Is this the last hurrah for anyone's computer?

[SirGrotius]

The demo plays on my computer, but I have the settings at medium and the game isn't smooth. I can play smoothly, but on low. It's a sad day. I knew my 7800 card and 3.06 ghz processor wasn't going to cut it much, but it's almost worse being able to play but not in full glory. Is Empire the last hurrah for anyone else's computer?

(I built this machine around the time Medieval Total War 1 came out and have upgraded it a bunch since. MTW2 was the first time it started having hiccups, but I could play in High.)

[Visitor13]

I guess it is for mine - but I don't really care about eye candy. Smooth gameplay with 'huge' unit sizes is the only must for me, and if that means playing the game on lowest in 800x600, so be it.

[ratbarf]

Same really, except I bought mine to play Rome. Sadly, I am going to have to get a new one if I want to play on Ultra. Though I could get high if I switched to Vista and shoved in two 9 series Nvidia and 4 more gigs of RAM. (I have 2 already.)

[Mailman653]

I think mine is showing age as well, I've been able to upgrade it over the years, but short of buying a whole new motherboard and processor, I think the sun is finally setting on my computer as well.

[Owen Glyndwr]

Unfortunately, I actually do have to swap out for a new processor mobo and RAM to play this game. It will probably delay the game playing for me by a month or two as I accumulate funds. :(

Oh well, it just means I'll be able to play EB2 On higher settings whenever that comes out

[Fisherking]

I am hoping the game runs smoother than the demo.

I saw some very odd things happen with the darn thing.

The auto detect gave me some very high readings for my machine. But hearing of everyone’s problems I turned it down a bit.

Everything ran well at first but I turned it down again…then the land battle wouldn’t load.

I tried going back to the auto detect setting, but this time it set almost everything to Ultra.

That gave me a really slow frame rate so I went into custom but the land battle would never load again.

I tried going down to Medium but I got a drag in the frame rate there I didn’t have in higher setting.

I am not going to worry about my machine because of the way the demo handled.

I am going to uninstall and clean the whole thing before installing the game and go from there.

[antisocialmunky]

The demo was so horrifically slow in loading.

[A Very Super Market]

It wasn't even that bad. 5 minutes is pretty short.

[yankeefan05]

My Laptop has 2 gigs, Nvidia 7800, and about 2.2GHz Intel Duo Dual Core. It runs soso on medium and fine on low.

I think its time for me as well to get a new laptop with better specs.

[Sir Beane]

I replaced my machine before Empire came out because I knew it wouldn't be able to handle it. Now I can run the demo on Utra .

[Greyblades]

Lucky. Mine is still at the shop (I was going to get it yesterday but my "Wallet on legs" decided to do overtime...I'm not stupid enough to complain about it though.)

[lars573]

Mine was getting long in the tooth since summer. I knew I would have to upgrade soon. But I has planz. New MB/CPU/ram, maybe sound card. I'm keeping my X1900 XT till it melts. I paid $400 for it, I'm getting my monies worth.

[Megas Methuselah]

My gaming laptop marches towards the horizon with pride...

[Eusebius86]

I had a 3Ghz single core, 1.5 GB RAM, and a 7600GT, needless to say, I knew it wouldn't play ETW. So I built a new pc in Nov. 2.6 Ghz dual core (wolfdale), evga 512MB 9800gt, 2GB RAM, XP, etc. I can play the demo on high everything, 1440x900 resolution...

[Northnovas]

My last upgrade was MTW 2 so I guess it's time again for the family to get a new cpu.

The demo ran okay the controls scrolling the mouse was a little off, most of the settings were ranged medium to ultra. Single core 2.8, 2G RAM, 7600 GS. It was good but I didn't think I was getting the full experience with the demo. I do hope the game is smoother but I would like to get things fixed up it just getting the right cpu put together with the newer OS.

[Julius_Nepos]

My computer was pretty high end 3 years ago, I remember the X2 4800+ chip I bought cost 680$ and was the single most expensive part of the machine. The hold up for me is, in order to upgrade at all, I have to replace a large proportion of my hardware, mainboard, CPU, RAM, PSU, Video Card, etc. I can't just do it a piece at a time really, so I'm having to put off the whole upgrade. I do think with 2GB of RAM and a 7950 GT 512 I'll be able to run the game tolerably, but I'm really not expecting anything spectacular at all. We'll see what happens, but yeah my machine needs to be replaced/upgraded to a very high degree.

[Forward Observer]

Just to play EmpireTW along with all the other new stuff coming out, I ordered a fairly high end rig from one of the on-line assembly shops. I ordered it on the 16th, thinking that I would have it in plenty to time to get it set up and tuned to my liking, but I also paid extra for a 3 day rush build and for 2nd day Fed Ex.

