What settings for my computer?

[samus_aran]

Hello,


I am getting a bit lost among the many different graphic settings in Medieval 2. Right now, the it is set a little below the "Medium" settings (everythings the same except bilinear filtering and no AA).

I am commanding every battle myself so it needs to run kind of alright (17 fps minimum, except for the occasional "hick-ups") up to the huge battles which will occur sooner or later during the campaign. With the current settings, i kind of achieved this goal (I tested them with the battle of tanneberg and the aztec battle, both in the middle of the armies smashing each other). Only when I am doin close-up of a big bunch of battle units cracking each other's skulls , it drops to 11-13 fps, but thats alright, as I wont do that later during the standard battle.

Thing is now, even though it runs okay, the game looks a bit crappy. This is mostly due to turned-off AA and the bilinear I think. I am pretty confident, the whole thing could do a bit better. And since I am lacking the understanding of the quality/performance ratio of most settings, I am asking you guys for your recommended settings for my computer:

AMD Athlon XP (real 2 ghz, can't remember the name, probably 2600+)
Radeon 9700 Pro
1024 Mb RAM PC-400 Kingston HyperX
Windows XP SP2
768 Mb swap file (because of lack of HD space)

I am not looking for the big big battles to run smooth as butter, but performance shouldnt get into the way of good playability either.

Thanks for your time guys!


Martin

[Sir. Polaris]

Well your low framrate is due to your PC not being able to draw everything fast enough.

Normaly this is card issue or a CPU issue one or the other is slow the other down, and now allowing it to do his job.


Minimum System Requirements

English version of Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP
Celeron 1.8GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor.
512MB RAM
8x Speed DVD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and latest drivers
11.0 Gigs of uncompressed free hard disk space
100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers
100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers
DirectX® 9.0c
128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support and the latest drivers. Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible.
Monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or above.
Multiplayer:
Internet (TCP / IP) play supported, internet play requires broadband connection and latest drivers, LaN play requires Network card.

Recommended

System: Pentium 4® 2.4GHz (2400MHz) or equivalent AMD® Athlon 64 or equivalent
RAM: 1024 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB
Hard Drive Space: 9000 MB
Other: 128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 2 support
and the latest drivers. Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c
compatible*. The Nvidia® GeForce 7300 or greater, or the
ATI Radeon® X1600 or greater is recommended.

Basicly from your PC, you have a old Grapics Card and Fair Cpu (Dual 2.0) 2 Megahertz over bare minium.

My recommendation is to get a new PC. You find every game from this point on to lag and futher reduce your FPS if they even run at all .

You could upgrade the card and get a larger HD space, but the PC in general needs a overhaul.

2.0 is weak now a days even in dual form. DDR2-400 at 1 gig is not so good either, DDR2-800 at 1 gig is needed just to run a OS and some games nowadays. Should look at 2 gigs of DDR2-800 if your going to run anything shiny or of high detail.

As with Grapics card, Go big or go home - Buy the second best on the market. Old cards cost less - yes, but never last as long and end up wasting money in the long run. I recommend the 8800 GTS 640mb or the GTX although the GTX due to demand is still a bit costly.

Another Option is to just turn down the size of the fighting. (reduce the strain on the CPU) the computer needs to think to fight the units, and if your 9700 is not being overloaded by all the drawing it needs to do, then it your CPU being overloaded with all the thinking it needs to do, and it slows down everything else.

CPU's are dependent on there clockspeed and avaiable PC Ram and swap space both which are low.

So all in all your PC is hurting you

So you can try running super low everything (ease up on your grapics)
And Or Lower Troop sizes (ease up on the CPU, Ram, HD)

Or buy a large new computer and turn the dial up to 11!