Is there a machine in existence that runs this game well?

**Baldwin of Jerusalem** · February 17, 2013, 04:15 AM

Ive been trying to play this game lately and whilst it loads up ok and does what its supposed to, I am far from happy with general smoothness on the battlefield map. I notice that even with unit sizes set to normal and most of the graphical enhancements turned of performance and animation fluidity is rather jerky especially in large melees. Is it just my system or does everyone else find this as well?

My specs:
Windows 7 64 bit/Home edition Sp1
RAM 4GB
CPU AMD Athlon II x 2 /3.0Ghz
GPU Nvidia GTX 570
PSU Corsair 650w 52a

This graphics card in particular cost me a fortune and its a real pain that its not powering this game the way I want it to.

**=Vastator=** · February 17, 2013, 05:07 AM

Originally Posted by Baldwin of Jerusalem

Ive been trying to play this game lately and whilst it loads up ok and does what its supposed to, I am far from happy with general smoothness on the battlefield map. I notice that even with unit sizes set to normal and most of the graphical enhancements turned of performance and animation fluidity is rather jerky especially in large melees. Is it just my system or does everyone else find this as well?

My specs:
Windows 7 64 bit/Home edition Sp1
RAM 4GB
CPU AMD Athlon II x 2 /3.0Ghz
GPU Nvidia GTX 570
PSU Corsair 650w 52a

This graphics card in particular cost me a fortune and its a real pain that its not powering this game the way I want it to.

Well, your GPU is really good and should run the game very well, but not with that old CPU. Your CPU is seriously bottle-necking your GPU. Maybe you should have changed your processor first...

**Baldwin of Jerusalem** · February 17, 2013, 05:48 AM

Really? Thats it is it...I did look at changing the CPU but it looked like a nightmare what with BIOS updates and all that. Thanks for the info ayway.

Could anyone suggest a decent replacement that would be easy to plug in and go with? Would a Phenom II x 4 960T be much better and would I have to do a BIOS update?

**Baldwin of Jerusalem** · February 20, 2013, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by =Vastator=

Well, your GPU is really good and should run the game very well, but not with that old CPU. Your CPU is seriously bottle-necking your GPU. Maybe you should have changed your processor first...

Vastator,
This was a very shrewd observation. I acted on your advice and upgraded to a Phenom II 960T and the difference is like night and day.

**fy9090** · February 17, 2013, 10:02 AM

brother, don't waste time on your AMD cpu. Change it to i7. yap, i7, and you will see the difference.

**Charsi** · February 17, 2013, 01:15 PM

I'm running fine on a AMD FX 8120 + Radeon 7870 just peachy... but I would recommend Intel i5 or AMD 8350 (or better). I kind of regret the 8120 but that's what budget dictated and the game still runs at max everything fine. Just has a bit of trouble with massive battles.

Chances are to upgrade CPU's you'll have to upgrade motherboards.. which means you start getting a bit pricey.

Upgrading to 8gb of RAM is something you might be able to swing pretty cheaply and it would help.

**Shea O'Gorath** · February 17, 2013, 02:32 PM

Be careful going from AMD to Intel. Not all CPU fit the same slot.

**Xyloto** · February 18, 2013, 03:33 PM

Im with an i3 and hd 7850 gpu, and can run it fine on ultra.

**Altimis** · February 18, 2013, 04:12 PM

Your CPU is weak, that's obviously. CPU running at 3 Ghz is just not fast enough. Try overclock CPU is the way to go or buy a new one, overclock might worth a shot [make sure you know what you doing, just not do it recklessly]

You have the same VGA as mine and its not different from HD7970 and 680x2 SLi and then I sold it and back to 570, all I can tell you is its not really different at all.

So far, just your CPU.

**InferiorBeing** · February 18, 2013, 08:48 PM

The Total War-games are very CPU-intensive. Much more so than an FPS, which are generally more GPU-intensive. Your computer isn't really optimized to run Shogun 2 all that well, unfortunately. It could probably run a game like, say, Battlefield 3 quite well, though.

