Major performance issues

[Daeger]

Hello. I bought a new computer months ago and I was really excited to try out M2TW with this because I THOUGHT I could run this on all settings maxed and huge armies but eh..apparently I was wrong. I have about 30 fps at max in full stack battles and it lags like hell if I zoom close and look at the fighting soldiers. In bridge battles and sieges fps is about 30 if I don't, once again, look at the soldiers fighting, if I do look the fps is like 2 at worst, yea TWO.

I have ASUS's Geforce 8800GT 512mb, 2Gb's of 800Mhz RAM and Amd Athlon 64 5600+ dual core processor and at the moment I have Vista home premium but I had WinXP pro couple months back and M2TW also lagged back then on XP.

So um.. any suggestions? I have the latest drivers for my gfx card, but should I try older drivers? Could these newer drivers cause the lag?

Also, Im using 1680x1050 widescreen resolution. I doubt that's important info but anyways.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I noticed that M2TW is only using 50% of my processor, does that mean it's only using 1 core?

[irishron]

Only uses one core, yes.

[NobleNick]

Your gfx card is certainly up to par.

I would try un-maxing some of your settings, and try using a more standard graphics setting (e.g., 1280 x 1024).

[pwf224]

Do a quick auto-detect for your comp, then play around with the setting using the ones it gives you as a baseline. Generally it does a pretty good job at telling you what you can run at, and then you can raise/lower the individual settings according to what you want, such as better effects and unit detail instead of perfect grass and buildings. This isn't a perfect method because different options use a different part of your computer, but it should be good overall.

[arti]

I have similar case, but oposite - fluent animation when close up but lag as hell when zoom out (when figting full stack armys bigger than normal size)
In my case is probably weak cpu - only amd x2 4200+ (so its only 2.33 as only one core is used by M2). I bought last week ati 4850 and was sure that I can now play on full stack, full detail, full HD.
Well full detail -yes, full hd -yes, but if I try go biger than normal size unit -5 fps. Funny because when I hit pause and then move camera around its fluent, hit pause again -lag
so its not gfx issue (changing res, detail shadow, don`t affect fps)
only when cpu its needed for computing massive soldiers behavior, paths, animation etc

Also be sure to install AMD CPU driver (I don`t know if its needed in vista, but in XP its not included in SP3 - Microsoft does`t like AMD) whitout it I had 2 fps in mass effect, and now is 40
check on amd site

[verena xeventus]

Hello. I bought a new computer months ago and I was really excited to try out M2TW with this because I THOUGHT I could run this on all settings maxed and huge armies but eh..apparently I was wrong. I have about 30 fps at max in full stack battles and it lags like hell if I zoom close and look at the fighting soldiers. In bridge battles and sieges fps is about 30 if I don't, once again, look at the soldiers fighting, if I do look the fps is like 2 at worst, yea TWO.

I have ASUS's Geforce 8800GT 512mb, 2Gb's of 800Mhz RAM and Amd Athlon 64 5600+ dual core processor and at the moment I have Vista home premium but I had WinXP pro couple months back and M2TW also lagged back then on XP.

So um.. any suggestions? I have the latest drivers for my gfx card, but should I try older drivers? Could these newer drivers cause the lag?

Also, Im using 1680x1050 widescreen resolution. I doubt that's important info but anyways.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I noticed that M2TW is only using 50% of my processor, does that mean it's only using 1 core?

^^ Im curious about what settings your actually playing on, can you tell me all your medieval 2 graphics settings please. Ive played around with the settings on medieval 2 on my 2 exisitng computers alot and know how to tweak it for both performance and graphics, so maybe I can help you.

I have similar case, but oposite - fluent animation when close up but lag as hell when zoom out (when figting full stack armys bigger than normal size)
In my case is probably weak cpu - only amd x2 4200+ (so its only 2.33 as only one core is used by M2). I bought last week ati 4850 and was sure that I can now play on full stack, full detail, full HD.
Well full detail -yes, full hd -yes, but if I try go biger than normal size unit -5 fps. Funny because when I hit pause and then move camera around its fluent, hit pause again -lag
so its not gfx issue (changing res, detail shadow, don`t affect fps)
only when cpu its needed for computing massive soldiers behavior, paths, animation etc

Also be sure to install AMD CPU driver (I don`t know if its needed in vista, but in XP its not included in SP3 - Microsoft does`t like AMD) whitout it I had 2 fps in mass effect, and now is 40
check on amd site

^^I also get more lag when zooming out with huge armies rather than zooming in. Like I said above I can get decent graphics V performance simply by messing around a little bit with the graphics settings and Im currently only using an ATI 1800XT on this machine an Nvidia 8600M G S on my laptop and will shortly have the ATI 4870 on my new machine (currently being built).

Anyway back to your post (sorry I rabbit on a bit) I think that the number of units on the field is more to do with your actual Chip than the graphics card, in which case your chip is very similar to mine and we seem to get similar lag problems. So for that reason I would recommend upgrading to a slightly faster chip if you want mega armies (personally I think anything over 2.8 ghz should be able to handle it, thats if I'm right about the armies V processor thing.

I would hope with your card it's not a graphics issue, especially since they are suppose to be one of the best cards available.

Hope this helps somewhat.

[Mythic_Commodore]

Yeah, Daeger, the fact that you're playing on a higher resolution can't help - I'd definitely recommend lowering it.