Suggestions for people who want EB to run faster

[mighty_rome]

I see a lot of people saying that EB is too slow. You have to remember that EB pushes RTW to its limits, which means it is going to push your computer to its limits as well. Even if your system was state-of-the-art when RTW first came out, I think you still won't be getting optimum performance. You cannot assume that outdated hardware will be sufficient to play this "old game", because the system requirements are really closer to that of more modern games than that of vanilla RTW.

So, here are my suggestions for getting improved performance out of EB.

Hardware suggestions

RTW with EB is very CPU-intensive with the massive scripts that it runs. Even if you have a 3.0GHz+ processor, that may not be enough, because GHz alone doesn't mean everything; an Intel Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz is actually slower than an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU at 1.8GHz. The newer generation of CPUs can simply do much more per clock cycle. So, if you have a 3.0GHz system and you wonder why it's slow, it may be that your CPU is a little more outdated than you think. In my opinion, the Pentium 4 class of processors is completely obsolete if you intend on doing any gaming. AI turns will probably go by much faster with a better CPU.

System memory (RAM) is probably the second most important thing you need to address. I have been monitoring EBs memory usage, and if you want optimum performance you will need a bare minimum of 1.5GB of RAM (2GB+ on Vista). I'd really recommend 2GB even for XP. Why do you need so much? Because EB itself can use well over 1GB, and if your system runs out of RAM, it starts using the pagefile on your harddrive, which is literally 1,000 times slower than system RAM. This will lead to long loading times and probably contribute to long AI turns too.

The video card is important too, but in my opinion it's not as important as your CPU and having adequate memory. Even a GeForce 6600GT will give fine performance with decent settings, and this is an inexpensive card. I personally run the game in 1600x1200 with maxed settings with a 7900GS and it runs quite well.

One last area that people may not even think about is your harddrive. There are quite a few files that are being accessed and loaded into memory when you first run the game, and when you load a battle, so if you still have an older 5400RPM IDE drive you might want to consider upgrading to a 7200RPM(or 10,000RPM) drive. If you're not sure what you have that's OK, and in that case I'd say that anything under 50 or 75GB is really quite an old drive, so you might want to upgrade it. Harddrives are very cheap now (320GB for only ~$90), so this may be a worthwhile upgrade.

Other suggestions

A few final thoughts. First, the water texture fix people have been talking about will not make a difference in the least. As far as your hardware is concerned, it's exactly the same. Why? Because it's the same size texture and that's all that matters, so it will not give a performance boost to go back to the old one.

Second, there is a little trick that I mentioned in another thread that I want to mention here too. This may help many people, so please read this. On every system I have played EB on (quite a few), I get a severe drop in performance when I move a unit in the campaign map as far as it can go. I assume I am not the only one who gets this, and I also assume it's probably just a bug in the RTW engine. Fortunately, there's two easy ways to get your FPS back to normal.

The first method you can use to get performance back to normal is to simply select a unit in a city, move him one step outside the city, and then back in. The framerate should be back to normal. I say to use a unit sitting in a city just so that you won't waste movement points for units that are out campaigning, but moving any unit one step will work (as long as he still has movement points remaining after that).

The second method is to simply end the turn; things will be back to normal after the AI moves.

My EB system

AI turns take approximately 15 seconds for me, and here's my system configuration for those interested:

- Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz running at 3.15GHz, with FSB overclocked from 800MHz to 1400MHz
- Gigabyte 965P-DS3 motherboard
- 2GB Kingston HyperX PC2-5400 RAM OCed from 333MHz to 437MHz
- Western Digital 320GB 7200 SATA harddrive
- BFGTech GeForce 7900GS videocard

My system was relatively inexpensive, but you'll notice I am doing quite a bit of overclocking. The Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 is world-famous for being able to run nearly twice as fast as normal with no mods or extra cooling. I run mine at 3.15GHz, but I'll leave it up to you what you do with yours if you buy one... don't blame me if you mess something up trying to run yours this fast :) Overclocking is worthless if your system isn't stable, but in many cases you can get a great performance gain and still retain stability. This is beyond the scope of this post, though, and in short; don't do this unless you know what you're doing :)


So, I hope someone out there will find some of this information useful. EB is a fantastic mod, so it deserves to be played and enjoyed :) Five minute AI turns aren't my idea of fun, and assuming you have a little cash to spend those days should be gone.

