System specs, yeah RIGHT

[Medieval Assassin]

Yup Well I just ran the game like a dream on a...

500mhz P3
192mb ram
64 MB Radeon 9000

With everything turned down, BUT THE GAME IS STILL EYE CANDY!

Which is way under miniums, Even when I'm zoomed in on 100-200 units fighting, No lag.
This is great, This is great, this is great.
Oh man I was so worried.

So there you go, if your system is as good or worse then this, it might still run

[Tamur]

Congrats!

Yes, they did an amazing job of gracefully degrading the graphics quality. I ran a test on a 1Mhz Athlon processor, w/256 Mb RAM and a Radeon 7000. Got about 30 fps with a 1200-man battle, it was truly amazing.

[DemonArchangel]

Proof that RTW will kick ass.
Now we're gonna need to mod it....

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

CA have done a fantastic job with the optimisation for this game. I'm running it everything on with my ageing Ti4200 64Mb, and it's as smooth as silk. It runs better on my system that MTW does, amazingly-I used to get quite severe mouse lag on that.

[Colovion]

A CA dev said recently that it can theoretically run all the way down to a P2 - but it won't be the greatest framerates.

[Medieval Assassin]

Yup, Mine runs better then MTW also. Wierd. MAN THE CAV PWN.
Ha, been playing for the last 5 hours...

[son of spam]

Congrats!

Yes, they did an amazing job of gracefully degrading the graphics quality. I ran a test on a 1Mhz Athlon processor, w/256 Mb RAM and a Radeon 7000. Got about 30 fps with a 1200-man battle, it was truly amazing.

whoa! how'd you dig up a 1 Mhz processor? Damn that's slow!

[Doug-Thompson]

I'm anxious to see how the computer handles the strategy map.

Years ago, the tactical battles on MTW ran fine on an old computer of mine, but the strategic map wouldn't. It was weird. It was a video-card problem, not a processor problem, though.

[USMCNJ]

i had the same problem (with the st map)
to all of you with low specs that run RTW smoothly, i really hate you guys.
i have 2.4 ghz p4, 512 Ram. Raden 7500 mobile 32 MB, and my frame rate is so bad that it feels like i'm on aced when i play the game.
i ended up spending $800 on a new pc.
so to all you lucky people, i really hate you all. (i'm actually very jelous.)

[Basileus]

hhm thats strange i couldnt even run STW properly on my old P3 heh

[Kagetora]

Does anyone know what it is that makes these old PC's run it well, cause I could really use the info.

[Kagetora]

USMCNJ, I'm no expert but I think you had a video card problem, 32mb doesn't seem that good. Perhaps you should have upgraded to a 128 mb with the 9600 pro, that way mroe cost effective. And we all know that P 4 are not the best for running games but rather the AMD's (so happy that I'm getting one but for around $1,400)

[King Azzole]

Very nice coding CA, probobly the best ive ever seen for graphics. You guys should give pointers to those "other guys" who have even crappier graphics than your engine but run so choppy.

[USMCNJ]

Kagetora , i was talking about my labtop, so it's pretty hard to update the video without violating the warrenty (plus i don't think i know how)
i got p4 because i don't like AMD, it's a personal thing : (put a heatsink on crack the cpu, WTF)

[Daevyll]

I have a P4 1.8Ghz, with 768Mb memory and a Radeon 9600 XT card with 128Mb video memory.
I run it on XP professional, SP1.

Small battles with 4 units per side run beautifully, but with 12 units per side, all engaged in combat, it slows down considerably.

So how on earth do you get it to run smoothly on a P3 ?

[Stuie]

Yup Well I just ran the game like a dream on a...

Glad to see you got your hands on the demo... sorry I couldn't help after all! My burner is still shot! Stupid two-year-old!

[KyodaiSteeleye]

Well, i have an AMD600, 32mb ATI Rage and 256meg RAM, and the game crashes to the desktop before battle setup, so unless there's some other reason, i think there is an issue here with specs.

