Game specs and performance: all M2TW owners post here [Archive]

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econ21

11-09-2006, 15:44

The "Would my computer run M2TW?" thread is getting rather large. It might help people if game owners posted their game specs and how well the game is playing.

Ideally, please post (a) your computer specs? (b) your game settings? (c) how many FPS you are getting (in battles and on the campaign map)?

TorangaSama made a very instructive post about the kind of detail needed to evaluate performance (in the context of the demo) here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1270106&postcount=141

That level of detail he asks for may be exhaustive, but gives an indication of the kind of thing desirable. Less technical posts may still be valuable.

Obviously, there is no need for duplicate posts - if someone posts a very similar setup to your own, there's no need to just merely echo them.

I suspect people may be very interested in performance on low end machines.

To keep this thread concise, please only post about performance of the game you own on your machine - I will delete off-topic posts.

Lanfire

11-09-2006, 16:19

Core Duo E6600
2 GiG DDR2 800 mghz
Nvidia 7900 GTO

Everything on high ** no bloom..

8000 people steady 35 fps. No lag.

Lusted

11-09-2006, 16:23

Core Duo E6300
2gb DDR2 Ram
Geforce 7900GT

Everything high, shadows and bloom off(i don't like the look of them), AAx4, AFx8.

Camapign get 60 fps steady, in battles fps is around 30-60 until i get to around 6000 troops when it goes to around 15-40. Some lag in bigger battles.

Roy1991

11-09-2006, 17:52

Pentium D 2.80GHz Dual Core
GeForce 7300LE Turbocache 512MB
2048MB RAM

Video options:
-Shader version 2
-4x AA
-4x FS
-Unit/building/vegetation/grass detail: High
-Effects detail: Highest
-Texture quality: High
-Shadow quality: None
-Bloom: disabled
-Reflections: disabled
-Campaign shadows: disabled

**I'm using fraps to show fps, but the outcome is a bit strange, so I don't know if it reports the right fps.**

I'm getting 20-30 fps on the campaign map. Enabling campaign shadows causes a loss of 15-20 fps.
10-20 fps in battles.

The battles run perfect, no lag whatsoever, not even with more than 5000 men on the screen, so I suppose fraps is showing the fps wrong.

TheImp

11-09-2006, 18:00

Could everyone post their screen resolution as well? Thanks.

Lusted

11-09-2006, 18:06

Oh, im playing at 1024x768.

maestro

11-09-2006, 21:58

AMD FX-55 @ 2750MHz
2Gb RAM @ 250MHz
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe motherboard
ATI X1900XT 512Mb

Game settings:

Campaign and Battle resolution both 1280x960
All options maxxed out, bloom on (for now)
FSAA 4X, AF 16X

Getting anywhere between 30fps and 100fps on the Campaign Map and averaging 30-50fps on the Battle Map on large unit size. Interestingly enough - the performance is a helluva lot better than the gold demo - odd that.

With Huge unit size and full, huge battles, I get between 15fps and 45fps

Monarch

11-09-2006, 22:21

So, who wants a normal persons pc specs? (I think most people interested in this will have lower specs)

I've got it on 1024x768. I really need to fiddle more with the graphics, I'm pretty sure for campaigning I can crank it up a wee bit. With medium graphics, but apparently when it auto detects it didn't want AA at all...so I stuck it on 2x. Bloom on as well, not reflections, and turned shadows off for extra no lag. (did it before I even played a game, I need to mess about with the settings)

I'm running 1gb RAM
IP4 3.0gz processor
Radeon X700 256mg

No lag whatsoever, loading times as fast or faster than Rome

As I said, I'm playing on a config that is probably quite a bit below what I can get. But I'm too busy playing to be bothered with graphics that much. AS lnog as graphics are up to a certain standard, I'm not really bothered.

Soulflame

11-10-2006, 00:10

46852

11-10-2006, 08:34

My specs:

AMD Sempron XP2600+ @2.1GHz
1GB DDR333MHz Dual Channel
6600GT @580/1100MHz
Played on 1440x900 widescreen

I consider this a low spec system (sigh @ technology galloping forwards too fast for me), but I was glad to see I could run the game quite smoothly even with high settings. I actually played a few small skirmishes with highest details and all fancy stuff on, and it was playable :)

Didn't have fraps or other benchmarking tools on while playing, so not sure about the fps, but I'm sure on lower settings the battles would run smooth even with big armies colliding with each other. Will have to try out bigger fights when I can.

46852

11-10-2006, 08:44

Well, here's the low point;

P4 2.4 Ghz
768 DDR Ram
P4S8X mobo
Ge4Ti4200 8x AGP 64 MB

Everything on low, it 'runs' on normal battles, if too many buildings come into view, it's all stutter.
Definately time to upgrade for me...

