Game specs and performance: all M2TW owners post here

[Haudegen]

I have a laptop:

Pentium M 725 (1.6 GHz)
512 MB RAM
Radeon Mobility 9700 / 64 MB

Resolution 1024 x 768

All settings are lowest, I play with normal unit scale. The performance is not great, field battles run mostly ok. In siege battles the game lags frequently.

Any tips on increasing the performance (other than upgrading the hardware) are highly appreciated

[AussieGiant]

I have a laptop:

Pentium M 725 (1.6 GHz)
512 MB RAM
Radeon Mobility 9700 / 64 MB

Resolution 1024 x 768

All settings are lowest, I play with normal unit scale. The performance is not great, field battles run mostly ok. In siege battles the game lags frequently.

Any tips on increasing the performance (other than upgrading the hardware) are highly appreciated

Well Haudegen it is well below even minimum specs. Make sure all the AA etc is off as well as everything at the lowest. I'm not sure but if you can lower the resolution you shuold try.

[Throumbaris]

Athlon XP 3000
2gb RAM
Geforce6800GT

No Shadows, everything else at high, antialiasing and anisotropy at 2x. Normal unit sizes and at 1280x1024, havent dropped below 20fps so far.

[AussieGiant]

On the .COM M2TW tech area there seems to be a number of battle performance issues using Dual Core 2.

[castle]

aussiegiant have you updated grahics driver as i think there has been one to add support for your card.

[Maxfu]

Hi guys. This is my first post so I thought I would make it an important one.

I'm running 1g of ram, a P4 2.80 Ghz.

I need to buy a new graphics card and I am looking for suggestions.

[Haudegen]

Well Haudegen it is well below even minimum specs. Make sure all the AA etc is off as well as everything at the lowest. I'm not sure but if you can lower the resolution you shuold try.

Yes I would be very interested in lowering the resolution to 800 x 600. But I don´t know if how it can be done. Manually changing the preferences file doesn´t work.

BTW: As far as I remember in the first demo of M2TW 800 x 600 was possible, wasn´t it?

[Steinfeld]

One thing I am still trying to figure out:
Is it better to play with a higher resolution and lower details or with a lower resolution and higher details?

Discuss!
(Or even better, just help me) :)

[AussieGiant]

aussiegiant have you updated grahics driver as i think there has been one to add support for your card.

Checking now castle!!

Cheers!!

---------------

Checked...I'm up to date castle... :(

[AussieGiant]

Yes I would be very interested in lowering the resolution to 800 x 600. But I don´t know if how it can be done. Manually changing the preferences file doesn´t work.

BTW: As far as I remember in the first demo of M2TW 800 x 600 was possible, wasn´t it?

That is what I was worried about. I think 1024x768 is the lowest. You could be out of luck Haudegen.

[Steinfeld]

One thing I am still trying to figure out:
Is it better to play with a higher resolution and lower details or with a lower resolution and higher details?

Discuss!
(Or even better, just help me) :)

I forgot to include MY specs and settings:

Pentium IV 2,4 GHz
1 GB RAM
GForce 6600GT 128 MB
Audigy SB 2 ZS

1152*864
Shader 2
no AA
Bilinear Filtering
no reflections, no bloom
Shadows very low
Units High
Buildings Low
Textures Med
Grass Med
Vegetation Med

Normal Unit Size.

Fraps has not sent me below 22 so far. Only the siege of London in the tutorial produced some stutters.

And I would still be thankful for the answer of the quoted question.

[Maxfu]

Running 3.0Ghz P4, 1.5 Gb RAm, GF7600 AGP 256Mb DDR2 RAM, 500W Power Supply. Resolution set 1280 x 1024. I could probably go higher but have not tried yet. All settings at max, including bloom and shadows. Everything is running great, no lag at all. The graphics really are unbelievable. Now I need to start my campaign.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

P4 2.8 GHz
512 RAM
Radeon X1300 256MB Card


Got most stuff on High, though I set the vegation detail and something else on high, back to Medium also ,to make it run slighty faster. SP Campgain and Battles are good, slight lag, but not bad..

[Cos3]

I'm running:

Pentium Extreme Edition 3.73ghz
4gb RAM
2 x Crossfired X1900's 512mb

1900x1200 resolution on 24" widescreen LCD
No AA - I don't feel I need to use it while running at that resolution.
Everything on max except shadows which are turned off
Huge units

Don't have FRAPS installed so can't tell FPS, but framerate is fast to the eye, which is all that matters. It does slow down a bit in large sieges.

