RAM question?

**UMCenturion** · January 20, 2011, 09:41 PM

I currently have 4GB of ram. i play Rome and Medieval TW a lot and was looking to upgrade. I still get a slow lag on Rome with about 6000 present (call me spoiled but i want 10000 without lag!). I was wondering if upgrading the ram will help out, or is it something else. And if yes, should i get 6GB or 8GB (afraid 8GB will be overkill or wasted).

current specs
core 2 8500 3.16gz (i know RTW doesnt take advantage of core 2 but i disabled 1 core to play it)
nvidia 450gts 1gb vram
700W power supply
asus p5q se/r
4gb ram DDR2 1066/8500
windows vista 64 bit (to take advantage of more than 3.5G ram)

any thoughts would be appreciated!

**mrcrusty** · January 20, 2011, 09:45 PM

Resolution/settings?

**UMCenturion** · January 20, 2011, 09:49 PM

1440x 900 resolution. I play on high AA, Huge units, high pretty much everything. sometimes i have to tone down unit quality, terrain, and grass. have lowered AA to reduce lag during huge battles, but would love to keep that high

**mrcrusty** · January 20, 2011, 09:54 PM

Originally Posted by landshark20

1440x 900 resolution. I play on high AA, Huge units, high pretty much everything. sometimes i have to tone down unit quality, terrain, and grass. have lowered AA to reduce lag during huge battles, but would love to keep that high

I'd say it's more likely to be a graphics card issue. Get a better graphics card and you should be set. The GTS 450 is somewhere inbetween 5750-5770 levels, which theoretically should be fine at that resolution, but I can imagine lag if your playing almost max settings and there's like 10k troops.

**UMCenturion** · January 20, 2011, 09:55 PM

thank you!

**Nanny de Bodemloze** · January 20, 2011, 09:57 PM

mrcrusty - you don't think his CPU is bottlenecking a bit, with the numbers of troops he's trying to use? It was the first thing I thought of, but I defer to your opinions

**mrcrusty** · January 20, 2011, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by Nanny de Bodemloze

mrcrusty - you don't think his CPU is bottlenecking a bit, with the numbers of troops he's trying to use? It was the first thing I thought of, but I defer to your opinions

Well, I thought about that too, actually, it was my first thought as well, but it's RTW. Core 2 Duo is cutting edge tech for that game. Since it's only single threaded, Quad Core, Hex Core, etc doesn't make a difference. With RTW and M2TW, it prefers raw clock speed over cores or superior architecture. A 3.2 Ghz Athlon II would probably do better than a 2.67 Ghz i7.

I would advise the OP though, to not disable the second core when playing. Sure, RTW may only use 1 core, but background operations leech off that core too. If you have both running, you can spread the tasks more easily and dedicate more power to RTW on a single core.

Overclocking might help, though without knowing the motherboard model and cooler, it's probably not advisable.

Then again, I'm only thinking with stock RTW in mind. Are you running with any mods?

**Bolkonsky** · January 22, 2011, 09:20 AM

Originally Posted by Nanny de Bodemloze

mrcrusty - you don't think his CPU is bottlenecking a bit, with the numbers of troops he's trying to use? It was the first thing I thought of, but I defer to your opinions

Considering that the CPU isn't really used for Graphics Processing, and that Total War games have a relatively low number of agents in comparison to other games, and the physics aren't really intensive, I don't think so.

**Nanny de Bodemloze** · January 22, 2011, 09:32 AM

Originally Posted by Bolkonsky

Considering that the CPU isn't really used for Graphics Processing, and that Total War games have a relatively low number of agents in comparison to other games, and the physics aren't really intensive, I don't think so.

I would agree, but for the fact that he's clearly using a mod to get those battle numbers, and IMHO that changes things a bit. However, my experience with modded RTW is limited.

**Wheelchair** · January 24, 2011, 08:24 AM

You can upgrade you PC all you want, It'll still lag.

The games only run off of 1 core, there-fore making dual/quad-cores pointless.

The issue is not graphics power, you could have 3 GTX580's and itd still lag, It's a unfixable CPU bottleneck.

/cynic

**UMCenturion** · January 21, 2011, 09:21 AM

I thought the Core 2 would be good enough. i didnt know that about the 2nd core. I have been told in the past to disable it. I will try that when i get home today. thank you for the responses. i guess i was hoping it would be a ram issue...kinda on a budget and cant afford a new cpu or gpu just yet. thank you though!

Oh and also I am currently playing RSII on RTW. one of the most graphic intense mods for RTW

**irishron** · January 24, 2011, 08:33 AM

Wheelchair is right. RTW is that old.

**UMCenturion** · January 24, 2011, 07:08 PM

okay, so just for kicks and curiousity, what kind of specs would someone need to have in order to run RTW at fully capacity? 10000+ men on battlefield, settings maxed out?

**irishron** · January 24, 2011, 07:16 PM

You have a chance with a 4gig cpu, a GTX580 1gb, and don't worry too much about the eyecandy.

**PGeo36** · January 26, 2011, 10:16 PM

Not worth the upgrade imo, but at best you'll have to overclock the processor since it'll be only using 1 core anyway. The 450 1GB should be fine graphics wise as well as the 4 gb of ram.

**irishron** · January 26, 2011, 10:21 PM

You're right, the upgrade is not worth it. The way the game was programmed, I don't know if overclocking would help especially with the unit textures of RTR, RS, and EB for three of the mods that use heavier textures than vanilla.

**mrcrusty** · January 27, 2011, 12:23 AM

Overclocking is about the only thing that will help from a CPU perspective. RTW is old and unoptimised, it won't really take full advantage of superior processor architecture with better IPC, and forget about virtual threading. It likes clock speed. Lots of clock speed. Mr. Dual Core Athlon II x2 255 @ 3.1 Ghz is likely to perform as good or better than Mr. Quad Core i7 930 @ only 2.8 Ghz.

I personally find the notion hard to believe, but RTW is really old and unoptimised and it makes sense from a logical standpoint.