I'm sure you'd do well if you just acquired a bit more RAM and an up-to-date display card with Shader 2.0 support.

Soulflame

11-10-2006, 22:34

Yeah the main bottleneck seems to be the videocard. Ram is probably enough.

But seeing as I'd like to goto a 7600GT, I might as well go with a new MB, processor and some new Ram as well, since the AGP version of a 7600GT is a lot more expensive (think I saw about 40-50 euro) then a PCI-e one.
I've had this setup for a long time (think about 4-5 years), so it's really time for an upgrade.

Anyway, when I get my new stuff (should be end of Nov) I'll post again how well it plays.

Dan.o6

11-10-2006, 23:24

I can't stress how much smoother the actual game runs on my PC, it is a great improvement!

chopa

11-10-2006, 23:27

I can't stress how much smoother the actual game runs on my PC, it is a great improvement!

smoother than what? demo?

tibilicus

11-11-2006, 01:14

AMD 4200 x2

2gb of DDr ram

Ati EAX 1600 pro

Maxed out with AA x2 can push for x4 but starts to lag a little. Turning pointless vegitation down alowas no lag on AA x4.

Tib

Andres

11-11-2006, 01:49

Pentium IV 2.4 Ghz
ATI Radeon 9600 (256 MB DDR Ram)
Ram 1.5 Gb
Soundcard: Hercules Fortissimo 4

I run it with Shader version 1 (no shadow, bloom or reflections), resolution 1024x768, Unit Detail, Grass Detail, Vegetation Detail, Effects: Medium, Building Detail : High, AA off, no V-Sync, texture Filter Bilinear, Campaign shadow: on

The campaign map: +/- 15 FPS (this seems low, but it runs quite smoothly, IMHO you don't need a high frame rate on the campaign map)

Battles:

Small ones (like 5 units vs 5 units) : FPS 25-40
Fought one "big" battle (full stack vs full stack) : FPS : 20-30
One "Mediocre" Siege (half stack vs half stack) : FPS 25-35

The FPS aren't very high, but the game doesn't stutter and I have no lag effects.

I used FRAPS to measure the FPS's

Conclusion: I think this will make a lot of people happy, since my system isn't what you would call "high end" nowadays ...

Drake

11-11-2006, 02:49

AMD Athlon XP 2600
512Mb Ram
128mb Geforece FX
Windows XP

Alright. Turne dit all down to low on battles, still stutters a good bit. The campaign map runs fine but is still a bit jerky. New graphics card methinks...

tutankamon

11-11-2006, 15:25

I can run it all on high with these settings andt it stutters a bit.. enough to make it anoying :inquisitive: but so i turned it all a bit down.. but no improvement.. (well a little but not that much) So i guess I have to upgrade my RAM..:embarassed:

Mobile AMD Sempron 3300+ 2,00 Ghz
1024 GB RAM
256 MB Ati radeon

Bwian

11-11-2006, 17:44

Athlon 64 3000
GF 9800GT
1024MB ram
19" widescreen monitor

Running in 'widescreen mode'

Let it auto set the settings, then upped the units to huge. Looks lovely...runs smooth and sweet. Resolution 1024x768, everything high and a bit of bloom.

The graphics have a slightly more 'realistic' feel than RTW. and sem far less bright and clean. I really like the look of it. The gun effects are a bit understated, but I love the cannons :D

I think the NTW team will be able to work some real magic with this engine....proper cannon loading animations and muzzle loading rifles.

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 10:59

Hi All,

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask, but...

I just installed the game on my new XPS 700 from Dell.

After looking at the default setting that were choosen by the game I thought....bollocks...its a new machine...I'm gonna max this puppy out and do a few hisotrical battles....so I did.

2.66 Dual Core
Nvidia 1G RAM 7950 GX2
2 x 150 Gig HHD on a RAID 0 stripe.

Running at 1280*1024 on a nice Samsung SyncMaster P193

I loaded up Agincourt and god was I unhappy!! The intro scene looked like a camera was being used to take pictures.

2 Questions:

1) What is the difference between configuring video settings using the Nvidia Control Panel on the desktop and/or doing the same thing in the video settings in the actual game? Which one is being used? Can someone provide accurate advise?

2) Can some people please provide their settings for best performance on a similar systems.

On a side note I'm going to 3DMark 06 my machine to check that all is well there as I removed the DELL XP Home build and erinstalled a fresh copy. However once this is done I would expect this game to run as smooth as you can imagine on this set up with just about everything on max.

Please help, and if this is in the incorrect area then please move it as required...although the video set up could help a lot of people. :2thumbsup:

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 11:33

Ok so for me...this is really important. :) Maybe not for anyone else, but I really do need specific help.

kercool

11-15-2006, 12:00

axp 2000+
not a gig ram n radeon 9550 all on low so far so smooth lol

Dave1984

11-15-2006, 12:08

Daveybaby

11-15-2006, 12:34

AMD 3000+ XP
1 Gig RAM running at 800MHz
ATI Radeon X800 Pro

Game runs fine, no slowdowns that i've noticed at all.