[mr.blonde]

Hi mates, specs
AMD athlon dualcore 3800+
2 giga RAM
7600 GT

all settings on high/highest except shadows on low, AA x2, AF x4, resolution 1024x768, huge units and perfomance is more than great except the known pathfinding/cpu issue in sieges...

[gardibolt]

P4 3.0
2 GB RAM
Geforce FX5200 256MB

Runs fine with everything set on low. Kind of a relief; I wasn't expecting it to run at all.

[grinningman]

I have a laptop:

Pentium M 1.83 GHz
1 GB ram
geforce 6600 go

I play at 1280x796 with antialiasing x2, most things on 'high', bloom and reflections on and shadows on low. I get FPS in the mid teens - low end about 10, but more usually 15-17. Very large battles (e.g. the Otumba historical battle) get awful FPS (6-7) at these settings, but most campaign battles are playable, and it looks *so good*

[Whacker]

Good morning friends.

My specs:
Athlon 64 3800+
1 gig of DDR800 OCZ VX ram
2 x Leadtek Geforce 6800 Ultras 256meg in SLI

CPU and both vid cards are water cooled. Helps out immensely for performance, I can game for hours and hours and the CPU won't break 110F and the GPUs 140F.

I can run the game pretty much the same as Rome, resolution is at 1280x1024 for both games, textures/quality maxed.

In Rome, I turned off the individual unit shaders and it gave me a good 5-10 boost in perf. I could run huge unit sized battles up to about 7k men with occasionally stuttering. Sieges or heavy use of flaming projectiles would also tend to bog down the machine big time.

In M2, I turned off bloom and shadows, and it's nearly identical. Turning on shadows, even on low, gives a noticable 5-10 FPS hit right away, which gets worse with more men. I like playing on huge as well.

Pound for pound, I'd say they're on par for performance. My assessment is that is great, it tells me that CA did put some thought and effort into optimzation.

Cheers

[chunkynut]

Intel P4 2.4
ATI 9800 Pro (XT Chipset)
1Gb RAM

Settings 1024x768 all on Medium except Grass I think, changed from the preset graphics settings nothing as I think it looks fine :) may have a play around.

I have some slight lagging at certain view points on both the campaign but if I move the camera slightly its fine and doesn't seem to occur when I move back to a similar view point.

[De Montfort]

I have:

AMD Athlon 64 6700+
1gb RAM
NVidea GeForce 7600 GT graphics card

I'm running with all the settings at high, normal unit size and at 1280x1024 with no problems or slowdown at all.

[Slammer]

I just sent off for a`new computer with these specs a Overdrive compter with the new 691 board with the new quad core overclocked to 3.4 also with the new nvidia 8800 gtx vid cards in SLI 4 meg ram 2 150 10000 hard drive in raid O with the 750 meg in 7200.10 and a dell 24in wide screen

[unknown_user]

I'm running a:

p4 1.8 Ghz
768 MB RAM
ATI X800 256MB

I've got it running things on medium, for the most part. I put effects up to high, and shadows turned off in battle. The only thing I get lag on that's noticible are huge siege battles and the campaign map.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it ran.

[AussieGiant]

Well fella's I'm slightly annoyed...that's an understatement.

I posted this in the Apothecary section and of course no one is there so I'm going to put it here.

This is the minimum specs for maximum performance as detailed on the official sites technical section.

--------------------

DarK
Moderator
Posts: 6004
(11/21/06 3:19 am)
Reply Re: minimum requirement for max performance
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intel Core 2 Duo processor / Intel PentiumD 3.2ghz / AMD X2 4200+ /
2GB of RAM /
NVIDIA Geforce 7600GT \ ATI Radeon 1950 Pro

These are simply equivalent specs to those Sega ran on Gold day that had no problem playing maxed out.

--------------------

No I don't mean to be rude but...............BS!!

I am running a brand new Dell XPS 700
with:

E6700 Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz
2 Gigs of ram
Nvidia 7950 GX2 with 1 gig of ram

and I can not max out this game at 1248*1024. In fact I can't even get close!!!

Anyone else go opinions or tips!!

Whacker you're depressing me!!

