The "Would my PC be able to run M2TW?" thread (all such queries here pls)

[JR-]

looks like the C2D 6600 is a popular choice right now. :D

[maestro]

Any Conroe chip is in another league in terms of raw power to any other chip on the planet. I've been a hardware enthusiast for more than 10 years now and I don't ever remember such a massive jump in performanec before in a single chip revolution.

The sensible chip to go for is the 6300, though, cause they all overclock to similar levels and you'll get a much higher FSB from the lower multiplier of the 6300 than, say, the 6600.

[DukeofSerbia]

If SSE2 stay then we'll have parox...

Minimum PC requirement:

Intel Pentium 4 Celeron 1.5 GHz
AMD Athlon64 2800+ (s.754)

[danfda]

SSE2 is only req'd for the demo; on about pg. 3 a senior member (can't remember who--sorry!) posted a blurb from one of the CA dev's who said that SSE2 was only for the demo, and that when the game itself ships you'll only need SSE. Does that help, Duke?

Or did I miss several boats?

On another note, I built a new PC with a core 2 6400, not the 6600. :D

[DukeofSerbia]

SSE2 is only req'd for the demo; on about pg. 3 a senior member (can't remember who--sorry!) posted a blurb from one of the CA dev's who said that SSE2 was only for the demo, and that when the game itself ships you'll only need SSE. Does that help, Duke?

Or did I miss several boats?

It seems that I missed. Anyway, I have Athlon64 which have SSE2.

[Lord_Phan]

Is there a memory leak with the demo?

I can run everything on max. And I mean MAX. But when I play a second battle it'll start to lag for a second here or there. so I stop, quit the game and restart the demo and no problems. Assume it's just a memory leak? Won't happen in the game itself?

[dannothecolonel]

My specs are as follows

AMD Sempron 2600+ 1.6 ghz

Nvidia Geforce 6800

512mb RAM

When I tried running the demo, the battles lagged, but the graphics were also screwed up in other ways ( soldiers would appear and disappear, strange lines radiating from units, knights appearing to fly through the air). This seems to suggest to me that i might be having some issues with my graphics card's compatibilty, as opposed to simply lacking RAM or processor speed. Then again, I don't know what I'm talking about, so what do you all think?

really don't want to have to buy a new computer to play this :(

[Dave1984]

My specs are as follows

AMD Sempron 2600+ 1.6 ghz

Nvidia Geforce 6800

512mb RAM

When I tried running the demo, the battles lagged, but the graphics were also screwed up in other ways ( soldiers would appear and disappear, strange lines radiating from units, knights appearing to fly through the air). This seems to suggest to me that i might be having some issues with my graphics card's compatibilty, as opposed to simply lacking RAM or processor speed. Then again, I don't know what I'm talking about, so what do you all think?

really don't want to have to buy a new computer to play this :(

More likely the processor speed and the RAM, to be honest, as I have the 6800 and I can run everything on max smoothly.

[BDC]

More likely the processor speed and the RAM, to be honest, as I have the 6800 and I can run everything on max smoothly.

Unlikely, sounds like a card issue. Install new drivers and stop overclocking it is a good start. Might be a power supply or overheating issue too.

[JR-]

Any Conroe chip is in another league in terms of raw power to any other chip on the planet. I've been a hardware enthusiast for more than 10 years now and I don't ever remember such a massive jump in performanec before in a single chip revolution.

The sensible chip to go for is the 6300, though, cause they all overclock to similar levels and you'll get a much higher FSB from the lower multiplier of the 6300 than, say, the 6600.

i went with a 6600 because O/C'ing was not an option in my HTPC case with all passive components.

but yes, overclockers do love the 6300/6400 chips

[dannothecolonel]

I've already reinstalled the latest drivers from the Nvidia site, amd i don't think there are likely to be power issues since the card works fine for other games. I don't think I am overclocking it either.

[GeneralMikeIII]

Hi, I'm new here and looking into buying a new PC for MTW2 at the start of next year. Currently I'm looking at-

Core2Duo E6600 2.4Ghz
Radeon X1900XT 256
2Gb RAM

Any comments/advice on if this will give a good performance would be great!

Also anyone got any idea if that CPU or graphics card are likely to come down in price anytime soon?