Edit: didnt include settings, duh.

Been running with the default autodetect settings:
Shader v2
1024x768
No AA
Trilinear Filtering
Detail : All medium, except: Buildings, Shadows = High
Shadows ON
Bloom ON
Reflections OFF

Kinda weird settings. Might have a play around with them and see what happens.

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 12:59

What is your system's RAM? Have you tried removing the shadows? I've done that and everything runs perfectly with everything else on max, 1280*1024 and I'd say your system whups mine!

I haven't used the nvidia control panel at all

I'm running a Dell 9150 with 3.0ghz dual core, 1gb RAM and a 256mb 6800 GPU

Hey D Wilson,

Sorry about the oversight. RAM is 2 GIGs at 667Hz.

In my first attempt in which I got the camera effect I had shadows on "Extreme". I took that down to High and the performance is still choppy.

I don't have FRAPS loaded but it seems I need to do this. I was so shocked that I am going to do some 3DMark 06 tests this evening to check that I am benchmarking around the correct numbers.

But do you think I should have to remove shadows on such a machine!!? If so then I'm a bit disappointed.

When you say everything on max, do you mean absolutely everything!!?? Because some settings are labelled as "Highest" or other levels above just "High".

Econ,

Thanks for the correction.

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 13:00

AMD 3000+ XP
1 Gig RAM running at 800MHz
ATI Radeon X800 Pro

Game runs fine, no slowdowns that i've noticed at all.

But what are your setting there Davey?

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 13:22

Can anyone give me some basics steps to go through to determine if it is just Game related or my machine?

Puzz, Screwtype, Econ??

If you guy's know of anyone that could walk me through some steps to diagnose my machine and then set the correct settings in the game?

I'm kind of freaking out here at the idea of just dumping all this money on a new machine and the game playing less that expected.

:help:

Dave1984

11-15-2006, 13:33

Hey D Wilson,

Sorry about the oversight. RAM is 2 GIGs at 667Hz.

In my first attempt in which I got the camera effect I had shadows on "Extreme". I took that down to High and the performance is still choppy.

I don't have FRAPS loaded but it seems I need to do this. I was so shocked that I am going to do some 3DMark 06 tests this evening to check that I am benchmarking around the correct numbers.

But do you think I should have to remove shadows on such a machine!!? If so then I'm a bit disappointed.

When you say everything on max, do you mean absolutely everything!!?? Because some settings are labelled as "Highest" or other levels above just "High".

Econ,

Thanks for the correction.

Yes, I mean everything up at high or highest, whichever is max for that particular option, even grass which I expected to be a killer. But my shadows are at none, and when I have them on, even at lowest, it has a really noticeable effect, and I think pretty much everyone has found roughly the same thing. I haven't missed them, though!

The only reason I can really think of to have them on now is in the case of a -movie_cam kind of thing appearing, so's I can get some really stunning screenshots.

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 13:56

Yes, I mean everything up at high or highest, whichever is max for that particular option, even grass which I expected to be a killer. But my shadows are at none, and when I have them on, even at lowest, it has a really noticeable effect, and I think pretty much everyone has found roughly the same thing. I haven't missed them, though!

The only reason I can really think of to have them on now is in the case of a -movie_cam kind of thing appearing, so's I can get some really stunning screenshots.

Ok thanks for the details D Wilson. I'll now have to check this shadow killer setting.

Caesar_julii

11-15-2006, 13:59

i'm hoping i can play with medium high settings. These are my specs:
1 gig ram
2.0 ati processor
256 mb video card radeon 9550 or 9600

Haudegen

11-15-2006, 14:36

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 15:03

I have a laptop:

Pentium M 725 (1.6 GHz)
512 MB RAM
Radeon Mobility 9700 / 64 MB

Resolution 1024 x 768

All settings are lowest, I play with normal unit scale. The performance is not great, field battles run mostly ok. In siege battles the game lags frequently.

Any tips on increasing the performance (other than upgrading the hardware) are highly appreciated :yes:

Well Haudegen it is well below even minimum specs. Make sure all the AA etc is off as well as everything at the lowest. I'm not sure but if you can lower the resolution you shuold try.

Throumbaris

11-15-2006, 15:24

Athlon XP 3000
2gb RAM
Geforce6800GT

No Shadows, everything else at high, antialiasing and anisotropy at 2x. Normal unit sizes and at 1280x1024, havent dropped below 20fps so far.

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 15:35

On the .COM M2TW tech area there seems to be a number of battle performance issues using Dual Core 2.

castle

11-15-2006, 18:07

aussiegiant have you updated grahics driver as i think there has been one to add support for your card.