[andrewt]

Pentium 4 3GHz
1Gb RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 128 DDR RAM

Battles run fine. Sieges starting from large town and castle (dunno if regular castle or wooden castle) lag really, really badly. Everything on the lowest settings. Shades and everything off. 1024x768. Recommended is medium settings and lots of things on. I actually run fine on those settings. I just reduced the settings for siege battles but they still lag me.

I tried both the newest ATI driver and the newest Omega driver. Still laggy.

[AussieGiant]

Hi All,

Information for anyone running a Nvidia 7950GX2:

---------------------------------

The 'new' 93.71 WHQL drivers also have a bug in regards to clock speeds on the GX2 and possibly SLI systems in general...

For example, if I use 'coolbits' to overclock the memory of my GX2 it reports it as follows:

Core Clock 500MHz
Memory Clock 1400MHz

Now, if I check Everest Ultimate Edition's status of my GPU's one card is listed as 500MHz core and 702MHz (1404Mhz Effective) memory whilst the other GPU is reported to be 500MHz core and 600MHz (1200MHz Effective) memory.

I know one card is indeed running the memory slower than the other because if I perform several benchmarks (such as HL2: Lost Coast etc) with one GPU on 1200MHz memory and the other GPU on 1400MHz memory I get about 3-4 frames per second slower performance than with both cards memory set to 1400MHz (using RivaTuner to 'fix' the memory clock speed issue) and then verifying the speeds again in Everest.

However, as soon as I reboot the PC, Cool Bits (since being modded by Rivatuner) and 93.71 have an issue and the memory speed of both GPU's is only 300MHz (600MHz Effective) and performance takes a huge dive

So I have to go back into the Nvidia Control Panel and set the memory clocks back to 1400MHz manually, but of course I'm then back with one card on 1400MHz (Effective) memory speed and the other back on 1200MHz (effective) memory! And no, don't tell me the clocks are correct because if I run several different tests with one card's memory slower (1200MHz) than the other (1400MHz) the performance is consistently slower than with both cards running at 1400MHz.

At the end of the day I simply don't trust the 93.71 drivers and I know that RivaTuner does not work correctly with them, so for me it was back to 91.47 WHQL as at least I know they don't have any problems in regards to clock speeds/tweaking!

I really hope nvidia and/or Unwinder and his fantastric Rivatuner software sort this bug out soon... perhaps we need another driver release?

The good news is that my GX2 runs just fine on the 'old' 91.47 WHQL drivers, and I've kept the updated SLI profiles from 93.71 too.

Regards,

Greggy

-----------------------------

[jabo0511]

Gateway Intel e-6400
2GB 533MHz RAM
7600 GS 256MB

I run on everything on the highest setting, bloom on except shadow on medium.
1024x768 resolution.

Smooth as silk.

[Garnier]

Ok the past few days I've figured out how my system can run the game looking best without lagging it. And now I've discovered something that totaly makes the game better. Yesterday I was playing with the first set of settings, averaging 12-18 fps. Now I use the second set, and the game looks a LOT better, just without blood or mud(which I can live without), and I can use bigger unit sizes, AND I'm getting 18-26 fps average, which makes it smooth. The main difference was taking off shader 2, grass and vegetation. Now I can use high textures and unit detail, plus AA.

[The_Pope]

AMD ATHLON 64 3800+ processor, Socket AM2 dual core

D Socket AM2 mainboard, nForce 550 chipset, 2GHz HyperTransport,
2 x Legend 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM PC6400 - 800MHz
160 GB Seagate hard drive

All option are max.

Not sure what resolution i set it at, but its on 22inch LCD.

Nice and Fast

[Whacker]

Whacker you're depressing me!!

Good evening my friend! Glad to see my efforts are paying off here, I aim to please!

The 'new' 93.71 WHQL drivers also have a bug in regards to clock speeds on the GX2 and possibly SLI systems in general...

Ahhhhh..... OK. Let me throw out a number of thoughts and some possible advice on the whole Nvidia/ATI thing and Nvidia SLI. I'll try and keep this brief as I know the topic is system specs and performance, but this shouldn't be too far off the mark. Others can throw in their thoughts as well.

