What are your system specs?

[Mount Suribachi]

I'm thinking of upgrading my PC so I can finally play RTW and was wondering what people were using and what kind of performance they were getting.

I'm especially interested in seeing Graphics & Sound cards people are succesfully using to make sure I don't end up with kit that RTW doesn't like.

Thanks

Just for a laugh,I'll start by describing my pitiful system...

1.05 Gig Athlon
512 MB RAM
20 Gig hard drive
El cheapo soundblaster card
64MB 3D Prophet 4500 Kyro II.

She barely plays MTW (due to sucky GFX card not properly supported by MTW) and laughs at the thought of playing Rome!

[Ginger]

It plays fine on my bargain basement machine;

2.5 ghz athlon
~700 meg ram
Geforce 3

The graphics are minimum specs, but as the ram and cpu are good it runs fine. I cant get all the nice effects and it slows above ~3000 soldiers displayed (so no huge battles. ). It cost me ~200 quid to put this machine together (self built & cannibalised), but it runs RTW fine and looks pretty good so you dont need to spend the earth. depends if you want to play doom 3 too I guess.

[Puzz3D]

I use AMD xp2400+ (2.0 GHz) cpu, 512 MB RAM (266 MHz buss), ATI 9800 Pro (128 MB RAM) and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound. This system does not give satisfactory performance with RTW no matter what graphics settings I use. I get less than 10 fps with more than 3000 men on the battlefield. I've had the system checked by a knowledgable person, and everything is working properly.

[Ldvs]

I use AMD xp2400+ (2.0 GHz) cpu, 512 MB RAM (266 MHz buss), ATI 9800 Pro (128 MB RAM) and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound. This system does not give satisfactory performance with RTW no matter what graphics settings I use. I get less than 10 fps with more than 3000 men on the battlefield. I've had the system checked by a knowledgable person, and everything is working properly.

Same here, no matter what video settings I change it produces no noticeable enhancements in terms of FPS. The PC runs well, but RTW doesn't seem to be optimized for either ATI graphic cards or AMD cpu's...

AMD 3200+ (2,2 GHZ)
1MB RAM
ATI 9800 pro

[Rapidly]

P4 2.8 ghz
1 gig RAM
GeForce 4 5900 FX
Older Soundblaster card

Runs great with this system, however I haven't tried anything over normal unit size. One problem I do get is an occasional screen freeze requiring rebooting, due I'm pretty sure to GPU overheating. It's not unique to this game; despite having two 120mm temperature-controlled case fans, for the past several high-end games now I've had to resort to taking off the side panel and directing a 12-inch desk fan onto the thing. Looking fwd to not dealing with that when I upgrade to a 6600 GT card.

[bubbanator]

Mine runs great on my Pentium 4. 512 RAM. However I have to use low and medium settings because I don't want to spend the money on replacing the crappy default video card when my games run fine.

[SpencerH]

for the past several high-end games now I've had to resort to taking off the side panel and directing a 12-inch desk fan onto the thing. Looking fwd to not dealing with that when I upgrade to a 6600 GT card.

Thats what I do too. My GPU overheating started with RoN.

[Mount Suribachi]

but RTW doesn't seem to be optimized for either ATI graphic cards or AMD cpu's...

Surprised to hear you say that given that the RTW recomended specs have about a dozen ATI cards listed.

Ah well, looks like I'll be getting a GeForce chipset then

BTW, is anyone running with onboard sound? was thinking of getting a MoBo with 5.1 onboard sound, but wasn't sure if RTW would like that...

[Colovion]

oh yeah - I have 9800pro

it works flawlessly

I'm running onboard sound on my DFI Lanparty 250gb, but I'd rather have a decent soundcard.

[Ldvs]

Surprised to hear you say that given that the RTW recomended specs have about a dozen ATI cards listed.

Yes, I'm quite disgruntled. With such specs the game should run way better. I'm not talking about having 10,000 men on the battlefield because my CPU isn't good enough for this kind of confrontation. Yet, I cannot comprehend it becomes choppy with barely over 4,000 soldiers. Other games run perfectly on my PC, therefore the answer is simple: it comes from RTW.

[SpencerH]

Surprised to hear you say that given that the RTW recomended specs have about a dozen ATI cards listed.

Ah well, looks like I'll be getting a GeForce chipset then

BTW, is anyone running with onboard sound? was thinking of getting a MoBo with 5.1 onboard sound, but wasn't sure if RTW would like that...

Thats all I'm using. I dont see the point of a seperate sound card nowadays.

[Nelson]

I run an Athlon XP 2800+ with 512ram and a Radeon 9800 with 128ram. The OS is XP Pro.

I use large units and set the graphics to high. Antialiasing is set to low. Huge units cause a noticeable frame hit with large or medium armies. In fact, even large units slow the game appreciably when 30 or more are in the fight. I believe that the cpu is my bottleneck. A 64 bit Athlon would be better although adding the newest Nvidia or Radeon card couldn’t hurt either.

I may take the ram up to 1 gig but that will be the end of the line for this rig. It will never handle Oblivion when it arrives.

[SpencerH]

P4 2.8 with HT (turned on)
512 RAM (400 or 800 MHz)
Radeon 9800 with 128ram
XP Pro
I'm not sure what unit sizes I use, peasants are 120 men.
Anti aliasing, shadows, desynch, etc are all maxed out and no problems/slowdowns ever.

EDIT: I dunno if it has any effect on battle capabilities, but I use an image of my CD.

[lilljonas]

I play it on my old PC that I was supposed to abandon when I got my ibook. Sure, I have it on the lowest detail level, and in battles featuring too much arrows I tend to get ridiculous 1-3 fps at the end of the battle (bringing the frustrated end to my scythian campaign after sacking Rome and forces started to be too big), but it works, and I keep on playing on the large unit setting.

PIII 800
512 Mb RAM
64 Mb RADEON

Far from perfect, but it works.

[UltraWar]

Pentium 3 900MHZ as shown but really 1001MHZ
512Mb i think
ASUS SOUND CARD
CRAPPY SPEAKERS

[tibilicus]

Proud owner of a 400 gig baby with pentium 4 prosesor. dont know much else about computers...........

[ToranagaSama]

Abit IC7-G
Pentium 4 2.4c (12x250 1:1)
Thermalright XP-94 (Vantec Tornardo 92mm ~3000rpm)
ATI Radeon 9700 pro (357/343.5)
2x512 MB Corsair XMS 3200XL (2.5-3-3-5)
SoundBlaster Live 5.1 Platinum
Addtronics 7890A (modified by www.coolcases.com)
Cornerstone p1700 (21")
Win2000pro SP4

Run at 1600x1200x32
Everything turned on and Maxed
Normal unit size

No framerate or other issues thus far.

RTW really isn't that demanding, in comparision to the likes of Far Cry, Doom3, HL2, etc. Mine was a **budget** upgrade (well over a year ago) intended to play Far Cry at a very good level in terms of FPS and Graphic quality, which it does (overclocking is a necessity). Adding an ATI x8xx would bring FC play to its highest level, but would be overkill for RTW.