Making EB Run Faster - A Guide

[TWFanatic]

If it makes it even 10% faster then I'm buying it. Thanks!

Know of anything else that would decrease lag and increase the unit detail settings I could use short of buying a new graphics card (which I don't even think you can do with a laptop without spending a fortune of cash)?

[Maksimus]

Yeah, but alex really dosen't make it 50% faster...

True , but more powerfull machine you have it goes vice versa up in speed (while on RTW it would be just a proportion to the amount of pure hard hz )

[Maksimus]

If it makes it even 10% faster then I'm buying it. Thanks!

Know of anything else that would decrease lag and increase the unit detail settings I could use short of buying a new graphics card (which I don't even think you can do with a laptop without spending a fortune of cash)?

I have changed a number of my ''bad habits'' about a year ago, first, I never use desktop icons anymore (exept R_Bin) because they use memory, also, on my Vista I use Win_Classic theme (so I can save memory), then, Torrent's are usefull to use while we spend hours on EB ( ) by they make your PC slower alot ... also.. regular (I would say fanatical) use of some fast Disk Defragmenter like: AusLogics Disk Defragmenter ... etc is really a gift before you start EB every day (this program takes a few minutes to be done )..

(linky's)
http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/runbetter.htm
http://expertlancer.com/top-10-ways-...er-run-faster/

Also.. TuneUp Utilities 2008.. and really... IF you want to play strong at some point.. you should check out of Web during that time and unplug all AntiVirus software...

Oh.. about the graphic card..well if you can aford it you should go with ASUS Nvidia 8800 GTS 320ram.. the best price/preformance of today..

And if you really can aford some nice things.. go to the linky
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/...gx2/index.html

[TWFanatic]

Thank you sir!

[overweightninja]

Oh.. about the graphic card..well if you can aford it you should go with ASUS Nvidia 8800 GTS 320ram.. the best price/preformance of today..

The 8800GT compares very nicely to the 8800GTS (it is superior in my opinion but it depends what sort of games you play).
I would reccomend checking out benchmarks from good examples of the 8800GT and GTS ranges and picking the one that runs the games you play most the best (and incidentally I can't speak for the GTS but I imagine either will make mincemeat of EB if the rest of your pc is up to it).
Cheers

[TWFanatic]

Sadly I have a laptop. Can one buy graphics cards for a laptop (and install them by one's self)?.

[overweightninja]

Sadly I have a laptop. Can one buy graphics cards for a laptop (and install them by one's self)?.

AFAIK it depends on the specific make and model as to how easily you'll be able to find components and then fit them yourself.
I haven't tried personally but I can imagine due to the compact design of most laptops it would be a challenge in most cases if possible at all, and IIRC I read that if the graphics chip is on board (soldered to the motherboard) you've got no chance.
Best bet is to consult manual/manufacturer and of course online for information relating to your model of laptop.
Cheers

[TWFanatic]

My video card is attached to the motherboard yes. I'm doomed to play in perpetual lag!

[GracchusTheGreat]

Concerning nVidia 3D settings:

Make sure V-Sync and Triple Buffering are set to "Force Off".

If you wanna take it further, download the utility RivaTuner. In addition to numerous other tweaks, it allows you to set the quality even lower than the nvidia control panel.

Like MSB, I too am running an Athlon 1.8 with a Geforce4 MX. After tweaking various settings to no avail, it turned out that the most effective was to set the Unit Size no greater than Large. Of course you can go lower and then increase other quality settings, but to me anything less than Large just ain't no fun.

[Good Ship Chuckle]

I would reccomend doing everything that MSB originally said you should...
EXCEPT:

DO NOT mess with the services under admistrative tools. I switched a number of them from 'automatic' to 'manual', and had number of problems connecting to the internet after that. Eventually I just turned most everything on to automatic again, to overcome the problem. I you're a pro (which I'm not) maybe you can pull it off, but for the rest of us, I would strongly recommend not messing with the services.

Other than that, everything else he says is top notch. I would especially recommend re-configuring the start-up services. Do this by running "msconfig" in run. Most of the stuff that starts up with your computer is crap anyway (crap that uses RAM).

But again...Beware of messing with administrative services...

[Xurr]

IMHO it also helps if you increase the size of your paging memory file, under Control Panel -> System, advanced. Then set the paging file to something like 1000mb normal size and 2000 max, or whatever number beyond that suits your fancy. The game only needs about 750mb paging size to run, but that's the absolute minimum. Give it more to minimise lag.

