the 20ish people in an army!

My PC is as below

AMD XP 2600+
2 x 512MB of DDR memory
ATI Radeon 9200SE 128MB DDR 8x AGP
Asus A7N8X-X SKT A Nforce2 AGP X8 Sound USB 2.0 Motherboard
PSU Q-TEC ADT-350 (+12V - 30A)
Seagate ST380011A Barracuda 80GB 7200RPM ATA/100 2MB Cache
Windows 2000 Install

3dMark03 stays pretty much 640 no matter how I tweak settings

I have spent the last 3 evenings reading up on the new technology (and don't things change so fast) and have decided the best way to get my PC Medieval II happy is to upgrade the graphics card.

It has to be AGP and I can't bring myself to pay more than £100 as it will only be for this game - my christmas present to myself will be taking a few days work and playing this game all day

I have been looking at the X1000 series from ATI

Here are 2 examples

£82 - Sapphire Radeon X1650 PRO 256MB GDDR3 VGA TVO DVI-I AGP
£72 - Gigabyte Radeon X1600 Pro 256MB DDR2, PCI-E, DVI, HDTV Out, Retail with Silent Heatpipe II AGP

One of these has no fan (I think) and that might be important - my current PC is very quiet and I don't know how loud fans are on graphics cards...

I would be very grateful for any input anyone can give me to help me decide the best way to go with this. I have till Tuesday to research until I will then make an order for a new card. I have to go to work now so please don't think I am being rude if I don't respond until this evening.

And first reply:

Well the second card is PCI-E, so you're stuck with the 1650.

I wouldn't say stuck though, necessarily, since it has DDR3 RAM instead of DDR2.

I'll get back to you in the morning since it's 2:30 in the morning in WA, US, but I believe that there are nVidia 6800's out that are AGP. They'd be the better option, in my opinion, since nVidia has better support, better bang for your Euro, and depending on the company a lifetime warranty.

Are you in England?

Good idea - if this went on any longer i was going to scream, but starting a new thread seems like a much more constructive idea :P

@PaulTa, i thought the same thing, but it does have AGP at the end, so it's probably both

Thread posted at the hardware/software forum:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76444

[MrsCabbage]

To be honest I just put those 2 graphic cards as examples. I am really after advice on wether cards like these will give me a full experience or not? Or if there are better ones etc...

[MrsCabbage]

Sorry I posted in the wrong forum area. I was wondering if you could post my post in the hardware software area for me, please. It doesn't seem to have had much response where it is currently. Apologises to those who have posted.

Moderator edit: Ok, done:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76444

[Andriejj]

I have a question about the amount of free hard disk drive which is needed for this game. Is it really 11GB??? Because when I asked my friend who already has it how much does it weights he said it's around 7 GB. So what is the real size??? It surely doesn't need 4 GB of artificial memory(in polish it's plik wymiany lub stronicowania, in english I'm not sure).

[Laconic]

I may be wrong, but I think the extra four gigabytes is for temporary files when installing the game. You have to have that much free to set everything up, but in the end it will only use seven gigs on your drive (unless you unpack your datapacks, in which case it will be considerably larger).

[I Am Herenow]

Hello :)

Which PC should I get to be able to play M2 with 10,000 (or whatever the maximum is) units on the field all at once, at the highest graphics setting, without any lag?

I found this one on the net - if I get it with the best possible features (Core 2 Extreme 6800, GeForce 8800 etc.), will that be enough to run M2 on the best settings smoothly?

Cheers! :D

[Rhyfelwyr]

This is the new PC I just ordered:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.00GHz Dual Core CPU
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Award winning OCZ Revision2 2GB Ultra PC2-6400 CAS4 (2x1GB) Dual Channel Kit
500GB Western Digital Enterprise 16MB Cache SATA-2 Hard Drive
NVIDIA 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 VIVO HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) DirectX 10Graphics Card
Antec 650W Next Generation Power Supply

Do you think it will be able to run M2TW at the max settings?

[sapi]

Depending on the resolution, yes, it should.