[RTKLamorak]

i had the same problem (with the st map)
to all of you with low specs that run RTW smoothly, i really hate you guys.
i have 2.4 ghz p4, 512 Ram. Raden 7500 mobile 32 MB, and my frame rate is so bad that it feels like i'm on aced when i play the game.
i ended up spending $800 on a new pc.
so to all you lucky people, i really hate you all. (i'm actually very jelous.)

dont be mate. peoples idea of "running like a dream" varies massively

im running RTW on a

4ghz Pentium4
NVIDIA 6800GT@ULTRA speeds
1gb OCZ 3700EB @ 250mhz 3,2,2,7

and it cerainly isnt running "like a dream", in fact, it runs so shoddily for such a high spec comp i havent played the demo since the first day. They need to get this game properly optimised asap. And no... the game going between 27-50 fps is NOT "smooth as silk", at least not as far as im concerned.

[Nelson]

peoples idea of "running like a dream" varies massively

I agree Lamorak that 27-50 fps is not “smooth as silk”. The high rate or the average rate is meaningless if you want good looking performance at all times. It’s the low troughs in the frame rate that tell the story. If things dip into the 20s then things are slowing up noticeably.

Games are playable at less than optimal fps and the fact that they are still acceptable to so many people in this state is good news for the industry. I envy guys who can happily live with scaled back features because I can’t stand to turn down graphics or to use small units.

My Athlon XP 2000 with 512ram and a 9800 pro is doing a better job with 20 on 20 battles than I expected at max sttings even with antialiasing turned up. It is certainly playable. There is no gross slide show effect jerkyness but rotating the camera in the midst of a battle does deliver a kind of sluggish variable speed appearance that is annoying. The largest units sizes will no doubt deteriorate this situation further. We also have yet to see what buildings will do to frame rates. I have ordered an Athlon 2800 that ought to help me out as it is about 25% faster than the 2000.

All in all, the demo indicates that CA did a better job getting the game to run with so many 3D soldiers marching about than I thought they could. They are a right clever bunch. Now it remains to be seen if the finished product will run perfectly on any machine.

[RTKLamorak]

The high rate or the average rate is meaningless if you want good looking performance at all times. It’s the low troughs in the frame rate that tell the story. If things dip into the 20s then things are slowing up noticeably.

agreed! For me, anything below 40fps and i can see a visible "slowdown". Its not actually missing frames or anything, and it has the illusion of "smooth" motion between frames, but to me its just not REALLY smooth!!

The difference between the minimum and maximum fps is a huge factor in this as you said. I play RTCW:ET mainly, and my fps NEVER falls below 90 on this machine, and i have it "locked" at 90fps so it NEVER moves from that figure. That is truely as "smooth as silk" all the time.

If however, i change the lock to 200fps, and the fps fluctuates between 90-200 i can see slowdowns very easily. If im in a room at 200fps, and run out of a door taking me to 95 for example i can see that change and it effects the smooth motion of the game, altho some people would still expect it to run smoothly (as many people seem to think you cant see changes in fps at anything over 60). Imo, a game runs best when your minimum and maximum fps is EXACTLY the same, but ONLY assuming your minimum fps is a relatively high figure.

If i can run RTW with a minimum fps of 40-50, and have vsync on with my monitor at 60hz refresh (it is a flatscreen btw, so no glare from low refresh) then it will never go above 60fps... and should hopefully give me the feeling of smoothness i desire from it as the fps will only flucuate by 15-20fps at any given time . I just dont enjoy games as much when they arent running at their best (where as many people can happily play RTW at 15-20fps, which i envy in some ways lol). I really hope they sort out the performance issues for the final release, as it will massively effect how much i play the game.

It seems CA have done quite a good job on getting it to run at least acceptably on lower end machine, but when it comes to top end machines it isnt running proportionally better imo. Im still not sure if drivers play a part (altho im sure they do somewhat)... but something is certainly amiss, and i just hope the game is doing my PC justice on its final release

[Sir Robin]

RTW was one of the big reasons why I bought a new PC.