Tom, I was looking at the same machine I think, or close. I posted much earlier in this thread (like page 4 or 5), and the response I got was that there is going to be a release of a new generation of cards, CPUs, a new directX version, and Windows Vista all coming before or around the end of the year. I decided to wait, since when all that new stuff comes out the old stuff (like the stuff you are looking at) is going to go on sale, and you can get the new stuff for just a little more than the machine you are looking at, and the new stuff is supposed to be beastly. It might be a good idea to wait and see before purchasing a new system.

[maestro]

The first DX10 card will be available in November (NVidia G80 core) and ATI's effort will be more like February (R600 core) and Vista should be released in home user flavour around the same time next year so there's a long time to go yet. And don't forget that you'll be no a brand new hardware platform, a brand new software platform and with a totally new driver architecture... that spells issues to me

I decided to upgrade now (well, about a month ago) and not bother with DX10 for a while.

Vista wil be expensive. DX10 cards will be very expensive. It won't work.

Ugrade now and enjoy M2TW as it's supposed to be played.

[GeneralMikeIII]

Ugrade now and enjoy M2TW as it's supposed to be played.

Yeah, that's the problem for me... my machine is a labtop. I got a Pentium M processor I think at 1.5 GHz and less than 500 Mb of Ram. The graphics card is an Intel 82 something stupid integrated piece of junk. This is far too gone to try to save. I got to get something totally new, and M2 isn't coming out 'till November either, so I'll probably get a new computer then, after the NVidia cards come out. Someone said something about a quad core processor too, and I'm pretty sure they said that would be coming out around the same time. Even if they are out of my budget, the fact that they are out will lower the price of the existing stuff that is out now.

[JR-]

the new nVidia G80 is going to be 700+ million transistors crammed into the old 0.09u fabrication process.

that means big chips, which also means expensive to produce, powerhungry, frequency limited, and therefore noisy to cool.

i personally am waiting for the spring refresh built using the smaller 0.65u fabrication process, hopefully mitigating all the problems mentioned above.

besides which, it will be a long time before anything gets released that actually makes use of the new features of DX10.

[JR-]

Someone said something about a quad core processor too, and I'm pretty sure they said that would be coming out around the same time. Even if they are out of my budget, the fact that they are out will lower the price of the existing stuff that is out now.

quads-core is lovely and fully intend to go there, but it will have no impact on gaming for the next 12 months at least, possibly even 18 months.

[Memnoch]

G'day all. I thought I would chip in with a laptop config that has (sort of) managed to run the MTWII demo. I was able to run it at an acceptable speed with a number of settings turned to LOW (but I was able to keep unit detail to HIGH at least to see the units). If the overall settings are turned to MEDIUM it slows down to a crawl. I have a feeling I need more RAM, which is the only thing I can uprade, really.

Pentium M 760 2Ghz
1GB RAM
Nvidia GO 6200 with Turbocache (128MB dedicated)

I'm thinking of adding another 1GB module - do you think it will make a big difference?

[Tom Lloyd]

Tom, I was looking at the same machine I think, or close. I posted much earlier in this thread (like page 4 or 5), and the response I got was that there is going to be a release of a new generation of cards, CPUs, a new directX version, and Windows Vista all coming before or around the end of the year. I decided to wait, since when all that new stuff comes out the old stuff (like the stuff you are looking at) is going to go on sale, and you can get the new stuff for just a little more than the machine you are looking at, and the new stuff is supposed to be beastly. It might be a good idea to wait and see before purchasing a new system.

Thanks for the advice, I think I'll wait until Januaryish to buy, cause then a combination of prices coming down, longer to save up, and hopefully some cash for Christmas will mean I can get a pretty decent system!

I do have one other question, is it going to be a good idea (if I can afford it) to get a motherboard that can do SLI and a slightly less expensive graphics card, but with the possibility to add another later, or does it make more sense to just go for the best single graphics card system I can get right now?
I'm currently leaning towards the latter and just sticking with the x1900xt.

[JR-]

the thought of spending 2x £180 on a 7900GTO doesn't make much sense compared to spending 1x £360 on a 8800GTX.

buying one £250 8800GTS in November with the intention of adding another one in spring for about £200 would be a better plan if you must have mega-power and want SLI to achieve it for you.

[sunsmountain]

No, it doesn't make sense.
I had an Athlon 2400+ before with a comparatively fast GPU(6600GT) and with my new processor(E6600) even Gothic 2 got a performance boost, both need to be fast for good performance and don't forget about memory.