[konijn]

Hi,

Could I get some opinions about the following specs and how it would work with MT2W;

Acer Aspire E380
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core 5400+
2048 MB (2x 1024 MB)
256 MB ATI Radeon X1650SE PCI-E
Windows Vista™ Home Premium

If someone could tell me at which settings it would work it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot. =)

[Rhyfelwyr]

This is the new PC I just ordered:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.00GHz Dual Core CPU
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Award winning OCZ Revision2 2GB Ultra PC2-6400 CAS4 (2x1GB) Dual Channel Kit
500GB Western Digital Enterprise 16MB Cache SATA-2 Hard Drive
NVIDIA 8800 GTS 640MB GDDR3 VIVO HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) DirectX 10Graphics Card
Antec 650W Next Generation Power Supply

Do you think it will be able to run M2TW at the max settings?

Apparently, this PC won't run M2TW very well at any settings. CTD's, blue screen, unspecified error messages.

I have patched to 1.2, installed the lateset drivers, fiddled around with setting such as anti-aliasing etc. I even read somewhere RAM could cause problems, so I removed 1GB with no improvement. I have no idea what the problem is.

The OS is Vista BTW, but everyone else says its works with M2TW for them. Anyone here got any ideas?

[sapi]

Very odd.

A few questions, then:

• What exactly are the errors, and when do they occur (both in game terms, and real terms)?
• Did you follow the arduous install procedure for nvidia drivers on vista correctly (ten million restarts and all that )?
• Have you installed dx9 manually?

Can't think of much more for now; if I do think of anything/when you get back, I'll try my best

[Rhyfelwyr]

Done all of the above. The crashes occur both during the campaign and in battles.

One thing though now you mention it. Battle for Middle Earth also crashes on my new PC, and a couple of times it gave me an error message related to DX8, which doesn't make sense since I definetely installed DX9. My PC shouldn't be having problems with DX9, its even DX10 compatible.

[firedragom]

I am curious because I know some games run faster with hyperthreading, and some actually run slower. I am curious to know which it is. Anyway, thanks.

[Dr_Horse]

Hey guys, what componant is breaking when the program starts doing this and then crashing at increasingly regular intervals. Or is it just program instability of Stainless Steel 4.0? Cheers.

[Dr_Horse]

Here's the pic, sorry it wouldn't let me post one right away.

[sapi]

Here's the pic, sorry it wouldn't let me post one right away.

Looks a bit like overheating to me.

What's the temperature like where you are?

I am curious because I know some games run faster with hyperthreading, and some actually run slower. I am curious to know which it is. Anyway, thanks.

Very few games take advantage of multiple cores (of which hyperthreading is a virtual simulation); but M2TW should have little to no performance loss from using it.

[firedragom]

Well I have been playing it with hyperthreading enabled, Ill try it disabled, see if I notice a difference and I will post back.

[Dr_Horse]

Looks a bit like overheating to me.

What's the temperature like where you are?

...I can't believe you just used the "t" word.

Basically, a few month ago I got a warning in the bios at start-up saying "low cpu-fan speed". When i continued to windows, the asus software i have to monitor temperatures and fan speeds said everything was normal. I did a few benchmark things to work the processor, still no problems.

After a bit I got sick of the warnings and thought I had better change the cpu-fan just in case, which I did, with a beast of a tower fan that was better than the one I had before.

Shortly after this upgrade the bios warnings about the cpu-fan started again, but this time when i got to windows, the asus software was telling me that the power fan wasn't working. A visual check confirmed that it was working fine, so i just assumed that the sensors were faulty or something.

The thing is I've used overheating computers before, and medieval is the only program having any problems (it runs company of heroes for hours in full spec with no problems). Also, the asus software reckons the temperatures never get any higher than 40 on the chip and 45 in the case. BIZARRE AND FRUSTRATING. It's a nice rig. I've had it over 2 years now and it can still run new games (does M2TW in full detail, huge units with no hassle) and I don't want to retire it just yet.

any ideas?

[ForgotMyOldNick]

I am curious because I know some games run faster with hyperthreading, and some actually run slower. I am curious to know which it is. Anyway, thanks.

Yeah... 'Hyperthreading'... I read several articles about it and the only two games I play are RTW/MTWII and Dawn of War (Due to time mainly and most other games suck!). DoW required me to disable hyperthreading in BIOS to play as the sounds where stuttering etc after 2 clean installs ...then it worked fine.

