I know its been asked a million times (video card)

[RackOps]

So I bought a PC yesterday. Picked up one game for it (Medieval II: Total War)

The system meets the minimum requirements for the game, so I figured all was good.

I installed the game this morning, fully expecting to be slaying infidels by breakfast....That didn't happen. The game loads and runs, but is so slow as to be painful.

I'm thinking about putting a video card on it, but I'm not sure what I need exactly.

System specs are:
1.8 Ghz dual-core processor
2 Gigs RAM

No stand-alone video card on it yet, which most likely explains why my soldiers look like retarded epileptics as they move across the battlefield.

I know my CPU is kinda on the low end, so is any card I'm looking at going to be good enough to resolve the situation or am I fighting a losing battle?

Thanks for any help

[irishron]

Turn everything to low or off. I would try other settings after that if that works. You may be able to get a couple of settings to medium but don't hold your breath and don't expect to be fighting many battles. They tear up a computer like yours.

[RackOps]

Any specific video cards you'd recommend?

[irishron]

Depends on preferences. I have an ATI Radeon x1950pro that will fight battles but how big I don't know because I haven't maxxed it out on the battlefield. Some have had success with ATI's HD series.
Nvidia 8600 and 8800 are popular. They all take a PCIe x16 slot and watch the power supply specs.
Even when you do that your bottleneck will be your processor. Even though it's dual-core the game only uses one.

[RackOps]

I didn't know that (only uses one core)

You'd think someone would be able to patch that.

[Serious J]

I didn't know that (only uses one core)

You'd think someone would be able to patch that.

Can't just "patch" in dual core support. It usually requires an entire code re-write from what I understand.

[irishron]

Can't just "patch" in dual core support. It usually requires an entire code re-write from what I understand.

Seriou J is right and it won't happen with Empire due in a few months.

[Ificratis]

A Nvidia 9600 is good for now and cost about 90-140 euro if you buy the 9600GT WITH 512 MB of Ram.
I recomended the ''GIGABYTE GEFORCE 9800GTX GV-NX98X512H-B 512MB PCI-E RETAIL'' in 250 euro. It is a Pci-E 2.0 Card and worth the money.

[Zuwxiv]

I have an 8600 (one of the older versions) and it works excellently. You can pick one up for under a hundred bucks. Or for a little less bang just 80 bucks but I'd go for the $100 version. It's a great card - it does it's job, it's cheap, it's well supported now. DX10 capable.

Dual-core processors are great for multitasking, but are a royal pain in the ass to program for. With new quad-core processors (or even dual-quad-core processors in some high-end powerhouses) it's getting to be a harder and harder job for programmers.

But many, many people still have single-core processors. For a while, the higher-end single core processors were faster than the dual-core ones, and a high-end pentium 4 might be better than your processor (for one single task). As a result, programmers haven't invested the time and effort into making both a single and a dual-core version of games, so you won't see a pay off at all. It'll multitask great, but without a bit of overlocking that processor is the weak-link of your computer.

Not that that's a bad thing, every computer has a bottleneck - the best-case scenario is where everything is about the same in quality so no resources (or money) are being wasted.

[Juggernawt]

I'd grab one of the newly released and *very* reasonably priced Ati 4850's, if your powersupply can handle it.

[Chevalier IX]

I am assuming you are running Vista as well so I would recommend getting more gigs of ram as well due to the fact that the OS consumes near to a gig as it is....as far as cards go...the Radeon HD 4850 is phenomenal for only 200 US dollars.....also integrated GPU has always played merry hell on this series...