HELP: how to make RTR run smoother/better

[Publius Maximus]

Hi all,

So I got a pretty crappy computer and I play RTR on all the lowest settings.
My computer is HP mediacenter m1070n:

2.8ghz
512 mb
128 mb radeon x300

I am hoping to upgrade my computer so that I can play RTR with better settings and more soldiers on the battlefield (at the cheapest price).

I plan on upgrading with a 1gig ram. Will this suffice and allow me to play on higher settings? I really don't understand much about computers.

Thanks!

[Blau&Gruen]

+ ram is a good idea (but he have to ask in the upgrade store what kind of ram can be installed on your main-board). I suppose you have a relatively slow ram.
if you can afford upgrade the graphic card, too

[Publius Maximus]

will the 1gig ram help a lot and allow me to play smoothly at the highest settings?

[Blau&Gruen]

will the 1gig ram help a lot and allow me to play smoothly at the highest settings?

What do you mean with highest settings, just the unit size, or all graphical things up to the highest? Because the second is not only ram related but also depends on the capability of your graphical card.

I would go to the store where I had bought the pc and ask what you can upgrade within a reasonable prize.

The unit-size on huge alone should well work with 1gig ram.

[Switch]

Well upgrading your RAM won't help you if you want to play on high graphical settings. You might be able to squeeze out 'Huge' unit size if you take off all special effects and keep unit details low/lowest.

As the others have said, make sure to check that the RAM you buy is compatible with your motherboard.

How long have you had that computer? With those few details, I'd wager it's a few years old.. If you want to be playing games on any except the lowest settings, you might consider just buying a whole new computer (which is easier and usually ends up cheaper than upgrading each individual component). You can get decent computers for ~£400 these days (I don't have much experience buying computers outside of the UK, but I imagine you're looking at equivilant prices) .

[lesterthenerd]

you could upgrade ur ram by 1 gig (around 100 australian dollars) and get a 7900 gs video card (around 230 australian dollars). could ran it max on huge. if u wanted a better card you would have to probably upgrade ur cpu (which im guessing is a p4?) and mother board cause ur cpu would bottleneck ur gfx card.

[PriestLizard]

I have a question related with specs and performance too:

System specs:
AMD 2400+ CPU
ATi A9250 128MB DDR
1024MB RAM

Problem: I usually have serious lag on the world map. The battles are "OK", I have medium unit size and most of the details are low/medium... its fine with me. On the world/campaign map however, its really "laggy", i.e. if I scroll over the map and stuff. Thats quite annoying.

So is this problem related to RAM or to the graphic device? I guess it must be RAM but on the other hand I dont think 1024MB is not enough for a game of 2005? I'm not sure if I should get new RAMs... I have a quite old main board (my whole comp was bought 2002) so it might be a problem to get RAM for that. Right now I have 133mhz RAMs I think...

Hope you guys can help me. Bye~

[lesterthenerd]

1gig ram is enough for most games though its highly recommended to have at least 2 gigs for a smoother performance if u want to run on highest. ur problem is ur video card and cpu. an amd 2400 is a very old cpu and man ur radeon 9250 is incredibly old as well.... those r ur main 2 problems... i guess to upgrade you would need a new mother board as well...

[mcantu]

I have a question related with specs and performance too:

System specs:
AMD 2400+ CPU
ATi A9250 128MB DDR
1024MB RAM

Problem: I usually have serious lag on the world map. The battles are "OK", I have medium unit size and most of the details are low/medium... its fine with me. On the world/campaign map however, its really "laggy", i.e. if I scroll over the map and stuff. Thats quite annoying.

So is this problem related to RAM or to the graphic device? I guess it must be RAM but on the other hand I dont think 1024MB is not enough for a game of 2005? I'm not sure if I should get new RAMs... I have a quite old main board (my whole comp was bought 2002) so it might be a problem to get RAM for that. Right now I have 133mhz RAMs I think...

Hope you guys can help me. Bye~

Try turning off shadows...

[thegravytrain18]

Yeah I have a gig of ram, and a 2.4? I think processor and a Radeon 9200 and I keep everything on lowest except for the unit detail which I usually have on high and the effects I usually have on medium. I don't do shadows or dust/smoke, but I do reflections/glints and unit shaders. What is the gloss maps setting for?