Actually the optimal size for a page file is 1.5 times your installed memory. So if you have 2 gigs of memory then your page file should be 3 gigs etc. Setting the page file to anything else is just a waste of resources and won't help performance at all.

[Olaf The Great]

This stuff really helped me increase the performance of my PC, and its advice freed up about 10gigabytes of fragmented and useless information.
I freed up 2 more gigabytes by moving low-computer intensive games to my crappy desktop, and uninstalled all games that are on both computers depending on which computer it worked best on.

Also, I'd like to suggest using the App Quick kill http://www.anappaday.com/downloads/2...quickkill.html
It deletes all the non-essential backround programs in the Ctr-Alt-Delete style, you can also set it to not-delete certain problems, plus its much faster to start and use than ctr-alt-delete.

[craziii]

could someone tell me which one of the services lets you see the user name of processes in the task manager? after the tweeks I can't tell which ones are system and which ones are run by me anymore.

[Gester24]

this really helps but i dont know how to access these stuff. im ust 14 lol can some one explain where for me to go and acess this stuff so i can turn some of them off cause my comp is sort of like his but intel lol. i need help!!

[bovi]

Which part is unclear?

[Gester24]

Which part is unclear?

the part unlcear is how i can make my campaign map go faster and the ai go faster as well. if you can can you plz explain it. i dont understand it. thnx

[Tellos Athenaios]

Okay not to turn down your hopes and expectations but it is very advisable to start maintain a cohesive & clear style of writing your posts. Because that will help other people figuring out what help you actually need.

And while we're at it: can you post what you already did try? Or what you have difficulty accessing?

[bovi]

The first post contains a wealth of suggestions. Do you want me to repeat them? Which part of them are you having trouble understanding?

[TheGlobalizer]

FWIW, I had issues with slow cursor and screen movement on the campaign map -- turning off campaign map shadows improved performance dramatically.

No issues in the battle map. Woot!

[Monocause]

(firstpostmode) Hello everyone! (/firstpostmode)

I'm running EB on an old (very old!) Evo N1020v Compaq laptop, which due to a 32 mb graphics card shouldn't even be able to drag along vanilla RTW (not to mention the idiotic 224 mb RAM instead of 256), according to CA. It's probably apparent that I've done everything I can to squeeze all the performance I can get of this scrap metal ;>
It runs very poorly on my machine, but it's bearable, I just read a book while playing EB and waiting for a battle to load or a turn to end.
I can advise a couple more things not present in the first post which I found useful:

1. If you don't want to mess with your services by yourself (and you shouldn't if you have the feeling you don't know what you're doing) there's a free app - engelmann game tuner (google it) -
which does this (and a couple of other things, including setting the optimum page file size) for you, and makes a convenient backup file so that you can switch between gaming and casual configs at ease. I use it now, works good.

2. Quit explorer before starting EB. Seems obvious that you don't use it while playing; the sinister explorer insists however on eating up your RAM and CPU. To do this start task manager, select explorer and quit the process. Then select "run" from the file menu, and choose EB. Be sure to quit the task manager as soon as you click OK, otherwise you'll have it running in the background, possibly eating more resources than explorer.
When you finish playing you'll be presented with a pitch black screen. Simply open the task manager again, and in the run prompt type in "explorer".

3. Revert to old sea graphics with a thingie available from EB website, section downloads/misc
(weird that it hasn't been mentioned, the new sea nearly gagged my ol' PC.)

And a question to the modders - is it possible to replace the campaign map animations with static ones? Seeing as how the new sea graphic caused a considerable performance hit, I wonder if the EB developers could release a replacement for the animated sea, trees etc. replacing them with more static ones. For me at least it would be a minor thing - I don't care for eye candy - and it could improve performance, maybe even decrease loading times. I presume that more people would be interested in this sort of thing, and it shouldn't be very difficult.

[bovi]

The reason why the sea graphics aren't mentioned, is that they are of exactly the same size as the original ones. It causes no extra work for the computer and reverting to the old graphics is a purely aesthetical choice.

As for a real resource hog, the EB script sucks up a lot of your juice. We prefer to cram stuff into it, however there are a couple of variants concerning the client rulers that run faster than the default 1.1 script.

[Umnir]

About page memory, do I have to set it for other HD's too? I have one HD that is splitted to two parts (C and D) and only C has that paging setting.. Should I hassle with the D?

