Graphics Settings Official Guide

[Hellmut34]

meh, it is probably my massive lack of RAM. only got 1022 mb, and im on a vista.

I have 2Gb for XP, from what i have seen 4Gb should be used for Vista

[LFO]

hello guys.....im realy in trouble now.... im starting play the game normaly and then i try to put a little more quality in the graphic details like shadows etc... but now i can't see the game is all blue and i cant put it back to normal configurations.
I have install the game again but the problems continue. Can anyone help me to put the graphic details back to is normal configuration. maybe a screen shot of the first menu of the game and a screen shot of the graphic details too, to be my guide and try to put it normal again....
Thanks....really thanks

[Demokritos]

hello guys.....im realy in trouble now.... im starting play the game normaly and then i try to put a little more quality in the graphic details like shadows etc... but now i can't see the game is all blue and i cant put it back to normal configurations.
I have install the game again but the problems continue. Can anyone help me to put the graphic details back to is normal configuration. maybe a screen shot of the first menu of the game and a screen shot of the graphic details too, to be my guide and try to put it normal again....
Thanks....really thanks

I don't know the cause of your problem, but you should try to reinstall the drivers for your graphics card. If that doesn't work, then install newer drivers for that card. If that doesn't work either, maybe because you have a rather old graphics card and the drivers you have used for it are of a considerably later date, then find and install older drivers for that card. My rule of thumb is to use drivers that are max one year younger than the graphics card, for then the chances are good that the drivers are optimally matured and tailored to the functions of that card. Later drivers might be geared to functions your card doesn't have, and this might cause problems.

If it is the drivers for your graphics card that cause your problem, then finding drivers that work should enable you to experiment with the video settings without further problem. But if this problem has made you cautious about experimenting like that, just click the button for "Automatic" settings in the graphics options of the game, and you should be safe.

[Ondaderthad]

It seems that the main problem with people changing Drivers is that they fail to properly uninstall the old one before updating.
see:
ATI Guide

NVIDIA Guide

Also don't forget to update your Sound Drivers as they can also cause problems (my old ones did before I looked for the latest)

[Strategos Brutus]

My units looks different. Just like he said. Maybe you need to increase grpahical settings?

Yeah i know this. But just three different faces for soldiers? What?! In medieval this was way better.

[Ightenhill]

Im worried he (a dev) thinks the DOF looks good.. its seriously borked on naval battles..

[j_a_bowler]

I adjusted the script as detailed and this really works, OMG! My PC has an Nvidia 8600GTS, 4 gig of RAM and is running XP. I have installed the latest 182.50 drivers. I just played a battle in the rain with SmokeMod Light and WeaponFX and it ran beautifully (Although I have shadows and grass turned off). All the graphics options are now selectable, so I will start to play with these. Thanks so much - more people need to know about this.

The angelic advice is right here...



Made an old P4 3.0 MHz HT with 3.0 GB RAM and GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB graphics card set at 1680 x 1050 resolution go all ultra settings for me. Big - I say BIG - difference. So I salute DrWizardPHD.

PS. You can't see this preferences file unless you tell the computer to show its hidden files and folders. In Windows XP, you do that, for instance, by open up a window for any folder in your computer, select "Tools" in the menu for it, select "Folder Options" on the list there, then click the "Show" tab, and finally find and mark the option to show hidden files and folders.

[DiabloDon]

The angelic advice is right here...



Made an old P4 3.0 MHz HT with 3.0 GB RAM and GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB graphics card set at 1680 x 1050 resolution go all ultra settings for me. Big - I say BIG - difference. So I salute DrWizardPHD.

PS. You can't see this preferences file unless you tell the computer to show its hidden files and folders. In Windows XP, you do that, for instance, by open up a window for any folder in your computer, select "Tools" in the menu for it, select "Folder Options" on the list there, then click the "Show" tab, and finally find and mark the option to show hidden files and folders.