My specs are two "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680"s in SLI, 16GB RAM, "Intel Core i7-3960X", 64-BIT "Windows 7 Ultimate", "Creative SB X-FI Titanium", with the game running from an SSD-harddrive, and the game runs flawlessly with everything maxed-out, even when zoomed in on large mêlées. While my computer is generally very strong (and embarrassingly expensive), I genuinely think the majority of the good performance can be attributed to the "Intel Core i7-3960X" and the amount of RAM I have. The GPU - not so much.

**Altimis** · February 18, 2013, 10:43 PM

The reason the game is CPU intense is because the game engine also not optimized for multi-core use too.

That's mean its will usage only 1 core (as peoples believe so and test) so the faster CPU have, the better FPS you can milk it out, also the larger CPU cache improved the game FPS too because its can faster calculate.

**InferiorBeing** · February 21, 2013, 12:35 PM

Originally Posted by Altimis

The reason the game is CPU intense is because the game engine also not optimized for multi-core use too.

That's mean its will usage only 1 core (as peoples believe so and test) so the faster CPU have, the better FPS you can milk it out, also the larger CPU cache improved the game FPS too because its can faster calculate.

I still think that's damn inexcusable.

**W4lt3r** · February 19, 2013, 08:40 AM

My build before -
AMD Phenom II 965 black edition 4-core
GTX 480
8GB DDR3 RAM @1600MHZ (Mushkin. 4x2GB sticks)
Asus M5A78L motherboard
Can't recall the manufacturer of my PSU and the harddrives, but 2x 1.5TB basic HDD drives @ 7200 rpm.

Changed my motherboard to a Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H and a i7 3770K (bought a custom closed-system water cooler for the CPU)
Saw a drastic change in FPS. Was easily able to have 4 full armies on maximum settings with no noticeable FPS loss nor performance drop. While with my 965 I was having some serious FPS and performance loss with just two full armies in a engagement.

So there's great difference between AMD and Intel processors. If you plan to hop the brands you'll HAVE to change your motherboard as well, since Intel's have their own sockets and quite likely won't fit in AMD designed sockets.

**Baldwin of Jerusalem** · February 19, 2013, 12:11 PM

Thanks for all of the responses. As it happens I picked up a Phenom II x 4 3.0Ghz 960T from ebay and installed it. So far so good...my GPU seems to be doing its thing as intended and Ive seen a huge increase in fps on the battlemap. I think its down to the L3 cache which the new CPU has. Whatever the reason, I can now play the game as it was intended.

I could have gone with a whole new intel system and a GTX 690 but the CPU upgrade cost me 70 quid so for now Im happy.

**Jedi** · February 19, 2013, 04:52 PM

You might want to look in depth at windows 8 as well to squeeze more performance.I saw benchmarks where AMD got good multicore boosts in games and benchmarks from windows 8 compared to windows 7 but Intel stayed the same.

No one was quite sure why or how but it was highly recomended to get win 8 with AMD.Weither or not this applies only to thier new CPU's or applies to the older phenoms is something you will have to google and find the benchmark.

Fiddle with ram also.Use the inbuilt cpu benchmark to see if a slight ram or cpu OC makes small or large differences.

**Baldwin of Jerusalem** · February 20, 2013, 11:16 AM

Interesting...I'll check that out. Thanks

**Altimis** · February 20, 2013, 12:20 PM

Its should, most strategy game that rendering many units on screen with high complex animations like Total War games demand faster CPU to make things smoothly.

Especially when the game rendering so huge number of soldiers on screen.

**Baldwin of Jerusalem** · February 20, 2013, 04:36 PM

Well, yeah its both as I understand it. The CPU and GPU are working in tandem to support each other. Neither one will perform to its optimum without an equally sophisticated opposite.