Resolutions for playing

[Budwise]

I like to use 640*420 (maybe 800*600, whatever the lowest default is) on the Campaign map and 1024*768 for the Battle Screen. I find that anything higher for the map makes it not only ugly but hard to navigate.

I due however, turn everything up.

[Geezer57]

I use max resolution for both Campaign and Battle maps - 1600 x 1200 IIRC.

[VikingHorde]

I play with the resolution 1280x1024 on campaign and battle maps. Anything less makes the graphics look more fuzze.

[SyKidd]

What graphics cards are you guys using? I've got an old nVidia MX4000 and have had major problems trying to play at higher resolutions. Driver conflicts, video crashes etc.
Got everything working ok now at 600x800 for both campaign and battles. I would like to go higher but don't want to get into trouble again. Any ideas? Thanks

I've also got a Geforce FX5500, but the game doesn't seem to like that one. It doesn't mention support for it in the readme.

Sykidd

"Nothing is too rum to be true."
Saul Bellow

[Geezer57]

What graphics cards are you guys using? I've got an old nVidia MX4000 and have had major problems trying to play at higher resolutions. Driver conflicts, video crashes etc.
Got everything working ok now at 600x800 for both campaign and battles. I would like to go higher but don't want to get into trouble again. Any ideas? Thanks

I've also got a Geforce FX5500, but the game doesn't seem to like that one. It doesn't mention support for it in the readme.

Sykidd

"Nothing is too rum to be true."
Saul Bellow
I'm using an ATI 9800 Pro for my main machine, and soft-modded 9500's (equivalent to 9700 non-Pro) cards on the secondary machines. They'll all play at 1600 x 1200 with full detail, since the game graphics are several years old. Drivers are all Omega Drivers (http://www.omegadrivers.net/) based on the Catalyst 5.7's (I've downloaded the new ones based on the 5.8's, but have been too lazy to install them). No problems, very stable, seldom crashes except when the machine has been on w/out rebooting for a week or more.

Newer NVidia drivers seem to have a conflict with Medieval - older cards with older drivers seem to work just fine. But the newer NVidia chips (6xxx series, etc.) require the newer drivers in order to be recognized properly, and therein lies the rub. Best results with NVidia cards and this game seem to occur with the pre-version 57.xx drivers (with certain exceptions) - your mileage may vary.

Until recently I still had one machine using a 64-meg GeForce 4 Ti-4200 with older version 53.xx drivers, and it played the game fine. Granted that's not a large sample, but you can still find the older drivers at NVidia's archive: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html if you're interested. I'd also suggest trying the Omega drivers (available for both ATI and NVidia), as they've fixed other issues for folks in the past.

[EatYerGreens]

Got everything working ok now at 600x800 for both campaign and battles. I would like to go higher but don't want to get into trouble again. Any ideas? Thanks


It all comes down to how much on-board memory your card has. If it's an old card, it may be able to support some high resolutions but at the cost of reduced colour depth - 16-bit colour range instead of 32-bit - to fit within a limited memory capacity. I gather that the game prefers to be run in 32-bit but take that under advisement, I forget where I read that.

As a for instance:

800 x 600 x 16 = 7680000 (div by 1024 = 7500kb)
800 x 600 x 32 = 15360000 ( " " = 15000 kb)
1024 x 768 x 16 = 12288 kb)
1024 x 768 x 32 = 24576 kb)
1600 x 1200 x 16 = 30000 kb)
1600 x 1200 x 32 = 60000 kb

If I'm right and 1Mb is 1024kb, then that last one is approx 58Mb, so a 64 Mb card should be able to support it.

However - and I'm not sure this is still true - the trick with most vid cards is that they use half their memory to display the current frame on screen and the other half to 'assemble' the picture elements of the next frame to be shown in the background, then flip between displaying one or the other at whatever the current frame rate is.

If that's correct, then the maximum width x height x colour depth it will support is about half of what you'd expect of it. Like I said, higher resolutions may be available but only in reduced colours, or they may run okay for a time and then a hardware component on the vid card overheats from the strain, goes out of tolerance and the errors that generates crash the CPU.

[VikingHorde]

What graphics cards are you guys using? I've got an old nVidia MX4000 and have had major problems trying to play at higher resolutions. Driver conflicts, video crashes etc.
Got everything working ok now at 600x800 for both campaign and battles. I would like to go higher but don't want to get into trouble again. Any ideas? Thanks

I've also got a Geforce FX5500, but the game doesn't seem to like that one. It doesn't mention support for it in the readme.