Hi there,
thanks a lot for this tip man. I've changed the script to 512MB on my 8800GTS 320MB and turned on everything on ultra. Except for shadows which is on high (good enough), Vsync off (as suggested) and DOF off (I personally don't like it anyway, gives me headache ) so i can have some extra fps. All I can say is, it looks fooking great @ 1440x900 with AFx16, AAx8 enhanced to 16x and supersampling in nvidia cp. Even my unit members looks different (no clones, well except for 3 or 4 of them but they could be brothers ). And gameflow is very good with no lag or stuttering. Oh btw, I turned ships to low though and it still looks perfect. They haven't included this function yet, right? Thanks again.

Specs.: Q6600 2.4Ghz, 4GB XMS Corsair RAM, GFX 8800 GTS 320MB

[scubert]

How would a Pny Geforce 8800gt 512mb Pci-E Dual Dvi run Empire? Im trying to stay in a budget and this card seems somewhat descent. I want to know what kind of settings I could play on.

[pchalk]

The angelic advice is right here...



Made an old P4 3.0 MHz HT with 3.0 GB RAM and GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB graphics card set at 1680 x 1050 resolution go all ultra settings for me. Big - I say BIG - difference. So I salute DrWizardPHD.

PS. You can't see this preferences file unless you tell the computer to show its hidden files and folders. In Windows XP, you do that, for instance, by open up a window for any folder in your computer, select "Tools" in the menu for it, select "Folder Options" on the list there, then click the "Show" tab, and finally find and mark the option to show hidden files and folders.

thanks +1 rep

[Demokritos]

You're welcome, guys. I figured that the advice I stumbled upon in a non-stickied hard-to-find thread would be useful to quite a few people beside myself, so that's why I forwarded it here

[aztec]

hello !! i,m a new user
you can use game booster for CTD
It can close all program that working for example: close antivirus
then your game will be great!!!!

[Goatman455]

Very Nice Guide, I thank you for taking the time to post this incredibly detailed and accurate settings guide.

[Mr. Scott]

"Units in ETW are hugely improved over Med2, each unit can have variants of each body part modelled- torso, legs, arms, head, hat, cross-belts, hair, cuffs, face hair, and hands. It’s a huge number of variations to render and a challenge to efficient instancing."

Is the guys serious Clonarmies

But good guide!

not clone armies. Clone faces.... the uniforms are unique to each soldier (although not as noticable in medieval 2 because it would look weird to have some british line infantry have some yellow colored uniforms)

[Casey.Phobic]

I'm losing anti-aliasing after i come back from the first battle of a game session. any clues as to what's up with that!?

[xrayxfan]

Hi guys
Pls someone help me i buyed a new graphic card ati radeon hd 4850
i play all settings on ultra but when i zoom out my soldiers look like hot cheese just like medieval 1
I have all settings on ultra but what more can i do??

[Enemy0fSociety]

Yes, 1 GB RAM won't take you that far these days, I'm afraid. Especially not with Vista, since this operating system consumes considerably more resources than XP, according to what I've read, which leaves less RAM over for other applications, like games...

@ Demokritus
Is there a way to lower the Ram used by vista? I have Vista 64 bit and actually 4 Gigs of Ram but mine still needs lowest settings of all to be playable. Its not as fast as i would like, but the fps is enough for the time being.

[Demokritos]

@ Demokritus
Is there a way to lower the Ram used by vista? I have Vista 64 bit and actually 4 Gigs of Ram but mine still needs lowest settings of all to be playable. Its not as fast as i would like, but the fps is enough for the time being.

The only way to free more RAM for games on Vista as far as I know is to close all unnecessary programs that usually run in the background all the time, like an antivirus program etc. I'm not familiar with Vista, so I don't know which programs are safe to close on that system or how to do it, but you should be able to get some info about this by googling for it.

PS: There is an application called Game Booster that might do this very work for you. Google for it to find out.

[Enemy0fSociety]

PS: There is an application called Game Booster that might do this very work for you. Google for it to find out.

This works so well!!! Thanks so much!