I usually have trouble when there is a lot of soldiers on the screen. I just ran Roma Surrectum for the first time and it was worse than normal. I'm going to have to play that mod on medium unit size. Really the main problem I get from having an older computer is CTDs. I get the a lot, especially when I've just started running the game. Usually when I sit down after getting home from whatever and I have a lot of time to kill, and I want to just veg out playing EB or something, it CTDs about 4 or 5 times within the first hour. Mostly its in the battle map, to, so I have to re-do battles. The good side of that is that now I know how the AI is going to deploy and stuff haha. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood though. But after the first hour usually it stabalizes and I can get in a good 2 more hours or however long I feel like playing with only a couple CTDs. And its not always that bad, like I occasionally have none at all, but its definitely the exception.

How often do you guys CTD? Maybe this is the normal rate, I dunno, but I'd hope that its not. I'm not sure why I CTD so much, but I've heard on here that older machines sometimes just can't handle the load. I've also considered over heating as a real possibility; I haven't opened my case and cleaned it out in a long, looong time.

Soon I'll be able to upgrade my processor and video card. I'd really like to be able to play with grass and the huge unit scale.

[PriestLizard]

I already turned off shadows on the world map. Its not helping. I dont have such a big lag on the campaign map on RTW Vanilla, so it must be related to the larger map size... which made me think its my RAM!? Hmmm...

@CTDs: I dont CTD a lot... its very rare actually. Usually its related with some revolt bug and I had a lot of CTDs when I modded the name files...
I have over-heating problems too... but then my comp totally shuts down. Thats why I use an external radiator as this solves the problem.

[Publius Maximus]

wait so in regards to my question

increasing ram will not allow me to increase my graphics settings?
when i do now, the game just lags and runs very very slow

i thought ram would fix this

so i actually have to get a good graphics card?

[lesterthenerd]

close to medium on huge id say since ur cards a major problem. .... take a look at this - http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/index...ki&tag=rmp_vds - ur cards no. 105... so yeah u should upgrade ur gfx card if u want to run on high settings. a x300 just doesnt have the grunt to run this mod on max even with 1.5 gigs of ram... definitely go for 1 gig of ram though, u will notice a big improvement.

[RedXIII]

Publius Maximus;

Your graphic card is a low end card and not really for 3d gaming. Getting more RAM wouldn't hurt, but upgrading the video card should yield better results.

PriestLizard;

You have an old CPU, an old GPU and slow RAM. Your graphics card has an AGP 8x interface, so I'll assume that is all your main board can support. If that is then case, then you are restricted to upgrading to an AGP 8x GPU card, but since your CPU and RAM is so old/slow it would bottleneck the GPU. An upgrade would be expensive and probably wouldn't yield much results, so buying a new PC may be an idea to look at.

[PriestLizard]

Ok thanks for the answer RedXIII and to all others. I will think about this option...

[thegravytrain18]

Maximus I have a gig of ram and although I'm sure it'd be worse if I only had 512, I still can't run my game like I'd want to. Last night though, I changed my unit scale to normal and I'm able to do dust and smoke, and a lot of the settings on highest. Plus I have yet to have a CTD in the battle map. So that helped immensely for my machine. I would think that that would be the one thing that the ram would help, to, is the number of soldiers my computer can process on the screen, but thats actually the thing that takes up all my resources.

[Artax]

Maximus I have a gig of ram and although I'm sure it'd be worse if I only had 512, I still can't run my game like I'd want to. Last night though, I changed my unit scale to normal and I'm able to do dust and smoke, and a lot of the settings on highest. Plus I have yet to have a CTD in the battle map. So that helped immensely for my machine. I would think that that would be the one thing that the ram would help, to, is the number of soldiers my computer can process on the screen, but thats actually the thing that takes up all my resources.

I have only 512 RAm and GeForce FX 5500 graphics card but I can handle huge unit size and highest unit details without any problems. However I have lower building details, low grass and no detailed shadows. Maybe some other option eats your RAMs.:hmmm:

And a noobish question: what does exactly anti-aliasing does?

[Only None]

And a noobish question: what does exactly anti-aliasing does?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_aliasing
then
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersampling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

The end result is that it smooths out jagged lines on your screen, especially on the edges of objects. 2x AA, probably the low setting, can make a nice difference with a small perfomance hit, but 4x, probably high, can trash your framerate, though it will look pretty.

[Artax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti_aliasing
then
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersampling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

The end result is that it smooths out jagged lines on your screen, especially on the edges of objects. 2x AA, probably the low setting, can make a nice difference with a small perfomance hit, but 4x, probably high, can trash your framerate, though it will look pretty.

Thanks.

[G_the_Great]

I use RTR Platinum with a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 6600 and I don't have any lagging problems or anything. A new graphics card isn't cheap but doubling your graphics capacity when you have 128MB can really boost you up there.

Of course, this is being said by someone with 3.6 GHz processor and 2GB of RAM...

Just a thought; How well does RTR/RTW run on dual core computers?