[MiniMe]

This may help many people, so please read this. On every system I have played EB on (quite a few), I get a severe drop in performance when I move a unit in the campaign map as far as it can go. I assume I am not the only one who gets this, and I also assume it's probably just a bug in the RTW engine.

+1
yes, you're not the only one =)
actually that's the only way my EB performance slows down

The first method you can use to get performance back to normal is to simply select a unit in a city, move him one step outside the city, and then back in. The framerate should be back to normal. I say to use a unit sitting in a city just so that you won't waste movement points for units that are out campaigning, but moving any unit one step will work (as long as he still has movement points remaining after that).
thanx for your advice =)

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Thanks for your informed post, I suppose that my weak point is my old AMD Opty@2.8Ghz(about 4Ghz pentium 4 speed). I've read in certain areas that the Core-Duo is 50% quicker. My AI turns must be at least 20 seconds(drives me nuts).

As for your tip on not moving characters their max points, I still have to spend time moving over that big map trying to remember and find them all each turn, this also takes alot of time(prob longer). I never expected an RTW based game to stuff my PC, but there you go!

[Thaatu]

As for your tip on not moving characters their max points, I still have to spend time moving over that big map trying to remember and find them all each turn, this also takes alot of time(prob longer).
Right click on the 'agents' section on the upper part of the UI. It'll list all your agents and their locations. That way you'll remember.

[mighty_rome]

My AI turns must be at least 20 seconds(drives me nuts).

It would be nice if the turns were faster, but 20 seconds is actually quite good for EB. It takes 3-5 minutes or more for some people. And yes, the Intel Core 2 Duo series are very fast processors.

Thaatu's suggestion should definitely help you keep track of your armies better, it lists every army no matter the size.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

but 20 seconds is actually quite good for EB. It takes 3-5 minutes or more for some people.
If my PC took 3-5 minutes to end turn I would have do the humane thing and put it out of it's misery. Shoot, if your like me and your pressing end turn(x10), waiting for that building to be finally finished, to get your hands on troops.....

[Megas Methuselah]

- BFGTech GeForce 7900GS videocard

erm... I have an NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE... I don't even understand what it means, but I assume it's not that good. I suppose I should get a better one, shouldn't I?
:uneasy:

My AI turns take about 1 minute!

[Leão magno]

Sincerly, think yu should consider more RAM than a new video card, mine is a xpress 1100 with 256mb and plays it just fine with everything up... it got really really really better when I upgraded the memory to a 2GB set

[mighty_rome]

Yeah, 2GB is really a must..I think thats the source of many peoples problems.

Earlier today, I checked and EB was using over 1.4GB of RAM...and your operating system already uses up a lot, too. So, 2GB will give a huge performance boost to anyone who upgrades to 2GB from 512MB/1GB.

[Sakkura]

Sigh. Seems like yesterday 1GB RAM was more than enough for anything.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Great post Mighty rome!

[Charge]

2GB is not a must. If you play RTW it's important as Vcard, but fast CPU rulez all the way!
In M2TW RAM and video card much more important.

Even if you have a 3.0GHz+ processor, that may not be enough, because GHz alone doesn't mean everything; an Intel Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz is actually slower than an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU at 1.8GHz. The newer generation of CPUs can simply do much more per clock cycle. So, if you have a 3.0GHz system and you wonder why it's slow, it may be that your CPU is a little more outdated than you think. In my opinion, the Pentium 4 class of processors is completely obsolete if you intend on doing any gaming.
... but you'll notice I am doing quite a bit of overclocking. The Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 is world-famous for being able to run nearly twice as fast as normal with no mods or extra cooling. I run mine at 3.15GHz, Damn you understand it too :2thumbsup:

[mighty_rome]

2GB is not a must.

Well, I didn't say it was a *must*, I said "if you want optimum performance you will need a bare minimum of 1.5GB of RAM (2GB+ on Vista). I'd really recommend 2GB even for XP."

