Build a PC for Rome 2 / Hardware Recommendations and Advice Thread

[Bolkonsky]

Leap Motion's better but consistent distribution is almost impossible. You can't rely on someone having a leap motion, whereas if all monitors become touch, developers of new software and OS will know that all new productions on the market will be touch. Plus, people are already familiar with touch screens on tablets. Support for Leap Motion will not be very good, if past market trends are any indicators, sadly.

The whole touch/waving your hands around is a huge gimmick anyways. They've already hooked computers up to quadriplegics and effectively used "brain control" and the Galaxy S4 will have eye control, will it not? Those two things are the future (brain control moreso than eye control, but eye control is cheaper and easier to implement so it will come and go before brain control) and the whole touch era will eventually become a forgotten fad.

actually if you read what I said you cant mix different vrams i.e 2/4gb. am not dissing you (no need to go schoolyard on me), just correcting you.

SLI lets you. It just uses the lowest common denominator. So if you have a 2GB and a 4GB, it limits the 4GB to 2GB. Just because everything has to be mirrored.

[Totalheadache]

Leap Motion's better but consistent distribution is almost impossible. You can't rely on someone having a leap motion, whereas if all monitors become touch, developers of new software and OS will know that all new productions on the market will be touch. Plus, people are already familiar with touch screens on tablets. Support for Leap Motion will not be very good, if past market trends are any indicators, sadly.

The whole touch/waving your hands around is a huge gimmick anyways. They've already hooked computers up to quadriplegics and effectively used "brain control" and the Galaxy S4 will have eye control, will it not? Those two things are the future (brain control moreso than eye control, but eye control is cheaper and easier to implement so it will come and go before brain control) and the whole touch era will eventually become a forgotten fad.


SLI lets you. It just uses the lowest common denominator. So if you have a 2GB and a 4GB, it limits the 4GB to 2GB. Just because everything has to be mirrored.

actually am not sure about this...I read quite a few conflicting posts on the subject. some people think it's as you say and others say dont mix 2gb and 4gb full stop as it wont work.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1647854&mpage=1 (i have seen threads where people say u can sli 2gb and 4gb and only 2gb is used).

either way it's pointless..

p.s unless u have first hand experience or know of someone...i'd bet crazyeyesreaper knows for sure..

[stradar1]

I already have my pc built for Rome 2 total war

[General George S. Patton]

i think that for total war u could put the touchscreen flat on a table and us it as sort of a touch and drag battle command thing, that might be cool

[Biggus Splenus]

Yeah. Some people are against touch interfaces, and therefore call it rubbish and will try to convince everyone else not to get it. I like touch surfaces, I think they are much better to use then a mouse for just general purpose browsing, but I wont advise anyone to buy one at this time because they are just too damn expensive right now, which is why I don't have one yet.

[gargarensi]

Hey guys, I'm putting together a new build. Can anyone give me insight how this will run current games and the likelihood of running R2TW on high or very high

Powercolor 7870 MYST edition
Crucial 256 GB SSD
i5 3570k
8 GB DDR3 RAM

[Sharpe]

This is all so complicated.

[Jedi]

A bit unless you keep up to date ^^


That 144hz screen aint that bad though but if it is for rome and only rome it is a bad choice.Those monitors like 144fps ALL the time and if you try running sub 70fps on them it is apparantly not very nice and not smooth? For a FPS game where aim matters like COD,L4D and reducing general screen smearing and blurring on LCD then it might be worth it but for RTS you are better served by a DELL IPS screen and running at 40-60fps with VSYNC capping your fps to 60.

I looked at one myself and the best is the samsung 120hz 23" but they are EOL and cant be bought anymore.There is very little difference in 144fps and 120fps.There is a huge difference in the hardware needed to stay above 120fps in games though.You need 7970's and 4.6ghz+ I7 cpu's for that in BF3.

Rome II on the soon to be released Dell U3013 (march 2013) or U2711 is as good as it gets unless you can afford a 4K res LCD.


http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u3011.htm Go to the motion test section and compare the images with the 2012 dell screen and the 120hz samsung.This gives an idea of how an image looks when moving.I see the two heads instead of one as there is a trail and it gives me headaches and what not but the image quality is so inferior to IPS that i put up with eye issue's and headaches.

[Totalheadache]

A bit unless you keep up to date ^^


That 144hz screen aint that bad though but if it is for rome and only rome it is a bad choice.Those monitors like 144fps ALL the time and if you try running sub 70fps on them it is apparantly not very nice and not smooth? For a FPS game where aim matters like COD,L4D and reducing general screen smearing and blurring on LCD then it might be worth it but for RTS you are better served by a DELL IPS screen and running at 40-60fps with VSYNC capping your fps to 60.

