Empire Total War system requirements

I have:

Windows XP Service pack 2
2.8 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core CPU
2.00 GB RAM
256MB Nvidia GeForce graphics card (I'm not sure what number but I think it's either 5600 or 6400)





I can only run ETW on low graphics settings (medium causes serious frame rate issues).


Would simply upgrading my graphics card be enough to allow me to use High or even ultra settings?



If so, what graphics card would be best?

Yes your Graphics card is really under spec.

Get a 9000 series or a new 260 or 280 and you'll be on High settings for sure.

By 9000 series do you mean like a GeForce 9600 or something?


Will it work on my PC? Should I upgrade anything else for ETW?

A 9600 or 9800 would be excellent. Go to SP 3 on XP make sure you have the latest drivers installed, remove as many applications from auto running on your machine as possible, defrag and clean up your HDD. Then give it a shot. If it doesn't do enough then you really need a new machine.

Swapping processors gets a little tricky.

Unfortunately it's not possible to give you too much advise on whether this type of GPU will work on your machine as we would need a fairly detailed discussion.

You can go to the hardware section of the forum and ask a fwe of the helpful chaps there.

Thanks. will do.

k am in same boat as most...is 3rd comp for this game and it needs somethin..

drivers up to date..runs on low settings..big multis itll choke...
Processor AMD athlon 64 processor 3500+,MMX,3D Now..2.2ghz and game needs 2.4...can l get by with this?
memory 1024 ram (2x512) 2 slots left for memory ....add?
direct x 9.c
display 1920x1200 (32 bit) (60hrz)
LG L245WP anolog 24 inch
current setup below...was gona get some more ram and mayby diffrent vid card ..my vid card is 7600 gforce 256 MB whatever that means...thinking of getting this
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Product...22350(ME).aspx

would like to get new processor but not shure if there plug and play ect or involved..ie reloadin everything? will leave if l can for now...anyway any help would be apprieciated as lm headin to comp store tomorow am early...


Thanx Kindly
Critter

I just ordered the 9800 online. One thing that I didn't think of however, was that you have to make sure your computer power supply is up to specs. Mine was seriously underpowered (375 watts) so I ended up sending away for a new one. Maybe this won't be an issue for you, but I thought I'd mention it.

Terry

Both my CPU and RAM are over the requirments for ETW, what im wondering about though is the graphics card. I have a ATI Radeon X600 pro with 256 ram. Anyone know how that will hold up? It runs MTW2 without problems.

Mine crashes during both campaign and battle games. Are these sufficient specs:

Time of this report: 3/14/2009, 21:59:07
Machine name: HOME-5BB1502475
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.080814-1242)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
System Model: NVDAACPI
BIOS: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3600+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory: 958MB RAM
Page File: 597MB used, 946MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

Volum,

I would think that the graphics card would be the the big requirement for this game. I know it is for me. I"m at low to medium for most settings, so like I have been doing for 20 years, I am getting a new part for just one game. I told my wife that all our other programs will look so much better.

Terry

My laptop which made MTWII scream wont let me open a Battle.

2046 MB of RAM

AMD Turion 64X2 2.0Ghz

What do I need to upgrade?

Machine bought when MTWII came out.

I play Mostly Rome TW Europa Barbarorum. Awesome Mod!


Do I need a new Machine to Play ETW?

I bought the Special Edition (it was last one left on March 4th)

Didn't know if that had any effect.

Thanks for your help

Dave

I don't see your graphics card anywhere, and unless your processor is a dual-core, it is under min requirements.

Originally Posted by Terry

I just ordered the 9800 online. One thing that I didn't think of however, was that you have to make sure your computer power supply is up to specs. Mine was seriously underpowered (375 watts) so I ended up sending away for a new one. Maybe this won't be an issue for you, but I thought I'd mention it.

Terry

I changed everything on my PC but the box, & power supply which was 4 pins short of the slot on the motherboard. Although the Smart Doctor that comes with the card said I was under power it came with a jack to connect up with the fan power cables.

Turned the warning off, set the power consumption to auto, all GPU settings to about halfway & its all running well. So rekon that as long as you have the correct voltage ps then it may be able to get away with it.

Originally Posted by A Very Super Market

I don't see your graphics card anywhere, and unless your processor is a dual-core, it is under min requirements.

Even if your processer is dual-core, it's under the min requirements, since it only uses the equivalent of a single core.

To anyone who might be under spec! in the PC department

My PC has an AMD Athlon64 3200+ single core running @ 2ghz an ATI 1950 Pro 512mb AGP and 2GB of DDR.
Besides the map lag which seems to be the same for everyone and the odd split second framerate freeze during battle the game runs well on shader 3 high medium textures large unit size AAX2 and everything else on medium or low, runs with high or ultra textures ok with AA off but I can't stand the jagged lines and it causes the framerate freezes to be more frequent.

@ PrimusPilus what's you're graphics card?
Can't see why it won't even let you load up a battle, have you updated your card drivers?

