Very different performances with similar or same specifications?

**Xzuzz** · March 24, 2009, 05:44 PM

It seems people are reporting in that they are playing the game at very bad performance whilst some says they have no problems at all with the same or sometimes even a worse computer.

I've been reading these threads about people with i7 and high-end computers complaining about performance, me being one of these people.

So now can we try to find out how some people with WORSE rigs can play the game with better graphics and FPS than those with the really high-end computers.

Is it the drivers? The OS? Patch number ? Luck?

Time for the geeks to step up and give me a good answer!

**Groove74** · March 24, 2009, 05:48 PM

well for me ETW runs like crap, I have dumped alot of cash into my system listed in sig. I consider it High end. Not sure how it stacks up to the popular builds but it is defenatly the best rig I have ever built.

I do know the Vid card is weak, this is why I will be adding the ATI 4870 1 gig this weekend.

**Xzuzz** · March 25, 2009, 05:55 AM

Well, what I'm trying to do here is to see if there is a connection, maybe it's the OS that is causing the problem, or maybe it's something else.

**Brusilov** · March 25, 2009, 06:23 AM

When the game is runinng on my PC it runs well. I've had various issues finding a driver to allow my GTX280s in SLI mode to work OK and have settled on some beta drivers from here: http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...11190&Itemid=1

1 TB (1000 GB) SATA HDD UDMA 300 7200 32MB
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4 x 3.2 GHZ) 1600FSB - 12 MB
Coolermaster Hyper Z600 - Silent
Corsair 8GB PC3-10666C7 1333MHz (4x2GB) DDR3 - Lifetime Warranty
2 x Asus 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 GDDR3 (SLI Setup)
Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional 7.1
XFX SKT-775 790i ULTRA + SLI 1600FSB
Internal Card Reader 50-in-1
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-BIT (Genuine DVD & COA Included)
WD RAPTOR SATA 74GB UDMA 150 10000RPM 16MB
Samsung 16x DVD-ROM Black (IDE)
LOGITECH Wireless 1500 DESKTOP RECHARGEABLE KDB + MSE BLK OEM
ASUS Wireless NIC 270Mbps USB2.0 WL-160W
TAGEN 1300W ULTRA PSU
ASUS DVDÃ‚Â±RW 20x S-ATA DRW-2014L1T BLACK LIGHTSCRIBE (SATA)

**Lord of the Isles** · March 25, 2009, 08:44 AM

My feeling is that there are multiple causes for ETW problems (as CA have more or less said in their rough list of bug fixes for the next patch) and these problems range from CTDs down to slight performance hits (I'm not counting gameplay/balancing/AI issues here). Some of these problems no doubt are related to peoples' individual combinations of hardware, the settings they use, OS, drivers, the way they play the game, and so on, but some are problems with the game itself.

For me, that's too many variables to juggle with, so I'm just going to wait for a patch or two and then see how the game behaves (for me and for others). But I wish you luck with this thread and will keep an eye on it.

**Ondaderthad** · March 25, 2009, 10:22 AM

It seems that Vista and ATI have the most problems.

**mandalore9** · March 25, 2009, 10:31 AM

Originally Posted by Ondaderthad

It seems that Vista and ATI have the most problems.

I beg to differ. I find more XP and Nvidia users finding problems.

I myself have both Vista and an Ati card. No problems whatsoever running on ultra.

**kublikhan** · March 25, 2009, 11:04 PM

Empire has been very stable on my system. I have had only a single crash, and that was in the middle of repeated alt-tabs. I auto-resolve nearly every single battle, both at land and sea, I don't know if that is a factor or not. Campaign map seems to have decent speed. A bit sluggish, but that would be expected from my rather weak video card at such a high resolution.

As I started getting further into my game, the end of turn has started taking an extremely long time however. It is odd, Only the Spanish faction is taking a long time. Every other faction, a few seconds. But for the Spanish alone, its over a 2 minute wait. They are one of the larger factions but that alone would not seem to explain it. My total end of turn wait is over 3 minutes, not counting diplomacy actions. I am at year 1750 and it was only in the last few turns that this problem started happening. I already turned off cpu moves and tried hitting spacebar but that did not fix the end of turn wait problem. I have actually stopped playing the game because a 3 minute wait for every single turn is just ridiculous. I checked my cpu usuage, and it maxes at 50%. That indicates to me that the second core of my cpu is not being used. Why would a game released in 2009 not be multithreaded? That seems to be a bone-headed move to me.

System Specs:
Intel E8400(Core 2 Duo @ 3.0 Ghz)
Windows XP SP2 32bit
4 GB ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT(256mb memory), Driver version 178.24
Video 1920x1080, medium quality

**ohnoesaz** · March 26, 2009, 10:45 AM

I just want to throw in what I've noticed...

I'm disappointed with the performance also. I built a fairly good system for this game but am not getting great performance.

The machine below is freshly built with only ETW and Steam installed. Most services are turned off.

Vista 64, 4GB ram @ 1066, 5-5-5-15
Separate drive for page file and random data storage
Wolfdale Core2duo @ 3.6ghz
ASUS P5Q-Pro P45 Mobo
Radeon 4870x2 and a new big PSU to go with it
Creative x-fi extremegamer

Even with this fairly good box I can't play on ultra settings. I can play on all high settings, but with some noticeable frame stutter, especially during ship battles, and even in the campaign map.

Its been confirmed ETW uses only 1 core, and part of a second core, which is very sad and old-school. It should utilize up to four cores, as I would race out and get a quad core if it helped that much, or an I7 in fact. Oh well...

Its all just a bit disappointing.