CPU and GPU requirements of the original RTW/BI: please share your experiences

[chrisb]

Considering the CPU requirements of the original (not Remastered) RTW/BI, what is your experience with different CPU genres with Win7?

I mean if we talk about Win7-compatible CPUs, Ryzen 1000 and 2000 series or Intel core 6000 series or older, are there any clear differences in their ability to run RTW/BI smoothly with Windows 7?

If we don't talk about extremely huge battles, would we see any significant difference e.g. between i5-6500 (fastest of these 3), Ryzen 3 1200 or i3-2120 (slowest of these 3)? We are anyhow looking at single core use, or is it so? Is there some CPU that pretty much covers the needs of this game and anything above it is unnecessary?

And the same question concerning GPUs: is GT 1030 adequate or is a faster one going to make the game run faster?

An, if I may... would running the game in Win 10 make any difference to the CPU and GPU requirements?

As you may guess, I'm trying to optimize a setup for this great game. 😁

[G. Ward]

Hello,

I'm not too sure about how to optimise a specific set-up for this game.

However, I have found that the game doesn't recognise discrete graphics cards (& will just run using your integrated graphics). This is terrible for performance.

This can be fixed, however, by placing the following file in the game's directory (where the game .exe files are located).

From what I can see, using this particular version of the d3d8.dll file, will allow the game to use your dedicated graphics card (thus increasing performance massively), *without* getting rid of flaming projectiles.


Download the file here: https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9/releases


I should just add that I've only tested this with the retail version(s) of Rome & Barbarian Invasion (i.e. 1.5 , & 1.6) not the Steam version(s) (1.5.1) of either. So, mileage may vary. But, this is, to this day, the best fix I've found.

Other than that, to increase performance overall, you might be able to use a 3GB patch, to enable RTW to use more RAM.

It is annoying that the game doesn't run anything like as well as Medieval II.




-V