Maxfu

11-15-2006, 18:13

Hi guys. This is my first post so I thought I would make it an important one.

I'm running 1g of ram, a P4 2.80 Ghz.

I need to buy a new graphics card and I am looking for suggestions.

:help:

Haudegen

11-15-2006, 18:36

Well Haudegen it is well below even minimum specs. Make sure all the AA etc is off as well as everything at the lowest. I'm not sure but if you can lower the resolution you shuold try.

Yes I would be very interested in lowering the resolution to 800 x 600. But I don´t know if how it can be done. Manually changing the preferences file doesn´t work.

BTW: As far as I remember in the first demo of M2TW 800 x 600 was possible, wasn´t it?

Steinfeld

11-15-2006, 20:17

One thing I am still trying to figure out:
Is it better to play with a higher resolution and lower details or with a lower resolution and higher details?

Discuss!
(Or even better, just help me) :)

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 21:10

aussiegiant have you updated grahics driver as i think there has been one to add support for your card.

Checking now castle!!

Cheers!!

---------------

Checked...I'm up to date castle... :(

AussieGiant

11-15-2006, 21:12

Yes I would be very interested in lowering the resolution to 800 x 600. But I don´t know if how it can be done. Manually changing the preferences file doesn´t work.

BTW: As far as I remember in the first demo of M2TW 800 x 600 was possible, wasn´t it?

That is what I was worried about. I think 1024x768 is the lowest. You could be out of luck Haudegen.:oops:

Steinfeld

11-15-2006, 22:42

One thing I am still trying to figure out:
Is it better to play with a higher resolution and lower details or with a lower resolution and higher details?

Discuss!
(Or even better, just help me) :)

I forgot to include MY specs and settings:

Pentium IV 2,4 GHz
1 GB RAM
GForce 6600GT 128 MB
Audigy SB 2 ZS

1152*864
Shader 2
no AA
Bilinear Filtering
no reflections, no bloom
Shadows very low
Units High
Buildings Low
Textures Med
Grass Med
Vegetation Med

Normal Unit Size.

Fraps has not sent me below 22 so far. Only the siege of London in the tutorial produced some stutters.

And I would still be thankful for the answer of the quoted question.

Maxfu

11-16-2006, 15:48

Running 3.0Ghz P4, 1.5 Gb RAm, GF7600 AGP 256Mb DDR2 RAM, 500W Power Supply. Resolution set 1280 x 1024. I could probably go higher but have not tried yet. All settings at max, including bloom and shadows. Everything is running great, no lag at all. The graphics really are unbelievable. Now I need to start my campaign.

ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88

11-16-2006, 16:58

P4 2.8 GHz
512 RAM
Radeon X1300 256MB Card

Got most stuff on High, though I set the vegation detail and something else on high, back to Medium also ,to make it run slighty faster. SP Campgain and Battles are good, slight lag, but not bad..

Cos3

11-16-2006, 17:42

I'm running:

Pentium Extreme Edition 3.73ghz
4gb RAM
2 x Crossfired X1900's 512mb

1900x1200 resolution on 24" widescreen LCD
No AA - I don't feel I need to use it while running at that resolution.
Everything on max except shadows which are turned off
Huge units

Don't have FRAPS installed so can't tell FPS, but framerate is fast to the eye, which is all that matters. It does slow down a bit in large sieges.

mr.blonde

11-16-2006, 18:04

Hi mates, specs
AMD athlon dualcore 3800+
2 giga RAM
7600 GT

all settings on high/highest except shadows on low, AA x2, AF x4, resolution 1024x768, huge units and perfomance is more than great except the known pathfinding/cpu issue in sieges...

gardibolt

11-16-2006, 19:38

P4 3.0
2 GB RAM
Geforce FX5200 256MB

Runs fine with everything set on low. Kind of a relief; I wasn't expecting it to run at all.

grinningman

11-21-2006, 16:11

I have a laptop:

Pentium M 1.83 GHz
1 GB ram
geforce 6600 go

I play at 1280x796 with antialiasing x2, most things on 'high', bloom and reflections on and shadows on low. I get FPS in the mid teens - low end about 10, but more usually 15-17. Very large battles (e.g. the Otumba historical battle) get awful FPS (6-7) at these settings, but most campaign battles are playable, and it looks *so good* ~:)

Whacker

11-21-2006, 16:40

Good morning friends.

My specs:
Athlon 64 3800+
1 gig of DDR800 OCZ VX ram
2 x Leadtek Geforce 6800 Ultras 256meg in SLI

CPU and both vid cards are water cooled. Helps out immensely for performance, I can game for hours and hours and the CPU won't break 110F and the GPUs 140F.