(Edit: Well, at least I didn't say it in my original post.. sometimes I can't remember things I've posted 10 minutes ago :) I think we all get what I am trying to say here anyway..)

Why do I recommend 2GB? Well, if you want to make 100% sure that your pagefile will not be used, you need 2GB. When the pagefile is used, your system performance takes a massive hit, because accessing data in this way is a thousand times slower than system RAM. That's why I think this is even more important than your video card.

EB can indeed use close to 1.5GB by itself at times, and your OS can use hundreds of megabytes as well, so this is why I suggest 2GB. It is to ensure that theres room for everything to be in your RAM at once. You want to avoid having memory paged out to the harddrive at all costs.

The game is of course playable without 2GB, but getting 2GB almost certainly will give you a very noticeable increase in the overall performance of the game. I am just letting people know the reasons behind why I recommend 2GB.


(Here is a screenshot of Task Manager showing EB using well over 1GB by itself)

https://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2754/ebrammu7.jpg (https://imageshack.us)

Also, I am in no way "blaming" the developers of EB for the relatively large amount of memory it uses. Sure, it would be great if it didn't use so much RAM, but I know it's out of your control. You've added an incredible amount of content to the game, so it's of course to be expected.

[mighty_rome]

Great post Mighty rome!

Glad you like it.. I am trying to do something to help out around here.. :)

[antisocialmunky]

Its also good to exit/reopen EB every few hours to avoid random memory related CTDs.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
Please remember that RTW is infested with a "memory leak" bug It may not technically be a leak but the community named it so and CA just ignored it after 1.5/1.5. that causes extreme slowdown/lags after a couple hours and finally makes the game literally unplayable. The less RAM you have, the quicker and deadlier it hits. I have, unfortunately, 512 M and it doesn't really take an hour.

After quitting the game, open Task Manager. RomeTW.exe will keep lurking, consuming hundreds of megs of VM, and occasionally need being manually terminated. (Usually it will terminate a minute or more later; the longer you play the longer the termination time.)

There must be a long thread at the Colosseum about the bug, started by Red Harvest.

PS: Thanks for the advice. :bow:
.

[mighty_rome]

I don't doubt that some form of memory leak could exist, but I personally have never experienced any type of major leak that led to a slowdown with RTW. However, I have seen the phenomenon you mentioned where RomeTW.exe takes several minutes to terminate. No memory leak has interfered with my actual gameplay in any way, though. (I'll try to look for that thread you mentioned)

As I am typing right now, I have EB minimized, and I have actually had it running continuously for more than 100 hours. I just minimize it when I am not playing, and I rarely reboot. With the older Windows operating systems, it seemed you needed to reboot every day to stay in good working order, but XP and Vista can run for weeks just fine.

While the game is minimized, it does not use hardly any of your CPU. So, assuming you have enough memory for other programs to be loaded, theres nothing wrong with just minimizing it, and browsing the web/checking email/chatting, or whatever else you may want to do. You won't experience much of a slowdown, if any. Of course, if you want to play another hardware-intensive game, you better close EB first :)

This is yet another reason why 2GB is nice; you can just minimize EB and perform some other tasks, and then bring it back up when your done. Bringing it back up after it's been minimized takes far less time than closing it, restarting it, and loading a savegame. I've also noticed zero stability problems from doing so.

So, I guess I have inadvertently proven that EB can be quite stable, although I have experienced a couple of after-battle CTDs after hundreds of hours of play. (nothing's perfect; even the tried-and-true Adobe Photoshop CS can crash.). If you are having stability problems it may still be best to reopen it every few hours, just to be safe (like antisocialmunky suggested).

[antisocialmunky]

My experience with RTW is that it does have some form of leak that affects its stability. Its probably somthing very small since I've never actually run out of memory (2GBs). However, the longer I run it, the more likely it seems I'll get a random CTD.

[Horst Nordfink]

Maybe this is slightly off topic, but............

What is the necessity in copying the R:TW folder completely? Does this mean I have installed R:TW twice? Is this really necessary? I would've thought that this slows down my system quite a bit?

