Laptop Screen Minimises RTW...

**Lord Dakier** · October 17, 2008, 08:12 AM

Whenever I start up the game or am about to go into battle or have just finished a battle, my screen minimises... its not very major but it is annoying... if theres anything you need to know just ask

**D.B. Cooper** · October 17, 2008, 09:37 AM

Does the battle actually load and you can start playing? Perhaps it's just changing resolution.

**Lord Dakier** · October 17, 2008, 09:41 AM

Yeah I can play it but as soon as I press something on the key it minimises I reckon its resolution but I tried all of them on RTW and non worked.

Reckon it could be the Desktop res?

**irishron** · October 17, 2008, 02:36 PM

Me, I'd set the desktop res the same as the lowest one in the game and set the game res the same. If it works change the res one step at a time to find out where the max point is.

**Lord Dakier** · October 17, 2008, 04:39 PM

Cant stand the low res format.

**irishron** · October 18, 2008, 03:54 AM

Buy a desktop built for 3d gaming with all the bells and whistles you think you need. also get ready to shell out over 3000 American dollars or build your own for about half that. Most laptops aren't made for 3d gaming off the shelf and upgrade possibilities are alomst nil.

**Lord Dakier** · October 18, 2008, 04:14 AM

Will this be any good for Rome in all aspects not just resolution?;
http://nukesystems.bravehost.com/core.html

Its the 2nd one down Im planning on buying. Extra £50/$100 and they will put in an Nvidea Geforce 8600gt.

**irishron** · October 18, 2008, 09:54 AM

You won't be happy. The cpu is too slow. It won't do the calculations on high setttings very well. It will be your bottleneck for the 8600.

**Yojimbo** · November 03, 2008, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by irishron

You won't be happy. The cpu is too slow. It won't do the calculations on high setttings very well. It will be your bottleneck for the 8600.

Not to mention the 8600 pretty mcuh sucks. you'd be much happier with a 8800gt.

**Lord Dakier** · October 18, 2008, 10:43 AM

Are you saying that having the 8600gt may be worse?

Im sure the cpu is alot better that what im running on this Elonex Laptop.

**irishron** · October 18, 2008, 11:21 AM

8600 would be good. The problem is a 1.8gh cpu is bottom for 3d gaming and so far none of the Total War games support multicore cpus so you're only using half of it anyway. RTW relies more on making all the calculations of where all your men are headed, how fast, weapons being used and how, and that's time 2 because it has to do it for the ai also. It really gets hard on it when it has to also tell the gpu which colors, how much shade, what kind of ground cover, the next tree to run into amonst others. If you want all the eyecandy on high settings, the cpu will slow you down.

**Lord Dakier** · October 19, 2008, 03:40 AM

Im not too botherd about graphical settings, was considering my own AAR however but that doesnt bother me too much. Would this run perfectly on the lowest possible settings except for unit scale?... and would it work with no shaders and everything on medium except unit shaders?

Aslong as I can run large unit scales... preferabally huge ones then im not too fussed on graphics.

**irishron** · October 19, 2008, 04:01 AM

I think on huge settings even without the eyecandy you'll get some lag. I had a 7300 card before I upgraded but I didn't try to max it out and it worked for what I wanted. The biggest differences between the the machine advertized and mine is I have 3gig ram so everything is loaded and the pagefile is there just to look cute where with a gig of ram you will get some swapping, and my 2.4 gh cpu will leave that 1.8 in the dust.

One thing you may want to think about is this system I have was 2 years old and refurbished when I bought it for $600 American. I have put another $400 American into it to do what I really want.
Might consider going that route if you know someone reputable.

**Lord Dakier** · October 19, 2008, 04:09 AM

Upgrading the ram wouldnt be a problem, you can find 4gb ram on ebay for cheap. I might buy that custom built model then just upgrade it myself. flashy new processor. Is the 1.8 all together or just half of it becuase its a dual.

**irishron** · October 19, 2008, 10:30 AM

The game will only use half of it and there is your bottleneck.
To give you an analogy of this, gamers including me want a system that will run thsi game like a six-lane freeway. The 1.8 is like that dirt road that's been around as long as man has figured how to use the horse and wagon just nowadays its an SUV. With my 2.4 maybe it gets paved, maybe not These people with the new motherboards and the 1600gh fsb and the memory speed to match their 3.6+gh cpus are the ones with today's freeways.

**Lord Dakier** · October 19, 2008, 11:32 AM

Oh my god, so even with this system Romes performance would be pretty poor.

**irishron** · October 19, 2008, 01:04 PM

Yes. Sorry.

**Lord Dakier** · November 02, 2008, 12:32 PM

Well I placed an Nvidea Geforce FX 5200 in my old beaten down computer that has;

Ram: 256mb
Processor: Intel Celeron CPU 2.40 Ghz

And the difference was amazing. I managed to get 2400 peasants on a siege with Epic Stone walls in a huge city. I have not yet gone past 2400 but will do to see when Rome tells me theres too many soldiers. It would seem that I need more ram however cause 3x speed seems a bit slow so could be programs going slow.