UndrState
10-04-2013, 18:46
Hello everyone,
I'm a long time lurker and fan of the Total War series. Medieval II is by far my favourite in the series, and I've played it for many years now, and many hundreds of hours. However, I've never been able to fully enjoy the game because my old "gaming" (*sigh*) laptop couldn't play most big battles without lag.
Well, now I'm ready to build a new computer, and I'll have a good budget to put it together. I've done some preliminary research, and feel pretty confident that I just need to buy the best parts I can afford (mid-high range) and all will be well...
...Except, then there's the CPU problem. The concensus here and @ TWC seems to be that Medieval 2 can't exploit multi-core CPUs, which leaves one with the somewhat counter-intuitive option of getting the fastest single core CPU to get the best preformance. On the other hand, at Tomshardware.com I've read some people say that a multi core CPUs' individual cores are faster than anything from the single core era, and that preformance can be aided by using the "Affinity" setting in task manager, so that M2TW can fully exploit that one core. Others suggest that won't help either.
My goal is to be able to play a Vanilla Med II battle with 2 full stacks clashing at a siege, zoom in real close to the action, and keep FPS greater than 30. I wish this were just a "throw money at it" kind of problem (I'm not rich, but I am patient), but it's not and I don't know enough about this kind of thing to get ahead of it.
I'm really hoping someone here could give me some certainty as to picking the right part for the job.
Thank you.
I'm a long time lurker and fan of the Total War series. Medieval II is by far my favourite in the series, and I've played it for many years now, and many hundreds of hours. However, I've never been able to fully enjoy the game because my old "gaming" (*sigh*) laptop couldn't play most big battles without lag.
Well, now I'm ready to build a new computer, and I'll have a good budget to put it together. I've done some preliminary research, and feel pretty confident that I just need to buy the best parts I can afford (mid-high range) and all will be well...
...Except, then there's the CPU problem. The concensus here and @ TWC seems to be that Medieval 2 can't exploit multi-core CPUs, which leaves one with the somewhat counter-intuitive option of getting the fastest single core CPU to get the best preformance. On the other hand, at Tomshardware.com I've read some people say that a multi core CPUs' individual cores are faster than anything from the single core era, and that preformance can be aided by using the "Affinity" setting in task manager, so that M2TW can fully exploit that one core. Others suggest that won't help either.
My goal is to be able to play a Vanilla Med II battle with 2 full stacks clashing at a siege, zoom in real close to the action, and keep FPS greater than 30. I wish this were just a "throw money at it" kind of problem (I'm not rich, but I am patient), but it's not and I don't know enough about this kind of thing to get ahead of it.
I'm really hoping someone here could give me some certainty as to picking the right part for the job.
Thank you.