Can RS use multiple cores?

**Timefool** · January 03, 2010, 11:48 PM

I have a Q6600 at 2.4Ghz and the games runs slow when the unit scale is huge. Is there any way that the game can use multiple cores, or is it limited by the game engine to only one?

**Bob Bobinson** · January 04, 2010, 12:37 AM

Nope. Since Rome: Total War is nearing its bajillionith birthday, it cannot utilize dual core capabilities. That's a trick left to newer games.

**Brusilov** · January 04, 2010, 02:38 AM

The slowing down could also be to do with your graphics card - can it handle what the game is trying to display and re-draw?

**Leeham991** · January 04, 2010, 11:24 AM

Wasn't the purpose of a duel core to make two very good single cores into one megacore?

I didn't think it would be a problem for the game.

**Greve Af Göteborg** · January 04, 2010, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by Leeham991

Wasn't the purpose of a duel core to make two very good single cores into one megacore?

I didn't think it would be a problem for the game.

The software has to support it to make it work, RTW came before dual core.

So you'll only get the performance of 1 core.

**Leeham991** · January 04, 2010, 12:02 PM

Ya, but surely that shouldn't be a problem really?

If you have a duel core that runs at 9x the speed of the same core design used singly in 2006 then shouldn't the single core that runs on the software still be 4.5x the speed of the requirement?

**apple** · January 04, 2010, 12:23 PM

But mods has higher requirements than the vanilla game.

**Timefool** · January 04, 2010, 02:40 PM

I use a GTX 260 so its not the graphics card that slows it down. Plus I did that pause test to see if the frame rates increase or remain the same, and when paused, they increase to 60.1, which I assume is the limit. It only happens in large scale battles, which seems to be the norm for RS with 0 turn recruitment.

**Chris Death** · January 04, 2010, 03:50 PM

Well i'm playing RS on two different riggs with units @ huge:

a)

dual core 3.6 ghz / 3.5 gb ram / EVGA GeForce 7950 GT KO 512 mb (changed it to ATI hd 4670 1024 mb gddr3 last weekend btw but there was no big
effect on anything related to RTW)

b)

single core 2.8 ghz / 3 gb ram / Sapphire Radeon hd 4650 1024 mb gddr2 (AGP 8x)

Rigg b is a pc from year 2002 but due to the graphics card this pc is absolutely astunning me.
I couldn't find any game of mine which wouldn't run at high to even vhigh settings.
There were games like: Crysis - Modern Warfare 2 (COD 6 me thinks) - Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 - Armed Assault - GRID - M2TW.
Nothing could break that old machines will to power.

Off course RTW + Mods run smooth on that rigg b even with 3 to 4 full stack armies.

To be honest i think that M2TW is running much smoother on the old rig than RTW but i believe this is due to the newer techniques
being used in combination with the new hd 4650 (which is built for DX10 and features shader model 4.1).

So a GTX 260 + any dual core shouldn't have any problem with RTW and what mods so far.

True - there are always different variants of GFX cards - there may be a small "LE" in the name which would then mean: low end (low edition) or
let's call it straight away "looser edition" because that's what you feel by their performance.
If you got a pre-built system it is very likely that your pc contains a few of such low edition components (since it's not only GFX featuring varying
quality).

The best grafix card will not move any worlds if it must downgrade itself due to different circumstances - channels / bus type / voltage etc.
Which voltage supports the pci-e slot of your motherbord and which voltage features the gtx 260?
Could be the mainbord features pci-e 16x and the GPU has pcie-2.0 so it must downgrade to 16x.

How much ram you got?
What's the ram speed and what is the effective ram speed? - e.g: you could have 800 mhz ram speed but due to the motherbord it could be only
400 mhz ram speed.

Epilog: as you can see that a pc of 2002 can run the game fine (well you can't see but believe me on that) it's not always the typical "your system is too old"
answer - because my second system is one really old.

~S~ CD

**arcsquad12** · January 04, 2010, 04:04 PM

Its not your card its the game. RS is pushing the limits of what rome's engine is able to handle. It happens to older games now and then.

Two examples I could use are Knights of the Old Republic and Half Life 2.

The KOTOR engine is a very simple one that nearly any computer can play with zero lag, but modders making new areas for the game need to keep the polygon limits down so that they can keep the game running at a smooth frame rate.

Half Life 2's FakeFactory mod series cranks resolutions and anti-aliasing details to ungodly levels, making a game that is killed by my laptop into something that would make an alienware chug.

**Timefool** · January 04, 2010, 05:01 PM

I have a quad core at 2.4Ghz, and 4GB of DDR2 RAM at 800Mhz, and my mobo supports it fully. AFAIK there is no LE for the GTX 260, and the closest thing to it would be the GTS 250. I don't know exactly what voltage my parts get, but it is factory default.

**Chris Death** · January 04, 2010, 05:57 PM

Well since i've changed to ATI lately i don't know too much about the newer NVIDIA's and their LE's and HE'S - it was just
a hint to go for other sources of the problem then only the name of a graphics card and the number of processors @ whatever speed.

Theoretically you should blast my 2002 PC into the ocean then with what you got there and with newest games you surely will if
we would compare them - just RTW is that piece of older software which doesn't take advantage of all those new technics
which make bigger and better grafix much more easy to handle by the gpu.

Only thing i would still like to see how RTW mods were running on this one: http://fastra2.ua.ac.be/
Well not only RTW mods but anything i got at home i would like to run at it.

~S~ CD

**henri51** · January 09, 2010, 07:06 AM

There are cases where dual cores can be slower than single cores due to frequent changing between cores. Recently one game maker (I don't remember which but I think it was Pacific War Admiral Edition) recommended turning off all of the cores except one to avoid the game slowing down.

To use 2 cores efficiently, the PROGRAM has to has to be designed to use the multiple cores, and of course old games don't do that.

So yes, generally but not always dual core computers will be faster than single cores, probably since most of the background Windows stuff is on one core and most of the game is on the other.

An example of programs that use multiple cores is the chess program Rybka: there are single-core and multiple-core versions. The dual core version runs on a dual core computer about 1.7 times faster than the single core version, and on a quad-core computer, the multiple core version runs about 3 times faster than the single core version on the same computer.

So don't assume that your 4-core computer will run a game 4 times faster than a single core computer: it may run a bit faster, but it could even run slower.

henri

**Wheelchair** · January 09, 2010, 09:11 PM

A dualcore will almost always be faster then a single core, due to architecture.

For example, Intel released a CULV CPU, It's Ultra low voltage, It's closed at 1.3Ghz Core 2 Duo with 3MB cache, You'd think it's VERY slow, but it's actually twice as fast as a 3GHz Pentium 4.