Thanks!

[bovi]

There should be no need to have paging files on more than one disk.

[iounas]

Hey guys I have an older pc too..
3ghz p4, 512mb ram, 9550ati

It is so much slower in every way..
-in campaign map in original I get 35-45 fps, in eb 15-25 (1600x1200)
-in my first roman battle 300 vs 300 I got 15-30 fps with all graphical settings to minimum while in original 1000 vs 1000 with medium to high setting I got 25-50 (1024x768)

Original used about 450mb of virtual memory and eb uses about 900mb.

I have 1.1 with minipack mods

Why is it that much slower?Is there a hope for me and EB?

[Foot]

We push the engine to its limits. Reducing your graphical setting to minimum will help some. Turning off campaign map shadows. Reducing the resolution.

But I would seriously consider getting more RAM. Its pretty cheap and getting to 1.5 or even 2 gigs would help loads.

Foot

[iounas]

In original setting grass to none increased fps by 20 and in eb there is no difference between none and high

[Subedei]

I used to play EB for 3 years now with 512 MB ram. It took a little while to load the game and during battles I had some "forced" pauses. Well, but EB is "the" game for me, so I did not care too much, remebering the good old Commodore 64 loading times.

Finally I got 2 Gigs of RAM yesterday.This increased the performance of the game a lot, to say the least. Man, I love the game even more now. Battles are loading within seconds and the whole feel is different. Me is very happy about this!

[applebreath]

-Stuff like this thread should be stickied in forum !!


I noticed that the first post was 3 years old. But I tried it anyways, except for the first section that decreases "game" options.

I'm trying to fix intermittent campaign lag. I works smooth for awhile, then gets choppy for awhile, then smooth again, etc. I have fx-55, 2gigs dual ram, 7950 gx2, Windows XP. I'm playing the Extended Alexander Final mod for 1.2. It has all fixes and "should" be installed correctly. I don't notice any other problems, but that campaign intermittent lag.

-First, feel free to suggest anything to fix this problem. Perhaps it can't be fixed though.

1)Will all of what the first post said still be ok to do now? "Anything" change in the past 3 years?
2)I didn't have anything called "upload manager" in the services section. Also, I have no control over "terminal services". It is running and doesn't give me the option to kill it. I can disable it but it will just come back on when I restart the PC. Does any of this sound like a problem?
3)For the msconfig section: I know it says that anti-virus "might" be on there, but is that the only one I have to worry about? I use a NVidia firewall, not windows firewall. It usually starts a program in system tray, but now I don't see it. Is the firewall still on?
4)Also, in MSconfig, 3 things are selected after I restart PC. Even if I deselect them, they come back on when I restart PC. (NvCpl - RUNDLL32.EXE; ctfmon - ctfmon.exe; GoogleToolbarNotifier - GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe); Should this be happening and is it ok?
5)Every time I run Norton, it finds a file (cookie) that it quarantines. How do I find the location of that file and is this normal?
6)I found the section for increasing virtual memory. There is a custom size section. It used to say 2046 MB (MIN) - 4092 MB (MAX). I changed that to say 3070 - 3070 (I have 2 gigs of RAM), is this ok? It used to say that the total paging file size for all drives was 2046, now it says 3070. So I think I did it right?
7)Another user said the following: "Also.. IF you want to play strong at some point.. you should check out of Web during that time and unplug all AntiVirus software..." -- By check out of Web he means to just close your internet explorer application if it is running? Or do you actually want to pull the plug from the wall? Or is there something else you need to do?

Thanks,
Apple.

[Ludens]

1) Yes, it's still accurate.

2-4) I can't help you with this. I'd stay away from the services unless you know exactly what you are doing.

5) Cookies are stored either in your browser folder or in the general internet forums. However, if it coming back, you should make a rule against accepting that cookie in the privacy-settings of your browser, then run Norton again.

7) Closing IE does not disconnect the internet. You need to pull the plug or instruct your firewall to block all transmissions.

[applebreath]

I did do the services section. But I kind of wish I didn't, although I don't have any problems from doing it, that I know about. I'd switch the stuff back but I'm not for sure which was the previous settings (i.e. disabled/maunal/automatic).

As for my main problem. It happens when I move outside the range of a unit (so you see the red/blue/yellow movement lines on the campaign map). I have no idea why it happens or if there is a way to fix it from ever happening. But when it happens, all you need to do is move a spy/unit outside of a city.

-Apple.