Although, I don't know sh!t about computers..........

[bovi]

For backup if something goes wrong, you should always have a clean 1.5 handy. I have a clean BI install, clean 1.6 BI, clean 1.2 RTW, clean 1.5 RTW, in addition to 8 different versions of EB (although I could probably clean out 5 of them as they are 0.8x installations and some intermediate versions between 0.81aV2 and 1.0).

Using hard disk space will not affect performance, unless it causes the disk to become fragmented due to low free space. A simple defrag will fix that.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Talking about defrags, I've had a few CTD'S which fragments the game file. When I check in windows(XP) it states the volume is small and that a defrag is not needed. Will leaving them fragmented slow my game? My harddrive is a fast Raptor and is not very full, so defrags are quick, but am I wasting my time if Windows says not to bother?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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The sticky bugs thread. Memory leak is mentioned on page 2, in this post. The more your physical ram, the later and less lethally it hits.
.

[Charge]

Talking about defrags, I've had a few CTD'S which fragments the game file. When I check in windows(XP) it states the volume is small and that a defrag is not needed. Will leaving them fragmented slow my game? My harddrive is a fast Raptor and is not very full, so defrags are quick, but am I wasting my time if Windows says not to bother?

Defrag is not that important that you should run it after any copy/move. But if it's fast (1-2 min), you're not wasting anything.

BTW, what defragmenter are you use, guys?:inquisitive:

[mighty_rome]

.
The sticky bugs thread. Memory leak is mentioned on page 2, in this post. The more your physical ram, the later and less lethally it hits.
.

That is interesting. Yet another reason for 2GB... :) Like I said, in hundreds(thousands?) of hours of gameplay I've never experienced any major issues relating to memory leaks. After leaving EB running for a week straight, it never exceed 1.4GB of memory use as far as I know.

I certainly do recommend defragging occasionally. You really can get a loss in performance when you have a whole partition that is heavily fragmented ("red" in the Windows Disk Defragmenter).

[woirble]

Apparently my hard drive, which is an image of an earlier drive, which was an image of an earlier drive and so on back to the dawn of time, is in FAT32 file format. I was told that converting it to NTFS should improve performance. I mostly concerned about performance in EB as everything else runs fine. Does anyone know whether converting should help performance in EB. My hard drive is a 150GB Western Digital Raptor.

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

[Slim_Ghost]

This game lags like hell in my laptop. However it does run very well on my average Dual Core PC - provided that I don't tune up the graphic settings to the max.

[carthage_supreme]

This thread should be sticky.

[Hooahguy]

i have little lag, but i only play for 1.5 hrs max...... and only 4 times.....
:sad:

[Iskander 3.1]

My biggest issue is the initial load when starting the game (usually 15 minutes, compared to 30 seconds with vanilla RTW!), although I do have to wait a minute or two between turns. I have a laptop with dual-core AMD Turion so I don't think that's the problem; my graphics card is integrated but new graphic-intensive games like World in Conflict run just fine....I think I just don't have enough memory.

893 MB of RAM and Vista....I'm guessing this is what's wrong. Would an upgrade to 2 GB (which probably won't be easy on a notebook) ease up the horrendous load times?

[Charge]

I will agree that 2GB is a must, for Vista...
Don't know about how it will be on notebook, I just know that they aren't supposed for games at all.

[Moros]

I have a nice nootbook. Which plays EB rather well. Better than my old destkop. The only thing that limits it is 2GB RAM. My processor is a T7500 Dual core (2.2 GHz? IIRC) so that shouldn't really be the problem. However I noticed that my ram gets used rather extensively. (I already turned of a couple of vista feature to save ram, those gadget thingys, transaparent windows,...) however it still doesn't seem to be enough.
Also with a videacard with 512 dedicated memory, the videocard shouldn't cause the issue.

[Charge]

Main problem with notebooks is power supply, which limits hardware available to use, and cut off overclocking. That's why desktop is best choice for home use...

[Iskander 3.1]

Ok, well I think a RAM upgrade will be needed soon. In the meanwhile I just use the 15-20 minutes to watch reruns of Strangers with Candy.