Sort of annoying because I payed good money for this cpu way back when and I can't use a feature of it for one of my favourite games at least. (forgot all about this so gonna try it later with MTWII !)

Considering I haven't used hyperthreading since I switched it off for when I mucked around with DoW I am thinking maybe there would be an actual improvement if I reactivated it.

So maybe just experiment ?


Dr_Horse: use photobucket or some image hoster for your pics mate.

[Dr_Horse]

Dr_Horse: use photobucket or some image hoster for your pics mate.

Photobucket is where that pic is hosted. Why, can't you see it?

[ForgotMyOldNick]

Sorry mate. Internet silliness today... and it's my day off !


Nice map hehehehee

[irishron2004]

I have manged to crash the graphics on the vanilla M2TW version 1.03 at end of turn with 90 regions controlled. I ran task manager on the last one to check memory usage. The chages in medieval2.exe were with the graphics. In the Russian steppes it was about 295,000kb. In the mountains and western Europe it went over 300,000kb. It was the only one I noticed changing.
At the end of the last turn, two of the symbols down thw left side were corrupted. I hit alt-tab to check memory usage and nothing that i had not seen before. I re-entered the game to finish the turn and the video corruption had gon through the campaign map, minimap, building queue, and the rest of the end of turn symbols. When I clicked on a couple of them, the info was corrupted.
I tested this machine with your analyzer in the first post and it passed everything. MY specs are:
cpu: AMD 64 2 core 4600
video: ATI x1950pro 256mb ddr3
memory: 3gb
OS: Win XP SP2, .Net2.0, dx9.0.c
Harddrive: 160gb
dvd: 20x
All drivers are up to date. Registry cleaner has been run. Hd defragged.
Now why can I not take every region without this happening? What is causing it? Is there a program to fix it?
I was always able to take the whole map in the original MTW, and all of the Mundus Magnus map in RTW, so why not M2TW unmodified?

[sapi]

This may sound like an odd question, but is it hot where you live?

[irishron2004]

This may sound like an odd question, but is it hot where you live?

Being central California, lows in the 30's and 40's whether it's raining or not, highs in the 50's. Typical winter weather.

[sapi]

Being central California, lows in the 30's and 40's whether it's raining or not, highs in the 50's. Typical winter weather.

Okay, that rules out overheating (I don't think we ever get down to your 'high' of 10 degrees over here )

Try uninstalling your current graphics drivers, then replacing them with the latest ones from the relevant manufacturer's website...

[irishron2004]

I forgot about centigrade. Mine are in farenheit. In fact, outside my bedroom window right now it is 39 degrees farenheit.

Did the driver thing when I put the new card in. In fact I went through this on Microsoft's vga drivers to get rid of anything that smelled, looked, or felt like nVidia before installing ATI's. I did not then nor do I now need the conflict. In fact after using both, O consider it a personal choice. I have had good luck with both.

Now, may I please bear upon you to let me in on what it would take to prove that this is a memory/resource issue? If your team there has a test that I can install and run on my machine I would love to prove me wrong and you right. That is all I am asking and I don't consider it the end of the programming world.

[palatinus178]

Hi everyone,

I'm playing M2TW: Gold on a laptop. a Dell Inspiron 1420 to be exact. Despite how many people have said that laptop can't play it, I managed to play it quite smoothly. However, during large battles, i have to turn down all settings to low..lol.

My laptop comes with a Intel 965 express chipset (i dunnno what that means) and I very very dumb with computers, I only use them for Uni/gaming (without the specs+research+upgrade part). What is a difference with all these graphics cards and the ones I have (Intel 965)?

Can i upgrade my laptop to a Nvidia or whatever that will enable to crank up my settings higher lil bit?
Any recommendations on improving my performance with M2TW? I'm obviously a newbie at computer specs/tech/info, so any suggestions?

Thanks for any reply.

[JCoyote]

Can i upgrade my laptop to a Nvidia or whatever that will enable to crank up my settings higher lil bit?

Generally speaking, with a laptop that has built-in graphics like that, no. The graphics are not upgradable usually, at least to anything that would improve performance.

[palatinus178]

Generally speaking, with a laptop that has built-in graphics like that, no. The graphics are not upgradable usually, at least to anything that would improve performance.

Hmm, so I cant do anything to make my gaming experience better? that hurts..