If anyone is not sure if their PC will run ETW I would try the demo first and if that works then in theory so should the game, well it did for me anyway.
LDC

Nar, that be the demo that is unoptimized like that.

And your processor is under min. specs.

Okay i already bought empire unfortunately it doesn't work on my old laptop luckily i was already planning to buy a new laptop in a couple of weeks.
Anyways hopefully empire will run on this new one here's the link:

http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/prod...hs1&l=en&s=dhs

I'm going to most likely get the version for 599$ and will it be able to run empire hopefully at around medium-high?

You will have trouble, the graphics card is integrated.

I've posted this before. The system requirements say:

Operating System: Windows XP 32(service pack 2), Windows Vista 32 OS.
Processor: 2.4 GHz Single Core Intel or AMD equivalent processor.
System Memory: 1GB RAM (XP) 2GB RAM (Vista).
Graphics Card: 256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card (shader 2.0 or higher).
Sound Card: Directx9.0c compatible sound card.
Windows compatible mouse & keyboard.
15 GB free uncompressed hard drive space.

Mine is:

http://www.compusa.com/applications/...&sku=H24-15039

My Processor Speed is 2.0 GHz
Processor Type is Dual Core - this is okay?

Your GPU is barely OK - and you are only getting 2 Gigs of RAM - with Vista. But the real deal breaker here is the GPU:

Still older games like Doom 3 or Quake 4 should be barly playable. Compared to older onboad graphic chips (e.g., GMA X3100), the HD 3200 is much faster. Even the Centrino 2 graphics core (X4500HD) should be slower than the HD 3200.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Rad...00.9591.0.html

It's an integrated grahics "card" and that means low/no performance for ETW.

Hey Guys,

I think it's time for a new computer for me. I'm desperately looking for another computer and thinking of buying a Dell with the following specs. Do you guys think the following specs are more than enough to play Empire? Thanks in advance!

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q8200 (4MB L2, 2.33GHz, 1333FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic Service Pack 1
MEMORY 3GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB supporting HDMI

Originally Posted by bmalik420

Hey Guys,

I think it's time for a new computer for me. I'm desperately looking for another computer and thinking of buying a Dell with the following specs. Do you guys think the following specs are more than enough to play Empire? Thanks in advance!

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q8200 (4MB L2, 2.33GHz, 1333FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic Service Pack 1
MEMORY 3GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 320GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 3450 256MB supporting HDMI

That video card looks way weak, I've never had one of those but judging by the charts at
toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...hmarks,30.html it gets
like 1/4 the score mine (8800 GTS 320mb ) gets and mine feels a bit underpowered at
high graphics for empire ( is good after turning down a couple options ).

the rest of the system looks good. a video card in the 100 - 120 range would probably keep up with games for a couple years, they look 50% faster than mine which is surely fine for this game.

Thanks for the response. I have another option to get a Radeon ATI HD 2600 XT 256MB with the Dell's configuration. What's your opinion on that? Or should I not buy a video card when I buy the Dell and just upgrade it myself when I buy one at Best Buy? Thanks again.

Originally Posted by bmalik420

Thanks for the response. I have another option to get a Radeon ATI HD 2600 XT 256MB with the Dell's configuration. What's your opinion on that? Or should I not buy a video card when I buy the Dell and just upgrade it myself when I buy one at Best Buy? Thanks again.

For like 70-80 at newegg.com ( best buy, ick ) you could get a far better HD 4670 ( the HIS Radeon HD 4670 IceQ is 70 ) or for a little more still an nvidia 9600 GT.

The trouble you might have is whether your dell power supply supplies enough power ( as it were ).
Try checking at dell forums, like if you were looking at inspiron 518 it turns up stuff like this
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/....aspx#19372880 where the
and searching for "inspiron 518 4670" turns up that people dont think the 581s power supply is powerful enough for it ( for example ), but that the nvidia 9500 is fine.

The memory size you need depends on what resolution you'll be running at and I think the texture size ( in this game at least ), 256 is probably good enough up to 1680x1050 but most come with 512 mb now which is definitely enough for 1680x1050 and good enough for 1920x1200 . Anyhow, if they're charging you like $60 for it, you can get a better card ( maybe much depending on the power supply needs ) and upgrade yourself, then you'll have a spare one for emergencies ( they happen! ).

computers are far too complicated.

Looking at a new desktop from Dell. The XPS system they have has the following graphics card in it:

1GB ATI Radeon 3870

Ok for ETW?

Originally Posted by Camulodunum

Looking at a new desktop from Dell. The XPS system they have has the following graphics card in it:

1GB ATI Radeon 3870

Ok for ETW?

Check this link:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...Score,794.html

Thanks for that.

I used to have lag on the campaign map but I switched to windows 7 from Vista and now I don't have any lag. Hmm.

Hi all,
My problem is this:-
I can play battles on the custom battle setup (albeit slow as hell), but not on the campaign. I'm pretty sure my computer meets the specs for the game. I'm thinking maybe it's a RAM issue, although I have 3G of RAM. Any thoughts o wise ones?