I can run the game pretty much the same as Rome, resolution is at 1280x1024 for both games, textures/quality maxed.

In Rome, I turned off the individual unit shaders and it gave me a good 5-10 boost in perf. I could run huge unit sized battles up to about 7k men with occasionally stuttering. Sieges or heavy use of flaming projectiles would also tend to bog down the machine big time.

In M2, I turned off bloom and shadows, and it's nearly identical. Turning on shadows, even on low, gives a noticable 5-10 FPS hit right away, which gets worse with more men. I like playing on huge as well.

Pound for pound, I'd say they're on par for performance. My assessment is that is great, it tells me that CA did put some thought and effort into optimzation. :2thumbsup:

Cheers

chunkynut

11-21-2006, 16:46

Intel P4 2.4
ATI 9800 Pro (XT Chipset)
1Gb RAM

Settings 1024x768 all on Medium except Grass I think, changed from the preset graphics settings nothing as I think it looks fine :) may have a play around.

I have some slight lagging at certain view points on both the campaign but if I move the camera slightly its fine and doesn't seem to occur when I move back to a similar view point.

De Montfort

11-21-2006, 16:53

I have:

AMD Athlon 64 6700+
1gb RAM
NVidea GeForce 7600 GT graphics card

I'm running with all the settings at high, normal unit size and at 1280x1024 with no problems or slowdown at all.

Slammer

11-21-2006, 22:55

I just sent off for a`new computer with these specs a Overdrive compter with the new 691 board with the new quad core overclocked to 3.4 also with the new nvidia 8800 gtx vid cards in SLI 4 meg ram 2 150 10000 hard drive in raid O with the 750 meg in 7200.10 and a dell 24in wide screen

unknown_user

11-21-2006, 23:03

I'm running a:

p4 1.8 Ghz
768 MB RAM
ATI X800 256MB

I've got it running things on medium, for the most part. I put effects up to high, and shadows turned off in battle. The only thing I get lag on that's noticible are huge siege battles and the campaign map.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it ran.

AussieGiant

11-22-2006, 06:24

Well fella's I'm slightly annoyed...that's an understatement.

I posted this in the Apothecary section and of course no one is there so I'm going to put it here.

This is the minimum specs for maximum performance as detailed on the official sites technical section.

--------------------

DarK
Moderator
Posts: 6004
(11/21/06 3:19 am)
Reply Re: minimum requirement for max performance
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intel Core 2 Duo processor / Intel PentiumD 3.2ghz / AMD X2 4200+ /
2GB of RAM /
NVIDIA Geforce 7600GT \ ATI Radeon 1950 Pro

These are simply equivalent specs to those Sega ran on Gold day that had no problem playing maxed out.

--------------------

No I don't mean to be rude but...............BS!!

I am running a brand new Dell XPS 700
with:

E6700 Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz
2 Gigs of ram
Nvidia 7950 GX2 with 1 gig of ram

and I can not max out this game at 1248*1024. In fact I can't even get close!!!

Anyone else go opinions or tips!!

Whacker you're depressing me!! :wall:

andrewt

11-22-2006, 06:48

Pentium 4 3GHz
1Gb RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 128 DDR RAM

Battles run fine. Sieges starting from large town and castle (dunno if regular castle or wooden castle) lag really, really badly. Everything on the lowest settings. Shades and everything off. 1024x768. Recommended is medium settings and lots of things on. I actually run fine on those settings. I just reduced the settings for siege battles but they still lag me.

I tried both the newest ATI driver and the newest Omega driver. Still laggy.

AussieGiant

11-22-2006, 10:26

Hi All,

Information for anyone running a Nvidia 7950GX2:

---------------------------------

The 'new' 93.71 WHQL drivers also have a bug in regards to clock speeds on the GX2 and possibly SLI systems in general...

For example, if I use 'coolbits' to overclock the memory of my GX2 it reports it as follows:

Core Clock 500MHz
Memory Clock 1400MHz

Now, if I check Everest Ultimate Edition's status of my GPU's one card is listed as 500MHz core and 702MHz (1404Mhz Effective) memory whilst the other GPU is reported to be 500MHz core and 600MHz (1200MHz Effective) memory.

I know one card is indeed running the memory slower than the other because if I perform several benchmarks (such as HL2: Lost Coast etc) with one GPU on 1200MHz memory and the other GPU on 1400MHz memory I get about 3-4 frames per second slower performance than with both cards memory set to 1400MHz (using RivaTuner to 'fix' the memory clock speed issue) and then verifying the speeds again in Everest.

