Processors for Rome

[JeromeGrasdyke]

I'd go with an Athlon64; I've been using one in my work machine for the last nine months and the integrated memory controller seems to give it a fair boost over Athlon XP and P4 for playing Rome. And it's probably the best balance of price, performance and future-proofing as well. Decent ram is worth having also - Corsair's low-latency modules are very good, and steer clear of slow memory setups such as PC800 RDRAM if you can. You might be able to (correctly) infer from that Rome really exercises the old memory bandwidth limits

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I'd go with an Athlon64; I've been using one in my work machine for the last nine months and the integrated memory controller seems to give it a fair boost over Athlon XP and P4 for playing Rome. And it's probably the best balance of price, performance and future-proofing as well.

I agree. IMHO, today, the AMD 64 is superior to any Intel processor.

BTW, in a Celeron 466, RTW runs!!! Although 3-4 fps isn't very playable...

[JeromeGrasdyke]

In fact, the game will run all the way down to P2's ... there are no real capabilties it needs other than raw power. Graphics cards are a different matter though. We may still try and get it reliably useable on all 32 mb cards (at the moment it's about 90%) as a patch, but unfortunately that's one that got away.

[A.Saturnus]

While we´re at it, can someone tell me what´s the best Athlon still running on a Gigabyte 7VTXE?

[Colovion]

While we´re at it, can someone tell me what´s the best Athlon still running on a Gigabyte 7VTXE?

BaHaha, I have that mobo - so crappy for ocing, but very stable otherwise.

It supports AMD Athlon XP 1500+ - 2000+ @ 266Mhz FSB.

[A.Saturnus]

BaHaha, I have that mobo - so crappy for ocing, but very stable otherwise.

It supports AMD Athlon XP 1500+ - 2000+ @ 266Mhz FSB.

Good, thank you

[Red Harvest]

I'd go with an Athlon64; I've been using one in my work machine for the last nine months and the integrated memory controller seems to give it a fair boost over Athlon XP and P4 for playing Rome. And it's probably the best balance of price, performance and future-proofing as well. Decent ram is worth having also - Corsair's low-latency modules are very good, and steer clear of slow memory setups such as PC800 RDRAM if you can. You might be able to (correctly) infer from that Rome really exercises the old memory bandwidth limits

That is very useful to those of us trying to guide folks when they upgrade. I'm still using an old KT266A system with a 9800 Pro...so I suspected memory bandwidth was a key limiter for me, although my XP2400 imposes some as well.

Despite the flare bug that rarely shows its head for me, I've been pleased with the apparent demo stability on this system, despite the fact that it is running 98SE.