Game settings

Does anyone know which settings have the biggest impact on the framerate? I know there is some info flying about but I find the one total war provide useless and would jsut prefer a concise answer from someone.

Thanks

p.s. If this is the wrong section please say.

Off the top of my head, things that have major impacts on battle framerate:

1) Unit size. Large or Huge unit sizes can cause a massive performance hit, especially in battles with lots of units. Try campaigns with Medium unit sizes.
2) Antialiasing and Antriscopic filtering are always big VPU hogs. I consider those to be 'bonus' performance options. If I can get the graphics up to close to max with extra power to spare, then I turn AA, etc. on, but otherwise I leave it off.
3) Shadows, particularly the higher level rendering methods, eat up a surprising amount of CPU power. I find you an reduce your shadow levels a great deal without really noticing the impact in the game.
4) Textures. I hate turning this down because this is what makes the battles look so pretty when you're zoomed in, but if you're really suffering when trying to watch combat from close range, this is a good way to fix the problem. The more your drop your texture quality, the poorer the combat will look, but you'll see a dramatic frame rate increase.

Thanks, Does the sky setting make much impact?

I have no idea, haven't messed around with it.

I get CTD when transferring from campaign to battle (on largest unit size). I have the generic "low" video option already. Would it help if I changed to smallest unit size?

It is actually grass, trees and shadows

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Originally Posted by jsberry

I get CTD when transferring from campaign to battle (on largest unit size). I have the generic "low" video option already. Would it help if I changed to smallest unit size?

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It's worth a try, but that might also be a driver problem. Try updating your VPU driver and see if it helps (don't forget to uninstall the old one first).

After fiddlying about It appears that I can have everything on ultra if I set shadows to off, but everything looks wrong without shadows

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Originally Posted by a-e

After fiddlying about It appears that I can have everything on ultra if I set shadows to off, but everything looks wrong without shadows

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That sounds like a tech/configuration problem to me. Shadows shouldn't be eating up that much processing power. Try posting in our TW tech problems forum: The Apothecary.

I found this groovy blog over at total war. com that might clear things up a bit. It goes in to quite a bit of detail on what each setting does and how it effects performance.

http://blogs.sega.com/totalwar/2009/...-shop/#more-83

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Originally Posted by MrWhipple

I found this groovy blog over at total war. com that might clear things up a bit. It goes in to quite a bit of detail on what each setting does and how it effects performance.

http://blogs.sega.com/totalwar/2009/...-shop/#more-83

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I was looking at this but found I couldnt make head or tail of it

@tincow: might my GPU driver be a touch old? or do you think it to be something else.

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Originally Posted by a-e

I was looking at this but found I couldnt make head or tail of it

@tincow: might my GPU driver be a touch old? or do you think it to be something else.

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Could be. It's always a good idea to update game drivers whenever you're installing new games. They change those things so often that mine are pretty much always obsolete whenever I check them.

I am always nervous about doing it in case I screw things up.

Why should shadow have such and impact?