FPS & System Setup Assistance

[Constantine II "the Great"]

Well, I've finally got RSII and have an issue most of you might have heard of. I have pretty decent FPS issues with a video card that should be able to handle the game easily. I tweaked the settings already to no visible avail. (I am also checking the Resolution as we speak).

Lag wise, it's continuous from the start of the battle. Though I will note every 10 minutes of laggy battling it will run normally for a very very brief time (10 seconds maybe).

Onto the main point, what kind of system do you all run? Any special setting you guys do? Should I buy a new video card? etc etc.

My current setup is:
Windows 7 64-bit
Radeon 4870 1GB
8GB of Ram
AMD Phenom 2 Dual Core
500GB HD

Feedback is greatly appreciated, the more in-depth the better.

[Ferdiad]

Everything except AA maxed out(AA is broken). I Force AA through the Control Panel. FPS is pretty much always over 40 even with all the bells and whistles of RS II on.

Rig

OS:Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
CPU: i7 930 @4.4ghz
MOBO:Asus Rampage II Extreme
GPU:Radeon 5970 xfx Black Edition
RAM: 6GB Corsair Dominator
HD:Samsung F3 1TB
COOLER:Corsair H70 watercooler

[Smerka]

Well I got
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
GTX 460 1GB
8GB of Ram
i3 540 Dual Core
1TB HD

I run rome 40-60 FPS and the occasional dip to 30 when the AI orders a full stack at the same time. I play older games which is why I have a dual core especially for SimCity 4.

[century x]

Alright your computers are awesome but it means nothing to RTW. It sees only 1 GB of ram and 1 processor core.

Do you have unit shaders on?

[DedlySerious]

Alright your computers are awesome but it means nothing to RTW. It sees only 1 GB of ram and 1 processor core.

Unfortunately true for the most part. but there are ways round certain things

Anyways
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
CPU: AMD PHENOM II quad core 955 BE o/c 3.8 GHz
GPU: MATRIX GTX580 Platinum Edition
MB: Crosshair Formula IV
RAM: 8GB G skill RipjawsX
SSD: OCZ Agility 3 60GB
HD: 3x 1TB western digital caviar black

[Deberoth]

I have an iMac 21'. I run Windows 7 Ulitimate 64 bit on it.

OS:Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
CPU: Dual Core @3.06 (2 cores)
GPU: GeForce 9400 (256 mb)
RAM: 4GB
HD: 500GB

I play on high settings with no lag. Only when there are more than 3 stacks involved in a battle.

[century x]

Unfortunately true for the most part. but there are ways round certain things

Yea I know all about that. That is why I have implemented that into my RTW

[RafoutRoud]

Nerd attack.

[Smerka]

Alright your computers are awesome but it means nothing to RTW. It sees only 1 GB of ram and 1 processor core.

Do you have unit shaders on?

You have to play with unit shaders on otherwise the game crashes when you zoom in on roman legions in battle.

[dvk901]

You have to have unit shaders on or RS2 will crash with almost all units. It's something about how the models work, I think, so it must always be on.

My system is a bit older than most:

Windows7 32Bit SP1
Pentium4 3.00GHz
ATI Radeon 4650 1GB Memory
3GB Ram

My savior here is that, as said, RTW only uses one core, so that 3.0GHz core speed is good.
And the 1GB of video memory is great also...best card I've ever had to date.
I also have a excellent ASUS motherboard, so for it's age, my system was the best of its time.

However, there are issues with almost all PCs that can\will determine how well RTW will play.....no matter how good your system is.
Some people with modern powerful PCs complain that it plays poorly...others say it plays great. You just have to play with settings and find whatworks best on your own PC.

One thing I have noted throughout my RTW days is that although my PC 'could' support 'Huge' unit settings (barely), no system I've ever had really did it very well. So I play on 'Large', which works quite well for me. It stands to reason that this would be, since Huge settings double the amount of units rendered on your screen...and even if you're far enough back that the game is using 'sprites', you still have double the amount of them. This, combined with the high resolution tree models and ground textures (heck, even the tree sprites are hand made high definition), can make for a rather 'laggy' experience if you try and push the bubble.

So, I would say it is best to turn Anti-aliasing off (never thougnt much of it anyway), play with Large unit settings, and set grass to low or medium. Vegetation detail can be high or medium....all this does is back off on the distance before the trees turn to sprites.

Oddly enough, it seems to me (in my tests with my system anyway) that the unit size has more effect on FPS in battles than anything else. To back this up, I had set Vegetation at one time to a setting that was, in effect, 'infinite'......meaning that the trees never used sprites, and the trees you were seeing were the actual models themselves for as far as you could see. It looked really great! The High Resolution vegetation option offered with RS2 is that option. The kicker here is that the trees are not 'moving'....and that's where you get the FPS killer. The more units and things you have moving around, the more stress on FPS.

[Smerka]

You have to have unit shaders on or RS2 will crash with almost all units. It's something about how the models work, I think, so it must always be on.

Thats weird best I remember playing with unit shaders off until I hit the reforms then it kept crashing when I zoomed in on my units. I even played a campaign with Macedon with it off and I played until the Roman started attacking and the the crashes began in battles against Rome. Anyway no harm done by turning it on.

[Ferdiad]

Go play Consoles then.

[Smerka]

Go play Consoles then.

lol.

To the OP try reinstalling RomeTW it helped me when I upgraded my PC. Your specs should be able to be able to handle the game as my system and yours are close in perforrmance. Either that or take Ferdiad's advice and go play COD.

[Ferdiad]

My post was directed at Red, seeing as he doesn't like talk of PC specs he should go play a Console.

[RafoutRoud]

Again.

Nerd attack.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

For the OP...

I did a lot of testing a while ago and now have a dedicated RTW PC:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=530912

Most modern PCs will be fine, except for one thing - processor speed. Because 'modern' PC games can take advantage of the Graphics cards on-board chip and memory, they will. Multi-core processors, particularly AMD ones I've noticed, therefore run at slower speeds, but perform well because now Windows can use multi-processors and all the available memory.

However, RTW will only use one Core and only 1Mb of memory (so a WinXP 2Gb and 8xAGP chip like I have (older, tweaked PC) is fine). I am using an old Intel 3GHz (true) chip - and that's why it's fine for me now. Anything at 2.6GHz and below is just too slow.

Hope that helps?

[Ferdiad]

If you have a quad core thats below 3GHZ you should defo OC it, its a waste not to.

[Ybbon]

If you have a quad core thats below 3GHZ you should defo OC it, its a waste not to.

Well that depends on whether it can be OC'ed, if your mobo supports it, if you have the cooling for the extra heat produced and the CPU to give the necessary power... I have a quad under 3.0 (well 2.9GHz so just under granted)

However, to OP, if you want more tech detail, ask in the basement, you'll get decent info on what may work for your system and whether anything may need upgrading. You should get more info than you need there, it won't be specific to RS, but they know their h/w specs.

[xXEsotericXx]

My rig is just.

WINDOWS 7 - 32BIT- SP1

AMD dual core 4400+ 2.2 mhz

3 GB Ram (DDR1)

9800GT 1MB video memory

i run the game smoothly, all maxed, sinds the game doesnt need a stupit 2k euro rig, and all mmo's i play max too :]

[xXEsotericXx]

DELETE