Before I get too deep into this, a quick background on myself. I've been building my own PCs for about 12 years now so I'd like to think I can at least talk with some reasonable intelligence on this subject without sounding too stupid. In terms of video cards, I've owned essentially nothing but Nvidia cards since my TNT replaced the old Matrox + Voodoo2 setup I had back in the day. I've had a TNT, TNT2, Geforce2, Geforce3, FX5200, and now my 2x6800 Ultra's. I am by not means an Nvidia fanboy, I just bought what was the most powerful card (in my view) at the time, or in a few cases I just wanted a real cheapo upgrade to tide me over for a bit, hence the FX5200. Am thinking hard about going with ATI my next upgrade cycle in about 1/2 year, but I'd like to see what they can throw up against Nvidia's 8x00 gen cards which are looking pretty impressive.

Now, my thoughts, primarily on Nvidia. Nvidia and ATI each have their strong points when it comes to keeping their drivers up to snuff with modern games, and in terms of recent and older game compatability. I see you've got a real nice new system with that 7950GX2 card in it, which I've read is fast as all get out, BUT it's got a huge number of problems in terms of the reference drivers. If you go back and look at the past 6 WHQL driver release notes, you'll see a ton of bugs introduced and fixed each time for both SLI systems with any SLI card setup, AND moreso for the 7950 series. There are a ton of games that won't work right on the 7950 series, it's getting better over time but you're still going to see that, hence why I'm not surprised you saw that for M2TW. I'll offer that you shouldn't worry too hard about this, even though the 8x00 gen is out, the 7950 is still cadillac class and the last thing Nvidia wants is people who've shelled out the big bucks for that to have a card that doesn't work well and isn't well supported on modern games. Also the Nvidia SLI is still a mixed bag, for the most part it's now a "mature" technology that they've ironed the kinks out of, but it's still got a few teething problems and the developers don't always know how to write well to take advantage of this. Another glimpse into the "bugs" section of the driver release readme will show that there's a hefty amount of "this is a developer problem, not a driver problem" issues. I've experienced my fair share of these with my 6800's in SLI.

The other major aspect for me (and I imagine others) is recent/older game compatability. Nvidia and ATI both kinda stink here, but it would almost seem that ATI is doing a better job of it as of late. I can think of a handful of games that are pretty broken on my Nvidia systems now running the latest drivers over the past year or so. I've experienced the "low earth orbit APCs" bug in Mechwarrior 3, which my friends on their ATi systems don't have. KOTOR2 has been broken for the past 4 driver releases on all Nvidia SLI systems, if you start the game with AA enabled it crashes. You can enable AA in game and it works fine, but every time you exit you have to manually edit the .ini to disable AA. Barf. The original MTW runs like total crap (pun intented) on my hefty SLI system, the campaign map is dog slow. There's a thread around here stating that the 61.xx drivers will help fix this, the problem being that anyone with an Nvidia card past the 5x00 series can't use them, because iirc the 6x00 series cards came out with the 7x,xx forceware drivers and hence are supported with those on up. I've also had a number of really weird crashes on the campaign map in MTW that I can't pin down, some research seemed to blame this also on Nvidia drivers. My friend running his ATI x800 doesn't have this problem at all, MTW runs smooth as butter and doesn't crash at all.

Please take this with a grain of salt, this is just my experience and thoughts on the matter.

The bottom line to you Aussie is, well... hang in there. Your video card *is* relatively new, and as such is going to have the usual teething problems. I personally would only recommend you use the WHQL drivers directly from Nvidia.com and NOT anything from Dell. However, if you see a beta driver release on nzone.com and the readme seems to indicate that a specific issue for you might be fixed, by all means snag it. I've just noticed that the non-WHQL drivers are often indeed unstable, certain games will bring this out more than others. Also don't be afraid to get the word to Nvidia about your issues if some troubleshooting can't pin it down. They have a forum, and there's a site feedback link (that appears to be busted now).

Good luck!

[Dr3x4L]

Intel Extreme X6800 2.93Mhz, Evga Nforce 680i, BFG 8800GTX Sli, 2 Gig Corsair Dominator Xms2, Western Digital Raptor 150GB x2 ,Gigaworks 5.1 Thx, X-fi Fatal1ty, 24" Dell Widescreen 1920x1200.

Running @1920x1200 Huge Armies 8XAA 16x AF Maxed out.
Fraps says its running at 999Fps but i dont think thats true but it dont slow down. :) Come to think of it nothing does.