However, as soon as I reboot the PC, Cool Bits (since being modded by Rivatuner) and 93.71 have an issue and the memory speed of both GPU's is only 300MHz (600MHz Effective) and performance takes a huge dive

So I have to go back into the Nvidia Control Panel and set the memory clocks back to 1400MHz manually, but of course I'm then back with one card on 1400MHz (Effective) memory speed and the other back on 1200MHz (effective) memory! And no, don't tell me the clocks are correct because if I run several different tests with one card's memory slower (1200MHz) than the other (1400MHz) the performance is consistently slower than with both cards running at 1400MHz.

At the end of the day I simply don't trust the 93.71 drivers and I know that RivaTuner does not work correctly with them, so for me it was back to 91.47 WHQL as at least I know they don't have any problems in regards to clock speeds/tweaking!

I really hope nvidia and/or Unwinder and his fantastric Rivatuner software sort this bug out soon... perhaps we need another driver release?

The good news is that my GX2 runs just fine on the 'old' 91.47 WHQL drivers, and I've kept the updated SLI profiles from 93.71 too.

Regards,

Greggy

-----------------------------

jabo0511

11-22-2006, 16:27

Gateway Intel e-6400
2GB 533MHz RAM
7600 GS 256MB

I run on everything on the highest setting, bloom on except shadow on medium.
1024x768 resolution.

Smooth as silk.

Garnier

11-22-2006, 17:46

Ok the past few days I've figured out how my system can run the game looking best without lagging it. And now I've discovered something that totaly makes the game better. Yesterday I was playing with the first set of settings, averaging 12-18 fps. Now I use the second set, and the game looks a LOT better, just without blood or mud(which I can live without), and I can use bigger unit sizes, AND I'm getting 18-26 fps average, which makes it smooth. The main difference was taking off shader 2, grass and vegetation. Now I can use high textures and unit detail, plus AA.
http://aycu21.webshots.com/image/8500/2001236656081892058_rs.jpg

The_Pope

11-23-2006, 05:44

AMD ATHLON 64 3800+ processor, Socket AM2 dual core

D Socket AM2 mainboard, nForce 550 chipset, 2GHz HyperTransport,
2 x Legend 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM PC6400 - 800MHz
160 GB Seagate hard drive

All option are max.

Not sure what resolution i set it at, but its on 22inch LCD.

Nice and Fast :whip:
:2thumbsup:

Whacker

11-23-2006, 06:18

Whacker you're depressing me!!

Good evening my friend! Glad to see my efforts are paying off here, I aim to please! :grin:

The 'new' 93.71 WHQL drivers also have a bug in regards to clock speeds on the GX2 and possibly SLI systems in general...

Ahhhhh..... OK. Let me throw out a number of thoughts and some possible advice on the whole Nvidia/ATI thing and Nvidia SLI. I'll try and keep this brief as I know the topic is system specs and performance, but this shouldn't be too far off the mark. Others can throw in their thoughts as well.

Before I get too deep into this, a quick background on myself. I've been building my own PCs for about 12 years now so I'd like to think I can at least talk with some reasonable intelligence on this subject without sounding too stupid. In terms of video cards, I've owned essentially nothing but Nvidia cards since my TNT replaced the old Matrox + Voodoo2 setup I had back in the day. I've had a TNT, TNT2, Geforce2, Geforce3, FX5200, and now my 2x6800 Ultra's. I am by not means an Nvidia fanboy, I just bought what was the most powerful card (in my view) at the time, or in a few cases I just wanted a real cheapo upgrade to tide me over for a bit, hence the FX5200. Am thinking hard about going with ATI my next upgrade cycle in about 1/2 year, but I'd like to see what they can throw up against Nvidia's 8x00 gen cards which are looking pretty impressive.

Now, my thoughts, primarily on Nvidia. Nvidia and ATI each have their strong points when it comes to keeping their drivers up to snuff with modern games, and in terms of recent and older game compatability. I see you've got a real nice new system with that 7950GX2 card in it, which I've read is fast as all get out, BUT it's got a huge number of problems in terms of the reference drivers. If you go back and look at the past 6 WHQL driver release notes, you'll see a ton of bugs introduced and fixed each time for both SLI systems with any SLI card setup, AND moreso for the 7950 series. There are a ton of games that won't work right on the 7950 series, it's getting better over time but you're still going to see that, hence why I'm not surprised you saw that for M2TW. I'll offer that you shouldn't worry too hard about this, even though the 8x00 gen is out, the 7950 is still cadillac class and the last thing Nvidia wants is people who've shelled out the big bucks for that to have a card that doesn't work well and isn't well supported on modern games. Also the Nvidia SLI is still a mixed bag, for the most part it's now a "mature" technology that they've ironed the kinks out of, but it's still got a few teething problems and the developers don't always know how to write well to take advantage of this. Another glimpse into the "bugs" section of the driver release readme will show that there's a hefty amount of "this is a developer problem, not a driver problem" issues. I've experienced my fair share of these with my 6800's in SLI.

