Medieval II Computer & Hardware Recommendations

[sapi]

You are advised to check out the PC Buyer's Guide thread in the basement for advice on purchasing a new system.

That thread contains the best people to help you; so in order to both keep things tidy and help you, 'new pc' posts will be redirected there.

sapi

[aion2006]

Awesome I learn much on that thread! I posted on that thread. Hopefully someone can help me out!

[Georgian Knight]

that's just what i need...

thank you very much

[Marku]

alot of it is out of date now, with quad and all taking over.

[powerbits]

Actually Quad is not all that in games.

I design and sell game pcs and the Strong dual cores are still much better in many games..

However , its quite possible that a quad soes very good in medieval as CPU power is very high in demand when you fight with 2 large armies..

[Freddie]

Actually Quad is not all that in games.

I design and sell game pcs and the Strong dual cores are still much better in many games..

However , its quite possible that a quad soes very good in medieval as CPU power is very high in demand when you fight with 2 large armies..

The trouble with M2TW is that the game engine is based on Rome:TW meaning that the it can only use one CPU core. This is disappointing because as you said a game like M2TW needs all the CPU power it can get and at the time of the games release multithreaded games were starting to become standard.

As for quad cores only a handful of games can use a quad CPU effectively (Crysis although this is a bit suspect not everyone is convinced the game is truly multithreaded, Unreal Tournament 3 and Supreme Commander), I'm hoping though Empire will be coded to take advantage of quad core CPU's. Look at Supreme Commander Benchmarks on Dual vs Quad core CPU's to see how much of a difference it can make.

[Ificratis]

This is true. So if you use a duo core cpu take as mach speed you can. I recomended the INTEL CORE 2 DUO E8500 3.16 GHZ LGA775 - 1333 FSB.
You pay something about 220 euro, but it deserves the money.

[Robo1992]

I got one of them ^^

[Peter007]

Guys, I have a problem. If I want to play medieval total war with many troops it begins to lag. The lag starts when exceeding 4000 troops, it is however a terrible lag. This is impossible for my computer. I have a Dual Core E6600 GeForce (2X) SLI 8800GTX graphics cards with latest driver. And 4 GB RAM as well, 400 GB hard disk. Can somebody tell me what the problem here is. Besides, RTW works fine with at least 10000 men, the lag just begin with 20000 or higher, but in MTW 2 it begins to be intolerable!!

[Ificratis]

If you have xp maybe the problem is caused form 4 GB of Ram.

[SD_West]

Your problem is SLI mode. Disable it and check performance.

[SaadHabib]

I don't know if this is the correct forum to post this, but would a Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family video card be able to run Medieval II Total War?
My computer manages to run Rome Total War on Medium graphic settings and low unit scale. Just wondering if my video card can handle the improved graphics of M2TW, or if I could tweak my video card to make the game run on the lowest settings. I was also wondering whether it's possible to upgrade a laptops video card.

[D.B. Cooper]

Integrated graphics cards aren't recommended for gaming, at all. My old computer with an integrated graphics card could play Rome with medium-high settings and large unit scale, and then the Med2 demo lagged like hell with the lowest possible settings. And even then it looked awful. Laptop video cards aren't upgradeable either in most cases, sorry, and trying to will surely void your warranty.

So no Med 2 won't play well. Play the demo to see for yourself.

[SaadHabib]

Yeah, I tried M2TW and it lagged way too much. The game menus and even the campaign map worked really fast but the battles were way too choppy. I guess I'll have to settle for a new laptop within the coming months.
Which video card would be cheap and suitable to run M2TW?

[Ificratis]

9800GT is a good cheap choise.

[Manchild24]

hey. i have a question about weather i can run a game on a laptop. i wanted to buy one can can play medival 2. here are my specs.
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GS
Processor Platform: Intel® Centrino®
Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo Mobile
System momory (RAM): 4GB
Video memory: 1GB GDDR3
If you need to know anything else, let me know

[irishron]

Not having a laptop myself but reading others efforts, it will run but not as well as a desktop with the same specs. Desktops are cheaper, too.

[Manchild24]

Not having a laptop myself but reading others efforts, it will run but not as well as a desktop with the same specs. Desktops are cheaper, too.

what settings you think i could run it at?

[Ghost_loy]

Okay I have a question.

What is the most important part of the Computer for M2/ETW.

I have:
5600 2.8 Ghz AMD Athlon x2 Dual Core
4 gigs Kingston Ram @ 1066
Biostar T Series Mobo
EVGA 8800gt 512mb
2 Sata Hard Drives @ 291 gigs total with 62.65 Gigs Free

Is the Video Card more important for performance or the CPU?

I can play M2 fairly well.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

High Unit Settings/No Shadows

So I was wondering After I replace my dying PSU should I focus on a CPU or a GPU? I think CPU. What do you think?

[Ghost_loy]

Anyone?