[Bootsiuv]

I have a nice nootbook. Which plays EB rather well. Better than my old destkop. The only thing that limits it is 2GB RAM. My processor is a T7500 Dual core (2.2 GHz? IIRC) so that shouldn't really be the problem. However I noticed that my ram gets used rather extensively. (I already turned of a couple of vista feature to save ram, those gadget thingys, transaparent windows,...) however it still doesn't seem to be enough.
Also with a videacard with 512 dedicated memory, the videocard shouldn't cause the issue.

I've heard 2GB for Vista simply isn't enough....I hate to think how much it would be, but buying two high quality 2GB gaming sticks (like Corsair) would probably improve your performance dramatically.

If you're at home, obviously plug it in as well, as I know my notebook goes into power saver mode when I run it off of battery, and it vastly limits performance. I can turn that option off, but then my battery would only last about 45 mins.

I really think it's your combination of Vista and RAM.

XP = 2GB for best performance
Vista = 4GB

or so I've heard in technical forums.

[johhny-turbo]

(Here is a screenshot of Task Manager showing EB using well over 1GB by itself)

https://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2754/ebrammu7.jpg (https://imageshack.us)

Yep, whenever I play EB I make sure I shut off any unnesesary processes going on.

[Charge]

Yep, whenever I play EB I make sure I shut off any unnesesary processes going on.
Obviously you haven't played Gothic3 on 512 mb ! :laugh4:


XP = 2GB for best performance
Vista = 4GB
for xp 2gb is a limit, a can fairly say that for 95% of games 1gig of fast OCed ddr2 memory would be enough. Just some games (or mods) uses more due to unoptimiezed engine and/or something...

Holy crap, I really should by 4gb for vista? Awful..

Hey, does vista-32bit handles only 2gb too?

[Bouketsu]

I'm trying to get a new comp and I'm picking out a processor right now, Would an AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3800+ (2.4GHz / 512KB L2 cache) be alright?
If not that then atleast a AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 4600+ dual-core - 2.4GHz?:help:

[Tellos Athenaios]

@Moros: close to my specs. Have AMD 64 X2 5200+ processor - meaning dual core 2.6Ghz. Do have 2GB RAM, and do have Vista.

And have no lag whatsoever. The only thing noticeably better about my system is probably the CPU.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I'm trying to get a new comp and I'm picking out a processor right now, Would an AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3800+ (2.4GHz / 512KB L2 cache) be alright?
If not that then atleast a AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 4600+ dual-core - 2.4GHz?:help:

You would be able to play EB with it, but not very fast. The dual core example you picked should handle EB rather well though. (Depending on other system specs too, of course.)

[carthage_supreme]

Ive got a 2.4ghz dual core , 1gb 5300 ddr2 with vista. And god almighty the waiting is such a pain in the ass , takes 10-15mins, and i recon this is all due to vista. So it's a good investment to dish out some 72 euros for an extra 2gb? does the loading-time reduce with 2gb?.

[mighty_rome]

To carthage_supreme: Yes, I am absolutely sure that every game you play will run better with 2GB.

To Bouketsu: Either one would be OK as long as your other system specs are adequate as well.

The point I tried to make earlier in this thread is that some older processors that have very high clock rates (like old "Pentium 4 3.0GHz" CPUs) are actually quite slow compared to newer CPUs of the same, or less, clock rates. This is due to a variety of reasons: newer CPUs have faster bus speeds, multiple "cores", etc.

Looking only at the GHz speed of a CPU is the same as looking only at the attack rating of a unit in RTW and ignoring the lethality; there's more to it then just raw clock speed. (I thought I'd make a nice RTW:EB-related analogy :)

[Bouketsu]

You would be able to play EB with it, but not very fast. The dual core example you picked should handle EB rather well though. (Depending on other system specs too, of course.)
Hm... Well it's gonna be a Vista with 2 GB of RAM and 2GB DDR2-667MHz dual channel SDRAM.
(Off-Topic question, could anyone tell me or show me a thread that shows the difference that it makes when you play EB on BI?)