~EoS~

[MCDS2]

my g-card is an Ati 5870:

• 2.15 billion 40nm transistors<LI sizset="4" sizcache="2">TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture
  
  • 1600 Stream Processing Units
  • 80 Texture Units
  • 128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
  • 32 Color ROP Units
• GDDR5 interface with 153.6 GB/sec of memory bandwidth
• PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface<LI sizset="5" sizcache="2">DirectX® 11 support
  
  • Shader Model 5.0
  • DirectCompute 11
  • Programmable hardware tessellation unit
  • Accelerated multi-threading
  • HDR texture compression
  • Order-independent transparency
• OpenGL 3.2 support7<LI sizset="6" sizcache="2">Image quality enhancement technology
  
  • Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
  • Adaptive anti-aliasing
  • 16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
  • 128-bit floating point HDR rendering
  <LI sizset="7" sizcache="2">ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology2,4
  
  • <LI sizset="8" sizcache="2">Three independent display controllers
    
    • Drive three displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
  • Display grouping
    
    • Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
  <LI sizset="10" sizcache="2">ATI Stream acceleration technology
  
  • OpenCL support15
  • DirectCompute 11
  • Double precision floating point processing support
  • Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling3,5
  • Native support for common video encoding instructions
  <LI sizset="11" sizcache="2">ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU technology6
  
  • Dual, triple, and quad GPU scaling
  • Dual-channel bridge interconnect
  <LI sizset="12" sizcache="2">ATI Avivo HD Video & Display technology8
  
  • UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
  • Advanced post-processing and scaling9
  • Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
  • Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
  • Independent video gamma control
  • Dynamic video range control
  • Support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2
  • Dual-stream 1080p playback support10,11
  • DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support<LI sizset="13" sizcache="2">Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP12
    
    • Max resolution: 2560x160013
    <LI sizset="14" sizcache="2">Integrated DisplayPort output
    
    • Max resolution: 2560x160013
    <LI sizset="15" sizcache="2">Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
    
    • Max resolution: 1920x120013
    <LI sizset="16" sizcache="2">Integrated VGA output
    
    • Max resolution: 2048x153613
  • 3D stereoscopic display/glasses support14
  • Integrated HD audio controller
    
    • Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
    • Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
  <LI sizset="18" sizcache="2">ATI PowerPlay™ power management technology8
  
  • Dynamic power management with low power idle state
  • Ultra-low power state support for multi-GPU configurations
• Certified drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

Speeds & Feeds

• Engine clock speed: 850 MHz
• Processing power (single precision): 2.72 TeraFLOPS
• Processing power (double precision): 544 GigaFLOPS
• Polygon throughput: 850M polygons/sec
• Data fetch rate (32-bit): 272 billion fetches/sec
• Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 68 Gigatexels/sec
• Pixel fill rate: 27.2 Gigapixels/sec
• Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 108.8 Gigasamples/sec
• Memory clock speed: 1.2 GHz
• Memory data rate: 4.8 Gbps
• Memory bandwidth: 153.6 GB/sec
• Maximum board power: 188 Watts

System Requirements

• PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
• 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)<LI sizset="82" sizcache="3">Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
• Minimum 1GB of system memory
• Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
• DVD playback requires DVD drive
• Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive
• For an ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card (included) are required

Footnotes

1. HD capable monitor required.
2. Driver version 8.66 (Catalyst 9.10) or above is required to support ATI Eyefinity technology and to enable a third display you require one panel with a DisplayPort connector.
3. Requires application support for ATI Stream technology.
4. ATI Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios which is required for panning across three displays.
5. Digital rights management restrictions may apply.
6. ATI CrossFireX™ technology requires an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard, a ATI CrossFireX™ Bridge Interconnect (for each additional graphics card) and may require a specialized power supply.
7. Driver support scheduled for release in 2010.
8. ATI PowerPlay™, ATI Avivo™ and ATI Stream are technology platforms that include a broad set of capabilities offered by certain ATI Radeon™ HD GPUs. Not all products have all features and full enablement of some capabilities and may require complementary products.
9. Upscaling subject to available monitor resolution.
10. Blu-ray or HD DVD drive and HD monitor required.
11. Requires Blu-ray movie disc supporting dual 1080p streams.
12. Playing HDCP content requires additional HDCP ready components, including but not limited to an HDCP ready monitor, Blu-ray or HD DVD disc drive, multimedia application and computer operating system.
13. Some custom resolutions require user configuration.
14. Requires 3D stereo drivers, glasses, and display.
15. OpenCL compliant driver and SDK release scheduled for later in 2010.

i was wondering if the campgain map stuttering has anything to to do with me running the game through direct x 11 and shader 5.0?