RTW frame rates with various graphics cards

[Red Harvest]

I just came across this link at the .com

Frame Rates of Graphic Cards in RTW

Those of you wondering how various cards stack up in RTW might find it useful.

[professorspatula]

I want a new graphics card after seeing that comparison chart. Do you think if I'm really good and do what is asked of me without question, that the senate will reward me with a new Geforce 6800 GT? The senate can then keep the First Cohorts and silly office titles for themselves.

[BeeSting]

I want a new graphics card after seeing that comparison chart. Do you think if I'm really good and do what is asked of me without question, that the senate will reward me with a new Geforce 6800 GT? The senate can then keep the First Cohorts and silly office titles for themselves.

[Red Harvest]

I'm surprised by how well the 9800 Pro does compared to the new generation and for just over half the cost. With my XP 2400+/266 FSB system, the 6800 GT would be unlikely to help much, because the 9800 Pro is not the bottleneck.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

They don't show my 9600 PRO, boo hoo.....


RTW is more processor and RAM dependant than anything else so getting a really good processor and good RAM is more important that getting a 6800 ULTRA.

[Byzantine Prince]

How much of that is dependent on teh CPU though? I have a 1.2 Ghz CPU and i doubt it would make much difference if I updated my 7500 Radeon. It would still lag somewhat.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I have not seen any tests, but the number of AI routines and such that t has to run through is far more stressfull than the graphics. Plus the RAM gets eaten up really fast. If you want to have really big armies I would reccomend a gig at least. My 2.8, 9600 PRO and gig of cas latency 3 RAM in 4 256 sticks works quite well until you hit 6k troops and if you are just looking at the ground the frame rate stays the same...

[Red Harvest]

You would still get a big improvement over a 7500 I imagine. The "sweet spot" would probably be a lot lower than a 9800 Pro. With that speed of CPU an 8500 or 9000 level should give a noticeble boost. And a 9600 would probably tap out its potential.

The 7500 was a 2 pixel pipeline chip, the 8500/9000 is a 4, and the 9800 is an 8. I had (still have in a box) an older Radeon that was an early rev of the 7500 chip from what I can tell, it overclocked like a banshee to just shy of 7500 speeds. It was a good card in its day, but the 8500 was a major step up with a 1.4 GHz machine.

The big improvement though with something like the 9600 level of card is that you start getting decent shader support. The 7500 is a DX7 architecture and is not doing the shaders in hardware. The 8500 was DX8 and shares some features swith the 9000, so they are both limited in DX9 shader support.

[Quillan]

I just got my 9800 Pro back from warranty service, so I am happy. It's an excellent card, still, 2 years+ after its debut. While it was away, I had my older Geforce 4 ti4200 in the computer, and it couldn't handle RTW. I'd get random lockups fairly quickly.

[hellenes]

There is no idication of troop numbers, settings etc...
With normal 240x20=4800x8=38400 soldiers what graphics card can handle it?
Modded (with a troop number editor) 500x20=10000x8=80000

Hellenes

[Zatoichi]

I saw a marked improvement in frame rate when I went from 512 to 1024 Mb RAM using my Radeon 9800 PRO. I could also use huge unit size without the larger battles getting too choppy. People who know more about this stuff than me have reccomended increasing RAM as a cheaper way of improving your RTW playing experience, so who am I to argue? It worked for me, anyway.

[Hortensius]

I have a gforce mx 440 (128mb) and am getting lag in various situations, can anyone recommend a good upgrade........somewhere in the region of £70/80?

Thanks.

[Bhruic]

Those results look extremely odd. It's hard to believe that a 9500pro and a 9800pro are coming up with that close results. In fact, discounting the 5XXX line of nvidia, all of the cards are very close in results. Seems like the test might have been more CPU bound than GPU bound. But considering they used a 4000+ for the AGP, that seems unlikely. Certainly not the results I'd expect to see.

Bh

[Spino]

I just came across this link at the .com

Frame Rates of Graphic Cards in RTW

Those of you wondering how various cards stack up in RTW might find it useful.

Great find RH!

