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.

[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.

[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.

[Lord Hammerschmidt]

No real problems with my:

Pentuim 4 3 ghz
1 Gig Ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128 mb)
Sound Blaster Live! (laugh away)

Got the whole rig for $500, Dell refurbished.

Runs nicely on large unit size with detail maxed, even in very large battles and city seiges.

[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.

[Brysk]

AMD Athlon 64 +3500, Geforce 6800 GT, Audigy 2 ZS, 1 gig of Corsair, 1 120 GB harddrive, and an old 40 gb used for virtual memory, Cost me 800 dollars to put together, not including case, lights and custom fan grill, (1000 at that point), You jus thave to get your parts at Newegg/Xoxide, and I got the 6800 GT for 300 bucks at a computer fair. Runs RTW like silk until I hit the point where it lags because of computation of too many units.

[Diadochoi]

No real problems with my:

Pentuim 4 3 ghz
1 Gig Ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128 mb)
Sound Blaster Live! (laugh away)

Got the whole rig for $500, Dell refurbished.

Runs nicely on large unit size with detail maxed, even in very large battles and city seiges.

I first played RTW on my friends Pentium 2.4 Ghz with 512 RAM, and it ran OK on medium unit sizes. The frustrating thing was that it took 2-3 mins to go from the campaign map to the battle screen. The only in game lag on low detail settings was when a large third army was involved in the battle somehow.

Then I got a similiar Dell refurb (except with the SB Audigy) as listed above, and it does run great. Loading times are more like 15 seconds, and I play with huge unit sizes with most of the detail settings maxed. Very rarely any lag. I assaulted Rome (large stone walls) with a few armies totalling about 4000 carthaginians , however (maybe 1000 roman defenders), and the whole thing came to a screeching halt. Absolutely unplayable. I'm a little miffed that the developers would even let you put that many people on the field, knowing that no computer on the retail market could handle it.

In summary: get a dell refurb, they are dirt cheap and as good quality as new.

[Lord Hammerschmidt]

Ya, with that many men in a city siege, I think just about anything would slow down. I've done nearly 8,000 men in open field, no problem there.

And the PC has been awesome, except for the first night when the HD partition and all contents vanished. Haven't figured that one out yet, but it's been ok since...

[pezhetairoi]

20 GB drive
256MB RAM
1.4GHz
SoundBlaster Live
nVidia GEForrce 4MX

Runs fine even on huge with 3 uber fullstack armies on the field simultaneously. Only problem is, of course, the fact that the transition from campaign to battle screen takes eons, but that just gives me time to update my campaign records so I'm fine with it.

And what's so funny about Soundblaster Live? *looks around with gimlet eyes, daring anyone to laugh*

[Colovion]

More than enough.

I played RTW initially on an Athlon 1600+ with with a 4200ti 128mb and it was excellent. jMy massive upgrade since then didn't really improve the visuals, only the FPS.

[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.

[PseRamesses]

AMD +3,2Ghz
1024 Mb ram
Radeon X300 128mb
Creative 5.1 surround sound system

Works flawlessly!

My previous PC was running on a P4, 512mb ram and a Radeon 9800 and kept crashing and even the manufacturer couldn´t understand it.

[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.

[Azi Tohak]

I actually purchased a new computer so that I could play RTW (and MTW to be fair), and my Athlon 3200+, 512 RAM, Stock 64 MB GeForce 3 (maybe?) works great. Before the patches the flaming arrows killed me (who did not have problems?) but now so long as I avoid the highest settings, it looks great.

But no anti-aliasing either... but still, my battles look great on large unit scale.

Azi

[dragons622]

P4 2.4Ghz
1 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro O/Ced to 432/700
250GB HD
Audigy 2 sound card

It runs great at 10x7 with large unit size. I'll get the occassional lag with more than 3000 units on the map (I agree it must be the CPU) but other than that the game runs great. BTW, I had a GF3 prior to purchasing the Radeon 9600 Pro and the difference in graphics is very noticeable. RTW definitely uses DX9 shaders, because the body form and armor of units look more realistic and smooth than the DX8 shaders under my GF3. It's a nice bonus after my GF3 fried during a PSU overload :(.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Athlon64 3500 2.2ghz. Overclocked to 2.488 with stock cooler.

2 512 sticks of Kingston HyperX. CAS Latency 2. PC-3200

Samsung Viewsonic 19" CRT, black.

Antec Soho file server case, 5 case fans.

Gigabyte Nforce4 PCIE, but not SLI mobo. (not sure which. sorry.)

250gb Maxtor hard drive, 7200rpms.

CD/RW drive. Not sure which, old model, works like a charm.

OCZ 420watt power supply, the one with the green backlight, new model. Nice and shiny.

BFG 6800GT, factory overclocked 20mhz's or so. (256mb, PCIE)

Windows XP Home

Floppy Drive

[derF]

Myself:

CPU= P4 3.0GHz HT 1MB Cache
RAM= DDR2 RAM 2x512MB
HDD= Serial 120GB
GPU= Radeon X300SE 128MB PCI-X

Runs fine of huge army size and lowish graphics settings.

[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.