what do I need

[MABUS2012]

I am finnaly thinking about getting some much needed upgrades to my computer. I've done some reseach but idont understand much of what i read about. For my computer what should i get for this game to run perfectly on. when it comes to graphics card i seen alot of ATI but i dont realy no the differences between the many different series they have.
and besides that i dont realy no what else i will need. so i hoping i could get some of you to tell me what exactly i would need for an enjoyable MTW experiance.

money isnt a huge problem but i'd rather cheaper stuff cause alot of my cash goes into playing Paintball and that is where most it will go. i wont be spending into the thousands i dont even no if it would cost that much

Help is very much appreciated
THX

[Lord Feloric's Ambassador]

The Nvidia 8800 runs Medieval 2: Total War quite well, but my Lord tells me that the 6800 should be plenty sufficient.

[Sodbuster]

Go with one of the graphics cards from Nvidia. I have a Nvidia Geforce 6800 with 256 MB, and it runs great. Dell sells computers for like $600 that could run M2:TW just fine. I'd suggest going to this website and putting in M2:TW to see how well the computer you have can run this, and what you need to upgrade.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

If all it says is that you need a new graphics card, well, those 6800's are getting pretty dang cheap nowadays.

[Lucifer Sam]

i had a pc with an AMD Athlon 128 mb graphics card running it alright-ish*, with 256 ram and 1.8 ghz prosessor..

*the settings in battles were all low (but it still looked great), the battles were a lttle laggy (just a little) but the only real problem was thhe pc powered down if anything hit a building on a battle, so no seiges...

[MABUS2012]

what in my computer allows for me to have thoudsands and thoudsands of troups on the field at once. Doese the 6800or 8800 do this
I am not sure if it is the video card that controls this but i was hoping it does.
that is what i am lookin forward to

[Furion]

I think this thread fits better in The basement.

Though I would recommend you to but the new Radeon cards, their the most price worth at the moment and you can still choose the strengt of them yourself.

[Grimmy]

The suggestion I suggest is that you take a look at the specs for Empire Total War and build your new comp for that. You're probably gonna want to play it. And why spend the cash to build a system when you may well end up wanting to upgrade your system again in just a few months?

Something else that would help is for you to post what you have, hardware wise. What's your processor? RAM? and if you can get the info, your mother board and power supply.

Be careful with just buying a new vid card. You'll want to make sure you've got a power supply that will give it enough juice to run.

[Geordie-warlord]

the nvidia 8800gt will play the game at max settings with about 2-3 massive armys on the screen if you want more than that you will need to cut back on the grahpics,aa,bloom.
it helps if you have a duel core processor @ 2.5-3 gb also 2-3 gb of 800mhz ram with low latiency.