Sykidd

"Nothing is too rum to be true."
Saul Bellow
Im using a Nvidia 6600 GT, but I would buy a ATI insted if I was you. They don't crash to desktop with the new drivers.

[ToranagaSama]

ATI 9700 pro (Omega 2.5.97)
Cornerstone p1700 (21")
1600x1200 32bpp 100 herz (Campaign and Battle)

Pretty as a picture, no issues at all.

@Geezer57

Curious, what OS are you using?

Something that might help with to keep your system running 24/7 is Cacheman (http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=products) .

Its free and works excellently. Do a Google to see some reviews.

Luck!

[Shahed]

I use 1024 for the camp map and max (1600 is it ?) for the battle map.

[Geezer57]

@Geezer57

Curious, what OS are you using?

Luck!
Thanks for the suggestion - I'm using WinXP Pro w/ SP2, etc. The machine is a bit of a kludge, assembled from mostly refurbed parts (cheap!), and using a Parallel ATA hard drive on a S-ATA port with an adapter. Not the most reliable configuration in the world - I figure it's doing about as well as such a conglomeration can.
Plans for the fall include putting together a new Socket-939 one, based on an NForce4 chipset, with a newer graphics card (probably ATI, given I spend most of my time playing MTW). Hopefully, that will result in an extremely stable machine - but the one I'm currently using is fine with a reboot a couple of times a week.

[KSEG]

Can someone tell me what does
AGP Memory
and
Pyrotechnics
Does?

[ToranagaSama]

Re AGP:

The short answer (http://www.sysopt.com/agp.html)

The Long Answer (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/19970805/)

[KSEG]

Re AGP:

The short answer (http://www.sysopt.com/agp.html)

The Long Answer (http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/19970805/)

What I meant is :
What does AGP memory option in the option menu does?
Will the graphic changes or performance degrades if you lower the value?

[Budwise]

What graphics cards are you guys using? I've got an old nVidia MX4000 and have had major problems trying to play at higher resolutions. Driver conflicts, video crashes etc.
Got everything working ok now at 600x800 for both campaign and battles. I would like to go higher but don't want to get into trouble again. Any ideas? Thanks

I've also got a Geforce FX5500, but the game doesn't seem to like that one. It doesn't mention support for it in the readme.

Sykidd

"Nothing is too rum to be true."
Saul Bellow

I am using a PCI card because my main GFX card is Nvidia and hates the game and I can play it on full everything. You can get a new card on eBay for really cheap. I have even seen ATI 9600 SE cards do really well and you can get those for really cheap now.


Im using a Nvidia 6600 GT, but I would buy a ATI insted if I was you. They don't crash to desktop with the new drivers.

I don't want to sound like a broken horn but ever since I put in my ATI PCI card, I haven't had a CTD since. Its really worth the 20 dollars to get one and put it in.

[Budwise]

Like I said before, I perfer lower Resolutions because I hate the Campaign map with anything higher. It just doesn't fit to scale. Find what works for you and if you like it, KEEP it.

[ToranagaSama]

Curious, speifically which model video card are you using?

[Geezer57]

Curious, speifically which model video card are you using?
Please view this thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=53863 and all your questions will be answered...well, maybe not all your questions, but at least this one. ~;)

[mfberg]

What I meant is :
What does AGP memory option in the option menu does?
Will the graphic changes or performance degrades if you lower the value?

It will change the video performance of your system a little. I had to change the number to reduce the video stuttering in my old computer, but my new computer worked just fine with the numbers from the installation.

mfberg

[ToranagaSama]

@Geezer57

Thanks, but its best I stay out of that thread and the other related ones.

---


What I meant is :
What does AGP memory option in the option menu does?
Will the graphic changes or performance degrades if you lower the value?

Short Answer:

It allegedly effects the bandwith/transfer rate of the GPU (memory) card.

Its not a matter of *degradation*. The slider is there for those who may be having problems in which case they *may* need to notch it down a bit. By problems I mean motherboard type problems. The GPU (actually the memory on the GPU card) and Motherboard may have capatibility type issues.

If you do not have issues, then set it to the correct setting and forget about it. By correct, I mean 8x for 8x, etc. If you have an 8x card you're not going to get 16x speed.

You probably won't be getting 8x speed either, but that's another story....

Oh well, quickly, the GPU companies lead with the technology, so back when 8x was the rage, all the cards were 8x cards, BUT the supporting hardware, MB/Chipsets was not. So it was all a marketing hype! Same with 4x before that....

I haven't been keeping up with the latest and greatest, but I believe 16x is the fashion now. I'd make a small wager that its all hype too.

Answer a little longer than I intended.