does anyone feel my pain

New (O.K. not new but new to me) computer, a gateway build for Christmas 05. I run out and pick up MTW2 install all nice nice and fire it up. The graphics are beautiful. The sound fantastic. I play for five minutes. The first battle que's up and...........very choppy at first....then.......locked up. OK I try again. same thing. Run the canyourunthis and find that the almost new wonderfully appointed computer came with only an 64 mb onboard graphics card. I am forced to play a strategy only game and autocalc all the battles. I've played the entire series on TW games and I love the strategy portion of the game but just know how much I am missing. So, does anyone feel my pain? Oh and what is a good graphics card to get to supplement this system, without breaking the bank.

I do not and cannot feel your pain: it is entirely your own sensation. But I can at least comprehend what you seem to be going through.

As for a good graphics card to purchase: it would be necessary to know what system you have. Then maybe someone could recommend a card that fits it.

Ouch, did you try turning all the graphics options down? My graphics card is circa 2003 but can still handle battles if i don't turn settings up too high
I have Athlon 3000+ (~2 GHz), 512 RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro.
If I use the "automatic" graphics settings, battles are almost unplayable if there are a lot of units. With most of the details set to medium and 1024x768, no AA, it runs perfectly. Tip: Shadows is the setting that makes the MOST difference in the beauty of the game, without it everything looks like an overcast fall day, so i would recommend having it at least on low unless there is no other way.

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Originally Posted by Bijo

I do not and cannot feel your pain: it is entirely your own sensation.

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:laugh4:

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Originally Posted by ReiseReise

Shadows is the setting that makes the MOST difference in the beauty of the game

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It's also the setting that makes the most difference concerning performance on some systems.

In general I'd say get an 8800GTS if you can, though it may be overkill depending on your system. Otherwise choose one from the GeForce 7000 family, at least a 7600GT.
I have a 7950GT and it runs fine on high details though it could run better.

This is what you get when you buy pre-built computers - really frigging bad built in cards that suck, and for your average person are impossible to replace with a new card due to the software/hardware clashing.

Buy a nice shiny graphics card (if you can afford it) and find some instructions off the net on how to replace your inbuilt one.

If you can't afford it, then i'm sure even a nasty old card like the ATI Radeon 9600 would do fine.

Thanks all for the help so far. I'm off for the next several days. I'll get more info in on Monday.