The other major aspect for me (and I imagine others) is recent/older game compatability. Nvidia and ATI both kinda stink here, but it would almost seem that ATI is doing a better job of it as of late. I can think of a handful of games that are pretty broken on my Nvidia systems now running the latest drivers over the past year or so. I've experienced the "low earth orbit APCs" bug in Mechwarrior 3, which my friends on their ATi systems don't have. KOTOR2 has been broken for the past 4 driver releases on all Nvidia SLI systems, if you start the game with AA enabled it crashes. You can enable AA in game and it works fine, but every time you exit you have to manually edit the .ini to disable AA. Barf. The original MTW runs like total crap (pun intented) on my hefty SLI system, the campaign map is dog slow. There's a thread around here stating that the 61.xx drivers will help fix this, the problem being that anyone with an Nvidia card past the 5x00 series can't use them, because iirc the 6x00 series cards came out with the 7x,xx forceware drivers and hence are supported with those on up. I've also had a number of really weird crashes on the campaign map in MTW that I can't pin down, some research seemed to blame this also on Nvidia drivers. My friend running his ATI x800 doesn't have this problem at all, MTW runs smooth as butter and doesn't crash at all.

Please take this with a grain of salt, this is just my experience and thoughts on the matter.

The bottom line to you Aussie is, well... hang in there. :grin: Your video card *is* relatively new, and as such is going to have the usual teething problems. I personally would only recommend you use the WHQL drivers directly from Nvidia.com and NOT anything from Dell. However, if you see a beta driver release on nzone.com and the readme seems to indicate that a specific issue for you might be fixed, by all means snag it. I've just noticed that the non-WHQL drivers are often indeed unstable, certain games will bring this out more than others. Also don't be afraid to get the word to Nvidia about your issues if some troubleshooting can't pin it down. They have a forum, and there's a site feedback link (that appears to be busted now).

Good luck! :yes:

Dr3x4L

11-23-2006, 17:12

Intel Extreme X6800 2.93Mhz, Evga Nforce 680i, BFG 8800GTX Sli, 2 Gig Corsair Dominator Xms2, Western Digital Raptor 150GB x2 ,Gigaworks 5.1 Thx, X-fi Fatal1ty, 24" Dell Widescreen 1920x1200.

Running @1920x1200 Huge Armies 8XAA 16x AF Maxed out.
Fraps says its running at 999Fps but i dont think thats true but it dont slow down. :) Come to think of it nothing does.

wzup

11-23-2006, 17:36

AMD Athlon 64x2 5200+
2gb PC3200 (4x 512mb 400mhz DDR SDRAM)
500GB SATAII/7200RPM 8mb cache HDD
ATI RADEON x1900XT 512mb PCIe 2xDVI ViVo
Sound Blaster X-fi Fatal1ty
DiBoss 23" wide LCD (crappy resolution 1360x768 :whip: )

I´ve put all settings on high and everything runs smooooooooothly

Dan.o6

11-23-2006, 21:48

AMD Athlon 64 3700+
1.2GB RAM
nVidia Geforce 7950GT XT 512MB PCI
19" LCD @ 1280x1024

everything runs perfectly smooth, although the inevitable lag during HUGE 8 player 16 unit battles is still there

jon-tom

11-23-2006, 22:09

Hey im new round here so i thought i'd start somewhere and try an be helpfull
my PC specs are
3.2 pentium4
2 gig memory
radeon x700 with 256mb onboard mem
and one quality soundcard THX certified.

i can run medieval on full whack so long as im not using shader version 2 in the graphics setup..................i know im missin out on some ace water visuals but it still looks impressive

AussieGiant

11-24-2006, 03:03

Gateway Intel e-6400
2GB 533MHz RAM
7600 GS 256MB

I run on everything on the highest setting, bloom on except shadow on medium.
1024x768 resolution.

Smooth as silk.

Booo!!! :wall:

Good for you Jabo...I'm not happy though, as you can imagine.

AussieGiant

11-24-2006, 03:12

Good evening my friend! Glad to see my efforts are paying off here, I aim to please! :grin:

Ahhhhh..... OK. Let me throw out a number of thoughts and some possible advice on the whole Nvidia/ATI thing and Nvidia SLI. I'll try and keep this brief as I know the topic is system specs and performance, but this shouldn't be too far off the mark. Others can throw in their thoughts as well.

Before I get too deep into this, a quick background on myself. I've been building my own PCs for about 12 years now so I'd like to think I can at least talk with some reasonable intelligence on this subject without sounding too stupid. In terms of video cards, I've owned essentially nothing but Nvidia cards since my TNT replaced the old Matrox + Voodoo2 setup I had back in the day. I've had a TNT, TNT2, Geforce2, Geforce3, FX5200, and now my 2x6800 Ultra's. I am by not means an Nvidia fanboy, I just bought what was the most powerful card (in my view) at the time, or in a few cases I just wanted a real cheapo upgrade to tide me over for a bit, hence the FX5200. Am thinking hard about going with ATI my next upgrade cycle in about 1/2 year, but I'd like to see what they can throw up against Nvidia's 8x00 gen cards which are looking pretty impressive.

