TECH woes(MTW)

[mandrake]

Hello guys, total noob here. Before I describe my problems, some system specs(I copied the form from the apotecary):

-the TYPE of hardware in my system:

Motherboard: ASUS A7S266-VM/U2 ACPI
Cpu type: AMD Athlon™ XP 2200+(1.80GHz)
video card: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 64MB(Bus: PCI)
sound card: C-Media Wave Device
ram: 512MB SDRAM
monitor: NA
router/modem/satellite: NA
firewall/proxy (hardware type): NA

-Software stuff on my machine:

operating system: Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional (Win32 x86) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 1)
directx version: 9.0b
vid card driver version: Latest
sound card driver version: Latest
which Total War game: Medieval
anti-virus software: Norton(disabled most of the time)
firewall/proxy (software type): NA

Options you use in the game:

screen resolution i play in: 800x600
screen resolution on desktop:
color bit setting on desktop: 32 bit
smoke and fauna on/off? : on/off makes no difference
unit size in game: max
agp aperture setting (game): 128mb(2x video RAM)
pyrotechic setting (game) : max(?)

did you run dxdiag? : yes

If you ran dxdiag and some tests failed, what were they? :none

I am running these tasks in the background: only essential

I have ANY microsoft office product in my systray (the stuff in the lower right of the desktop):only clock

I've defragged my system within the last (hour, day, week, month): 1 week

I installed a new directx version and now (whatever) isnt working: no

I recently did/installed/un-installed this ____ and now my system/game isnt working right: Medieval sure isn't

Description:

There, hope that helps. Here's the problem: frame rates. My settings up there are almost twice the IDEAL settings listed in the 1.1 patch readme, and still the game runs like a dog in Quick Battle. The mouse lags and I can tell it's going to be choppy as soon as the terrain loads.

What I have tried:

-In the GeForce tab settings: Turned anti-aliasing, antisotropic(?) filtering off. Image settings set to Performance. V-Synch set to ON. Hardware acceleration set to Off.
-In the BIOS, changed AGP aperture size to 128 mb.
-In the game:Turned Smoke/Fauna off. Sound settings set to Medium, hardware acceleration set to OFF.

Now the ONE thing I haven't tried is setting the PCI texture memory. However this is because that option is not available with my driver version (6.14.10.5672). Is this because it is on PCI bus?

I REALLY appreciate any help, or if you guys can lead me in the right direction.

[mfberg]

The AGP option in the game is what I had to change. I think it is explained somewhere in the Apothecary.

mfberg

[mandrake]

Sorry mfberg I did a search for that on the forums and couldn't find it. On the apothecary I did find people with problems similar to mine and tried their solutions, no help. what helps me is no matter WHAT I try it has NO effect whatsoever on a 1v1 Quick Battle with all unit sizes set to huge. Doesn't get better or worse.

Here's some tweak utilities I've tried using:

-The Geforce4 tweak that comes with the install CD
-Riva Tuner
-GeForce Tweak Utility
-nv3 tweak utility(won't install)
-nForce_system_utility_1.08.5 from nvidia.com(won't install)
-NVMax(won't install)

And i've read the entire Solution to Poor Frame rates thread in the totalwar.com forums.

[squippy]

Do you observe problems with other games?

Your graphics card is listed as PCI bus: is it an actual PCI card or an AGP card? I had this problem on an ASUS motherboard and flashing the BIOS helped.

I woyuld be inclined to turn vsync OFF and try your performance tests again to see if anything starts changing. Conceivably one setting causes so much impact none of the others matter.

[mandrake]

Thx for your reply squippy but I need some clarification on a few things:

Your graphics card is listed as PCI bus: is it an actual PCI card or an AGP card?

I have no idea how to even check this. Complete retard when it comes to these things http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I'm just pasting the stuff SANDRA System Report gives me. It is on PCI Slot 1 if that helps.

flashing the BIOS helped

How is this done?


turning Vsynch off

Yes I have tried this and several other combinations and there were no changes either way in my performance(or if there were, they were so small that I could not detect them).

[tombom]

If it is an AGP card in a PCI slot, then I would have thought it wouldn't work, or at least go very slowly, but then I'm not really an expert and it may not even be an AGP card. Also, i thought it was wrong to increase the memory to over the amount you have on the card but again i'm probably wrong. It would be nice if a moderator could move this to the tech forum

Sorry I couldn't of been more help.

[Gregoshi]

Hi mandrake http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

I'm sending this off to the Apothecary. You are able to reply to topics there in case anyone asks for more information.