AMD 2.08 GHz
512 MB Ram
80 GB HD
Geforce FX 5200 128 MB AGP.

It seems no matter what graphics settings the FPS hovers in the twenties.

It could be a card issue but I had the exact same fps rates with a 9600 SE 128 MB AGP.

Yep I am a budget gamer.

Hopefully the release version will adress these issues.

[RTKLamorak]

do you still have the 9600SE?

you do realise a 5200 is WORSE than a 9600SE right?

[Medieval Assassin]

I mean, It does run VERY WELL, No lag what so ever, untill 29-30 full units are running around (at mach 1401274012974120949124125) around that map, then it slows down a little, but recovers... And I'm not running Windows98SE either, just the plain 98.
I saved myself 800$ if it slows down now and then just a little, I ain't got no problem!

[RTKLamorak]

what fps range are you getting out of interest Assassin?

use fraps

[Doug-Thompson]

It's pretty common for games that run well on lower-end machines to have problems running on high-end ones. The only game I know of that hasn't had problems covering a broad range are the IL-2 Strumovik series.

[Medieval Assassin]

Testing it out now...

[RTKLamorak]

It's pretty common for games that run well on lower-end machines to have problems running on high-end ones.

It just seems like some games arent made to utilise more powerful machines. Where as the performance increases in many games are predictable as CPU/RAM/GPU power is increased, some are not!

fps should increase proportionally as you up the CPU/GPU by set amounts... but that just doesnt seem to be the case with RTW

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I can honestly say that I didn't expected RTW to run on my PC:

Celeron 466
512Mb RAM
GeForce 4 MX 440 64Mb

The big problem with this system is the lack of CPU power to account for high geometry and many troops.

From the start, I used the minimum settings available in the graphics options menu, including the smallest unit size and 800x600 16bit. It ran at about 3-5fps average with sometimes a high point of 9fps. Not very playable. Then I got an interesting tip:

Inside the file descr_auto_optimise_options in the Data folder, you can change (in the first line - minimum settings) the unit_model_detail setting from low to super_low. This minimizes the geometry of the troops to a setting that is not used on the demo, but that the game contains. So, instead of lowest you get a super_ lowest.

Needless to say that it doesn't look pretty, but makes it far more playable in my system. I got 7-9fps with highs of 14fps (small unit size and 800x600 16bit).

With 1280x960 16bit and max settings in everything, except shadows and antialiasing, I get 2-3fps with a high of 6fps...

[Red Harvest]

CA has said this game is memory bandwidth intensive. A Celeron is gonna really suck wind with it, because the Celery has very little cache on the chip--meaning it will have to access main memory even more frequently (and that is where they indicate the bottleneck is.)

[JeromeGrasdyke]

It just seems like some games arent made to utilise more powerful machines. Where as the performance increases in many games are predictable as CPU/RAM/GPU power is increased, some are not!

fps should increase proportionally as you up the CPU/GPU by set amounts... but that just doesnt seem to be the case with RTW

Well, first of all you've got to keep in mind that as your CPU speed goes from 1.5 GHz to 3 GHz, that's only a x2 speed increase, and you're unlikely to see all of that because your memory bandwidth as a proportion of CPU clock speed goes down. Even so, if you keep all the other settings constant the framerate scales pretty well, from 12-18 fps on a min-spec machine to 40-50 on a high end one. But if you then put the unit sizes from small to normal, you're immediately doubling the load on the simulation, and worse than that in some cases because collision detection does not scale linearly with the number of men. If you mod the units to become larger still, it gets even worse...

Rome is a strategy game, split second reaction time is not critical, and so we made a choice to try and give the player as many and as high a visual quality of troops as possible to play with, while maintaining a steady playable framerate. The game adjusts your default settings (as most games do) when you first start it up in order to achieve this, and again if you tell it to in the menu's. That is why the framerate appears very similar on different machines with very different specs.

The bottom line is, the choice is yours. You can adjust the settings to run the game however fast you want to (within the limits of the hardware). But be aware that when you're comparing framerates from different machines, you may not be comparing like with like.