Also IIRC VSync forces your graphicscard to put out exactly as many pictures as your monitor displays per second. That means if your monitor runs at 60Hz, you will get a constant 60fps framerate. The problem here is if your graphicscard is too slow and can calculate only 20fps, it will put out 3 times the same picture anyway. I don't know exactly what VSync is good for, but it may fix some bugs with certain graphicscard-monitor combinations.

Concerning bloom, I think this refers to edges of objects where the light(from behind) will fade into the object, though I am unsure about the connection/differences between this and HDR effects(which, to me, seem to do exactly the same thing).

Though an upgrade to an E6600 is quite a leap, all your Total War games would have gotten the same performance boost had you upgraded to an Athlon64 3500+. The point is that in STW, MTW, RTW, the CPU set the rate at which your V-Sync was divided to get frames per second.

Example: 80 Hz monitor.

Good processor (3 Ghz): 40 fps, max.
Medium processor (2 GHz): 30 fps, max.
crappy Processor (1 Ghz): 20 fps, max.

GPU settings could influnce this +/- 5 to 10 fps, but CPU set the base.

VSync prevents rending and tearing of graphical images, meaning the soldiers will display in one piece and sharp no matter how fast you spin the camera.

Bloom is HDR for beginners, it uses a far simpler algorithm to get similar, but not quite the same, effects as High Dynamic Range lighting does.

[maestro]

Personally, I think bloom looks bloomin' () awful and i'm quite disappointed that the full game won't support Pixel Shader 3.0 or HDR

[Andres]

My humble machine:

Intel Pentium IV 2.4 Ghz
1.5 Gb Ram
ATI RADEON 9600

To run or not to run?

[monkian]

To run or not to run?

I reckon it should mate

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

i'm quite disappointed that the full game won't support Pixel Shader 3.0 or HDR

Is there any confirmation of this yet? I was hoping these features just weren't in the demo build. I'm sure I remember reading that the game would support Shader 3.0.

[maestro]

I asked on this forum and got a "no"

[Andres]

I reckon it should mate

Yippie!

[Belgolas]

Well I think I am going to upgrade my comp in the beginning of 2007. That way I get my Canada revenue cheque or whatever it is called and the price drops and the new hardware coming out. I don't think you will need a Quad core or a DX10 GPU for a while. Plus Vista is going to suck, well at least it is better than xp but it is too expansive.

About the first DX10 GPU it will need 400 or 450 watts and for SLI 800 watts. It will require to power connections from the power supply. That is a lot of power and that means a lot of heat, but the cooling on it does not look to be like the beats of the cards out now. I would not buy the new cards till the first generation has all the tweaks and errors fixed.

[AlJabberwock]

Depending on what else you are running on your system and given the nature of the increased needs of the video card I would not be surprised if 450 were quite insufficient... Moreover, the key element has become the matter of the +12v rail. Your mobo will need 10 to 11amps minimum on the +12v, and your vid cards in the GeForce 7k range typically are calling for 6 to 12. A SLI set up for 7900's calls for around 36 amps altogether between cards and mobo! Thats the minimums. Given that there are fluctuations, it never hurts to be over... significant undepowering will not only create negative visual effects, it will cause irreperable harm to your system components. (Almost always the most expensive ones!).

Cheers!

Al Jabberwock

[Basilios II Voulgaroktonos]

Now i have a machine with:Proccesor pentium4 3,2(hyper threading)
1GB ddr ram(speed i think its 533)
ATI RADEON 9800XT 256 MB

RTW i played it always in full graphfics in everything but now i dont know if i will be able to play M2TW in full graf and i wonder if i should take a nother machine...

I found 1 Laptop that i like with:CENTRINO2 DUALCORE 2Ghz
ATI RADEON X1600 512MB
2GB ram dd2 i think speed 667
What do you say hold the old 1 or take the new 1?i would apriciate any help in this mater





Sorry for my english but i am not a native english speaker!!!

[maestro]

Firstly, laptops suck. Seccondly, the X1600 is a rebranded X800 series which has been ported over to a PCIe bus. So your X1600 would only be one generational leap from you 9800XT and probably won't be clocked as fast as a proper one, either - more equivolent to an X800Pro than an X800XT.

One thing is for sure, though; in a game like M2TW, the 2Gb of RAM will be a big help