Rome is definitely a CPU bound game. All those soldiers have their own little AI routines working for them, the more soldiers on the battlefield the more CPU overhead required to play with smooth framerates.

Basically if you have a high end DX8/low end DX9 card you can run Rome just fine, provided of course that you don't turn on AA or Anisotropic filtering. The key is a powerful CPU and at least 512megs of ram.

[Ziu]

I'm surprised by how well the 9800 Pro does compared to the new generation and for just over half the cost. With my XP 2400+/266 FSB system, the 6800 GT would be unlikely to help much, because the 9800 Pro is not the bottleneck.

Thats true.
I have a 9800Pro and get around 65fps on large with graphic details maxed.
This is with an XP2400@2316 fsb210 1:1 (the Mobo is 266FSB but run at 210 to get 1:1 with ram)
The major problem for me is Ram (512) and the monitor max refresh rate is 75.
Although if I up the RAM I'll likely lose out on the overclock.
You have a great CPU there Red, heaps of potential.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Yeah, the 9600 PRO is great for a budget card, it supports DirectX 9.0c and everything. Compared to my friend's 9100 or 9200 it is much better, mostly because the water in Far Cry looks like Jello on his comp and like water on mine. I would love to see how many troops a FX-55 with 2 6800 ULTRA's in SLI and max high speed RAM, I think it is 4 gigs right now. That would probably be a mind boggling number of troops!

[Tocca]

I bought a new PC in December, but i bought a new graphic card (Geforce 6800GT) a week before the rest (the store where i bought the PC didn't have the graphic card).

So i played RTW first with my old PC and old graphic card (P4 2.2 Geforce TI4600 512MB RAM)
Then i played RTW with my old PC and the 6800GT.
Now i play with an AMD 3500+, 1GB RAM and the 6800GT.

So i can directly see the difference between the CPU and graphic card.

I played RTW in 1024x768, with settings on medium with the P4/Ti4600. When i installed the 6800GT in that machine, the big difference was that i could go to 1600x1200 and put most settings ingame at max with the same, or even better performance!
So, the better graphic card didn't improve frames/sec that much (maybe 15-25%), but it made the game look much, MUCH, better.

With the new PC though, RTW simply flies.


So, if you have a CPU that can handle RTW ok, but you can't max out resolution/graphic settings, you will certainly benefit from a better graphic card. But if the CPU barely can cope, a new graphic card might not be what you need.
But, it's never good to have a system with to big a leap between component.
A P3 with a Geforce6800Ultra for example would not take very good advantage of the 6800. And the oppostite, for example an AMD FX CPU with a Geforce2 wouldn't be much better.

[hellenes]

I bought a new PC in December, but i bought a new graphic card (Geforce 6800GT) a week before the rest (the store where i bought the PC didn't have the graphic card).

So i played RTW first with my old PC and old graphic card (P4 2.2 Geforce TI4600 512MB RAM)
Then i played RTW with my old PC and the 6800GT.
Now i play with an AMD 3500+, 1GB RAM and the 6800GT.

So i can directly see the difference between the CPU and graphic card.

I played RTW in 1024x768, with settings on medium with the P4/Ti4600. When i installed the 6800GT in that machine, the big difference was that i could go to 1600x1200 and put most settings ingame at max with the same, or even better performance!
So, the better graphic card didn't improve frames/sec that much (maybe 15-25%), but it made the game look much, MUCH, better.

With the new PC though, RTW simply flies.


So, if you have a CPU that can handle RTW ok, but you can't max out resolution/graphic settings, you will certainly benefit from a better graphic card. But if the CPU barely can cope, a new graphic card might not be what you need.
But, it's never good to have a system with to big a leap between component.
A P3 with a Geforce6800Ultra for example would not take very good advantage of the 6800. And the oppostite, for example an AMD FX CPU with a Geforce2 wouldn't be much better.

How many men did you haveon the battlefield?
The full potential of 1.2 game is as i said 240x20=4800x8=38400 pikemen on huge unit sizes...
Now I cant see anywhere the mention of unit sizes and troop numbers so this tests are quite unclear...

Hellenes