Now, my thoughts, primarily on Nvidia. Nvidia and ATI each have their strong points when it comes to keeping their drivers up to snuff with modern games, and in terms of recent and older game compatability. I see you've got a real nice new system with that 7950GX2 card in it, which I've read is fast as all get out, BUT it's got a huge number of problems in terms of the reference drivers. If you go back and look at the past 6 WHQL driver release notes, you'll see a ton of bugs introduced and fixed each time for both SLI systems with any SLI card setup, AND moreso for the 7950 series. There are a ton of games that won't work right on the 7950 series, it's getting better over time but you're still going to see that, hence why I'm not surprised you saw that for M2TW. I'll offer that you shouldn't worry too hard about this, even though the 8x00 gen is out, the 7950 is still cadillac class and the last thing Nvidia wants is people who've shelled out the big bucks for that to have a card that doesn't work well and isn't well supported on modern games. Also the Nvidia SLI is still a mixed bag, for the most part it's now a "mature" technology that they've ironed the kinks out of, but it's still got a few teething problems and the developers don't always know how to write well to take advantage of this. Another glimpse into the "bugs" section of the driver release readme will show that there's a hefty amount of "this is a developer problem, not a driver problem" issues. I've experienced my fair share of these with my 6800's in SLI.

The other major aspect for me (and I imagine others) is recent/older game compatability. Nvidia and ATI both kinda stink here, but it would almost seem that ATI is doing a better job of it as of late. I can think of a handful of games that are pretty broken on my Nvidia systems now running the latest drivers over the past year or so. I've experienced the "low earth orbit APCs" bug in Mechwarrior 3, which my friends on their ATi systems don't have. KOTOR2 has been broken for the past 4 driver releases on all Nvidia SLI systems, if you start the game with AA enabled it crashes. You can enable AA in game and it works fine, but every time you exit you have to manually edit the .ini to disable AA. Barf. The original MTW runs like total crap (pun intented) on my hefty SLI system, the campaign map is dog slow. There's a thread around here stating that the 61.xx drivers will help fix this, the problem being that anyone with an Nvidia card past the 5x00 series can't use them, because iirc the 6x00 series cards came out with the 7x,xx forceware drivers and hence are supported with those on up. I've also had a number of really weird crashes on the campaign map in MTW that I can't pin down, some research seemed to blame this also on Nvidia drivers. My friend running his ATI x800 doesn't have this problem at all, MTW runs smooth as butter and doesn't crash at all.

Please take this with a grain of salt, this is just my experience and thoughts on the matter.

The bottom line to you Aussie is, well... hang in there. :grin: Your video card *is* relatively new, and as such is going to have the usual teething problems. I personally would only recommend you use the WHQL drivers directly from Nvidia.com and NOT anything from Dell. However, if you see a beta driver release on nzone.com and the readme seems to indicate that a specific issue for you might be fixed, by all means snag it. I've just noticed that the non-WHQL drivers are often indeed unstable, certain games will bring this out more than others. Also don't be afraid to get the word to Nvidia about your issues if some troubleshooting can't pin it down. They have a forum, and there's a site feedback link (that appears to be busted now).

Good luck! :yes:

Whacker,

Maaate, thanks for the information, I really appreciate it. :2thumbsup:

You've confirmed what I have investigated on numerous sites. It took a hell of a lot of reading to find out but it is great to have it all crossed checked by yourself. Thanks for helping.

I never use the Dell drivers except for their proprietary Motherboards. I always go to Nvidia and use the latest one's there.

I do believe you are correct and I have to make sure someone gets to hear of this. Who and where do you recommend I inform of this issue?

Reapz

11-24-2006, 03:44

System Specs

P4 3.0 GHz
2 x 1024 Corsair RAM
GeForce 6800 Ultra

1024 x 768
Video options:

4x AA
Unit/building/vegetation/grass detail: High
Effects detail: Highest
Texture quality: High
Shadow quality: None
Bloom: disabled
Reflections: disabled
Campaign shadows: disabled

I'm using fraps to show fps

30 to 40 fps on the campaign map
15 to 25 fps in battles (lower end when there are a lot of trees)

AussieGiant

11-24-2006, 05:45

I've got to get fraps loaded up when I get home!!

You guy's are posting better performance than I have

To think I just handed my old rig over to my house mate and that was a:

3.4 Ghz P4

2 gigs of 533 Hz ram

Nvidia 6800 GTO 256ram

140Gig 10,000 rpm RAID 0.

Damn, what a bad move!!