Peformance and Killer shadows

**Captainrave** · 11-10-2006, 15:33

I have:
AMD 4000
7950GX2
2 GB Ram

Every thing is set at maximum except for Aliasing 2X and tropic filtering at 4X. Shadows are off. Everything runs fine until you activate shadows. Anything but shadows off brings this game to a crawl (and its a shame because the shadows look incredible). Im really surprised, I was expecting to be able to put everything on maximum. How are everyone else finding performance?

P.S. its a totally sweet game.

**Captainrave** · 11-10-2006, 18:12

Actually looking at my GPU temperatures I dont think this game is working correctly with the GX2...temps dont go too much higher than idle temps...weird?!? Anyone else finding this?

**Belgolas** · 11-10-2006, 21:35

There might be a few reason that it doesn't run smooth. One is that it doesn't work well with the GX2 which I don't believe and second is that you CPU is alittle old. Maybe that is your problems because shadows take up a lot of CPU power.

**Censor** · 11-10-2006, 22:56

I've done some testing on this too, and I can say that shadows are much more of a GPU hit. I downclocked my AMD 3800+ from 3.2 ghz to 2.4ghz, and FPS difference was around 1-2. Shadows get to be a real bottleneck with huge armies, I can play fine with low shadows and around 6000 troops, but the shadows flicker around. Upping shadows to high with the same number of troops makes the game unbearable (10-15fps). I have an X1900XTX which is quite a decent card too.

His processor isnt cutting edge anymore, but it isn't old. Shadows are calculated using processing by the GPU, not the CPU. It's the resolution of the shadows that make a difference (and of course how many there are).

**Captainrave** · 11-10-2006, 23:14

So I found out it wasnt the game at all....I have a software conflict with older drivers...installed the latest forceware drivers and can now run everything maxed out so so smooth.