New graphic card, low resolution user interface, bad performance

[nejcek]

I recently changed my old graphic card (Winfast PX6600TD) with new (MSI NX7600), primarily because I plan to have two LCD monitors (not yet). But also in mind to play with huge units in RTW.

the problem:
- if I try to use better resolution on campaign map (1280x1024, that is the best resolution posible by my LCD monitor), the unit cards and building cards looks ugly, i.e. like when you scale low resolution picture. They get just a little better when I maximize antialiasing. Is this normal? Is RTW graphic made for lower resolution and just scaled for higher resolution?
- I tried to play battles with huge units but even if I use all other settings on low (with resolution around 1024x768), units movement was very slow (even with normal game speed, double are triple speed was useless).
Do you think that is it, and my PC is not able to produce enough computing power to play with huge units smoothly.

hardware:

AMD Athlon 3000
MBo: Asus A8N-SLI
GPU: MSI NX7600GT, 256mb, ddr3
ram: 2GB ddr400mhz (4x512)

software:

WindowsXP pro, SP2
I am using: firewall, Ad-aware, Spyboot, antivirus software, diskkeeper, autm.upd


What I already did:

reinstal RTW and BI with all updates (first I was playing with Goths mod and thought the problem was there)
reinstal MBO and GPU drivers (tried few of them) and I did firs uninstal old drivers manually
clean registry

This is my primary computer which I use a lot for work, so I think am making good care of it, but I am not playing a lot of games so some advices for what to look after would be very appreciated. Yes, I also searh a lot of threads, but not all.

[Aristocrat]

Ok,
First things first, the unit can building cards are made for 1024x768 resolution (I think...could be 800 by 600). So the higher the resolution above this the more distorted they look, so if this bothers you set the campaign map resolution at 1024x768.
Secondly, how many men were on the battlefield...regardless of how good your computer is the RTW engine struggles after a certain point to run battles smoothly...your computer could perhaps get 12000ish, but your cpu may be holding you back a little (unless you've overclocked it, which btw Athlon3000's are generally fantastic at...and your motherboard has overclocking program that makes it easy to overclock up to 10%....which is about as good as Asus boards get these days).

Of course it could be due to your settings, have you got your video settings for Anti-Aliasing, etc, set as "application controlled" in the NVIDIA control panel or at a set (high?) rate. Anti-Aliasing and Antriscopic filtering can be framerate killers so AA at 2x and AF at 8x are the max I generally use (varies from game to game...on F.E.A.R I set mine to maximum).

On drivers, download a free program called Driver Cleaner (just google it...Im on dialup atm so no linky from me as Im lazy) and after uninstalling your video card drivers through the 'Add/Remove programs' option from the windows control panel system menu, use Driver Cleaner and remove NVIDIA Graphics drivers (trust me, its easy to use. easier to use than it is for my to type it).
Then install the newest NVIDIA drivers out, I am not sure what they are now...I assume they 84.xx now...possibly 85.xx. (Download the drivers before uninstalling the old ones to make it easier I guess).

[nejcek]

I forget to mention: bad performance is when playing with huge units and full armies on both sides. Especialy if I'm going throu the city gates with my army or when my foot soldiers are moving around in shield wall.

As it seems, regardles on my GPU, I am limited with my CPU and game engine.

I allready downloaded Driver Cleaner, I've got latest nonbeta drivers from guru3d (8.4.56) so I will try another clean instal of drivers.

Thanks a lot.

[Hadrian]

Excellent, excellent advice from Pompey! I agree with all his recommendations.Good detail.I like that.
The processor appears to be your weakest link but RTW should be very playable on that system, especially if everything is set to low except unit size.The number of men,anti-alaising and resolution are the three biggest FPS killers.
Try no AA at all on 1024x768 for battles.Game speed settings will not help FPS issues so I would suggest leaving that on "normal".
The latest WHQL Drivers out for nVidia is the 84.21 version.I'm using the 84.56 "beta" drivers and they're stable.If your using 84.56, they're not the problem.Maybe you can try to eliminate non necessary programs in your startup menu?
Walls,bridges,etc, can sometimes cause lags in battle.If your system is lagging in the middle of a field,thats another issue.The card graphics do fall apart on higher resolutions,some worse than others.

Ah! You've got 4 dimms installed! I didn't see that at first!The AMD processor isn't gonna like that at all! The x64 memory controller built into the processor is struggling with all 4 dimm slots being filled! It doesn't matter how much RAM it is,the Athlon CPU's memory controller has a known problem dealing with 4 dimms.
Also,because of the CPU,if all 4 dimm slots are filled with RAM that has double-sided x16 memory chips or has 128MB memory chips(which I think most new DDR400(PC3200)Dual Channel Kits are),then the Asus mainboard will struggle to support the RAM as well,doubling the problem!
Sometimes a BIOS will detact a compatability issue and reset settings like the Command Rate,etc, slowing down the memory process in an effort to enable it to still function.Thus you get crappy performance!
Have you just purchased more dimms or upgraded to newer RAM? If you have,the extra 2 dimms might very well be your problem....

[Incinerate_IV]

I agree with Hadrian, remove 2 of thost 512 sticks and see what happens.

[nejcek]

I It is true I just upgraded from 2x512 to 4x512 ram. Maybe I will try and remove two of them.
Otherwise it is like this:
I can play with large units and all other settings on high, everthing is ok
- as soon as I move on huge units I also get lags during the batle: at walls breach, while moving whole armise throu the gates, when both armies are running at each others etc.
It is always like this. I both new comp and didn't get for maximum performance, becusa I speculate about upgrading ram and GPU later. Then I found that I am limited too much with things I got from the beginning.

And your advices I quite helpful. I seems even after ten years of using computer I need to learn a lot (heh, maybe too much).

[Aristocrat]

Siege battles are notorious fps killers, simply because there is so much more on screen, and also because of the amount of things your cpu must do, including pathfinding, physics, animations, etc. However, your system *should be able to handle 2 full armies in a city battle, mine does it with everything maxed out and the battle runs smoothly. (I have 1Gb ram, AMD 3500 at 2.96ghz, and a 6800GT which is also overclocked).

As as been said, try limiting the number of windows background tasks (and services) running at the same time as the game, there are a lot of useless ones that are really useless to most people. Setting these to manual in the administrative tools section of windows generally means they won't start when windows does, but will when you actively start up some program that requires them.

And finally, as Hadrian said, AMD cpu's do not perform as well with all the ram slots of the motherboard filled up, try removing 1gb and running the other gb in dual channel, just to see what happens.
Also, if you have an overly large Page File, try setting it to about 512mb.

[Incinerate_IV]

I am using: firewall, Ad-aware, Spyboot, antivirus software, diskkeeper, autm.upd

I hope you are not running all these resources hogging programs at the same time! Always run only 1 anti-virus program at a time, if you run more than 1 they might conflict with each other and cause more harm than good.