I loaded the demo on my old rig, and while the tutorials ran fine, the large battles chugged at times--even on low settings. I had already promised myself that I would only play the full game on my new rig.

Unfortunately, the next day after I placed my order, the company called to tell me that they could not start because they were back ordered on the Nividia G295GTX 2x 1.7 gig graphics card I specified. I guess this is the hottest card on the market right now, so they are in high demand. They were supposed to be in this last week, but they did not come.

The company was honest enough that they refunded the $65 I paid for the express build and said I would get this service free because of the delay.

I checked with two other on-line builders thinking I would cancel my order and go with somebody else, but they were in the same boat because all of them use EVGA as their source.

Of course they said to check back next week, but who knows if they will even get the cards in then. Regardless, there's no way I'll have my new rig before the game comes out--probably at least a week after.

So, to all of you who will start playing next week---have fun with the new game. I'll just bide my time reading all the cheers and huzzahs plus all the moans, groans, rants, and usual fanboy whining.

[Dayve]

Don't be silly. Make a good game graphics alone do not.

I can still have immense amounts of fun playing Medieval or Shogun, and even at medium settings Empire looks 100x better than both of those games combined.

[antisocialmunky]

It wasn't even that bad. 5 minutes is pretty short.

Rome and MIITW loads in 30 seconds to 1 minute. Heck, Mark of Chaos which reputedly takes 15+ minutes to load for some people takes about 1-2 minutes on my machine so its kinda distracting when you're not used to it.

[Explodingcannonballfromhell]

I will most likely upgrade another extra 2gig ram making that a total of 4gig.
My current system still houses a dual core and a 8800GTX and for now this will have to pull ETW untill the next total war title.At that point i will most likely have to make some major hardware changes but for now i happily run most things on ultra settings.

[Subotan]

The demo was so horrifically slow in loading.

And yet you play EB.

I will solve the problem with the addition of more RAM. That's been my solution to anything wrong with my computer for about 3 years now, and it's worked every time. Although I suspect I may need a new graphics card.

[A Very Super Market]

EB takes like, 5 minutes as well.

But lets not go off-topic.

[Gregoshi]

My PC is planning its retirement on the sunny internet and doing some word processing and spreadsheets as hobbies. Hopefully this year.

[Graphic]

Mine is a Crysis machine so I'm unphased. Except for the slow loading in the demo, which I'm chalking up to it being a demo.

[Polemists]

I considered upgrading for Empire but as it is the only pc game I am buying this year the cost of 2k-3k did not justify me just waiting for a year and getting more out of the 2k-3k I spend.

My pc runs it on medium okay, and on low very very well. So this is probably it's last new pc game to run. Makes me glad I purchased my x-box a year ago, let's me play more graphically demanding games as they come out (Fallout 3, Fable 2, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol, (i like rpgs) etc))

On brightside once I get back stateside at a steady job i should be able to afford a 2-3k pc

[knoddy]

never fear it could be worse, i culd be like me, i upgraded my pc b4 empire and i could be playing it on ultra, IF my pc was working, sadly since upgrading a mere 4-5 days ago, ive been plagued with problems, culminating in me formatting my hdd today and being unable to reinstall XP.

YAY FOR ME! 150$ preorder that i wont be able to play wewt!

[Polemists]

you know...you may not wan t to do a custom pc next time....assuming that is the issue.

There are alot of pc fix it shops back in states but I am unsure what exsists beyond the US.

[Freedom Onanist]

you know...you may not wan t to do a custom pc next time....assuming that is the issue.

There are alot of pc fix it shops back in states but I am unsure what exsists beyond the US.

Strange....

Anyway, I've got weird one. The demo autoselects Ultra on everything, which is nice. Load times are a bit long but not horrendous, they are quicker by all accounts in the real game. Everything works perfectly.

EXCEPT......,, it only works under the Windows 7 beta I loaded! It won't work in my "real" OS XP, how annoying! Anyone else?

[Digby Tatham Warter]

Sadly, I am going to have to get a new one if I want to play on Ultra. Though I could get high if I switched to Vista and shoved in two 9 series Nvidia and 4 more gigs of RAM. (I have 2 already.)

Eh, what did I miss, why do you need vista to play on high?

In the Demo I played maxed out settings on good old XP Pro 32bit, with 2gigs of DDR2!

[knoddy]

you know...you may not wan t to do a custom pc next time....assuming that is the issue.

There are alot of pc fix it shops back in states but I am unsure what exsists beyond the US.

usually pc shops are a rip off here in aus, most of my mates are IT nerds so i normally dont have many issues that i cant get solved, oh well working on it now