I looked at one myself and the best is the samsung 120hz 23" but they are EOL and cant be bought anymore.There is very little difference in 144fps and 120fps.There is a huge difference in the hardware needed to stay above 120fps in games though.You need 7970's and 4.6ghz+ I7 cpu's for that in BF3.

Rome II on the soon to be released Dell U3013 (march 2013) or U2711 is as good as it gets unless you can afford a 4K res LCD.


http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_u3011.htm Go to the motion test section and compare the images with the 2012 dell screen and the 120hz samsung.This gives an idea of how an image looks when moving.I see the two heads instead of one as there is a trail and it gives me headaches and what not but the image quality is so inferior to IPS that i put up with eye issue's and headaches.

^approve. am waiting for a 120hz IPS panel if it's gonna be made (hopefully). will be expensive but my current benq ips still looks good 5yrs on...

@prometheus 32 gb ram is overkill, amount of ram makes very little difference to framerate. perhaps 5fps with higher ram speeds + 64 bit optimised game.

framerate is all overclocked cpu+right gpu for the right screen size and an "optimised" game. sadly total wars arent.

i had a quick flirt with shogun2 the other day and couldnt stand the still slightly choppy campaign screen and then the ever present melee lag when i zoomed in. also only a few turns i had some units with pathfinding issues. am still playing napoleon which i think is a gem!

[Jedi]

^approve. am waiting for a 120hz IPS panel if it's gonna be made (hopefully). will be expensive but my current benq ips still looks good 5yrs on...

@prometheus 32 gb ram is overkill, amount of ram makes very little difference to framerate. perhaps 5fps with higher ram speeds + 64 bit optimised game.

framerate is all overclocked cpu+right gpu for the right screen size and an "optimised" game. sadly total wars arent.

i had a quick flirt with shogun2 the other day and couldnt stand the still slightly choppy campaign screen and then the ever present melee lag when i zoomed in. also only a few turns i had some units with pathfinding issues. am still playing napoleon which i think is a gem!

I would hazard a guess the campaign screen issue might just be 60hz.... who knows if 120hz would eliminate it but there is actual ips screens that do 120hz but they are grey imports from korea and no one knows how long it will last and the stock is incredibly rare.Maybe 10 screens per year? www.120hz.net

I must get it on again as i aint ran shogun 2 on my 3570k and 2133mhz ram but napoleon slightly lags with melee also.Although i run with 400 men per unit on ultra SSAO off i had to uninstall it due to the AI.They simply come at me in one single line with 400 men per unit and its awful.I can pretty much line the infantry up and go afk as long as my melee stats are superior to thiers.That is the only time i ever struggle is when thier lines converge in the middle.

Ive even watched them flanked by a second army of militia and start turning and going complete spastic on me while im shooting at them with volleys lol

[PROMETHEUS ts]

What I would like is that CA focus on getting the pc the use of 64 bit so to use more ram ....


Unfortunately seems they didn't want to implement it in their game saying that most players do still run on 32 bit computers....


I am very disappointed about it to not be able to use my 32 gb of ram ...

[A Barbarian]

@Totalheadache
Using the framerate limiter in MSI Afterburner made scrolling the campaign maps of Empire, Napoleon and S2 really smooth. Try it.

[Totalheadache]

@Totalheadache
Using the framerate limiter in MSI Afterburner made scrolling the campaign maps of Empire, Napoleon and S2 really smooth. Try it.

mmm interesting never tried it. thing is napoleon runs almost perfect for me re the campaign map, it was only Empire+shogun2 that was choppy.

tbh am done with all total wars save Napoleon and then Rome2. maybe i'll get tempted to play a mod like third age again (that was bloody amazing).

p.s new pc toys incoming think i might update the thread in the basement with some pics. trying out a new res+pump from Alphacool.

[A Barbarian]

I am waiting for the 2nd 7970 which I ordered at the weekend when I found a way to make more room for the card. The one GPU fan is now almost right on top of the GPU which I thought wouldn't work at all because of the restricted airflow but some stress testing showed only a pretty small difference in temperatures which was surprising.

I hope to do some testing related to the frame latency / micro stutters issue, especially regarding TW games ofc . That topic adds a whole new dimension to GPU performance since it shows that average/minimum framerates are only show half of the truth. Another read: hardwarecanucks.com nvidia-gtx-titan-vs-sli-crossfire

[Jopel]

Last week my PB278Q arrived, somewhat early for Rome II but in all honesty my sole reason why I bought it

[Biggus Splenus]

Last week my PB278Q arrived, somewhat early for Rome II but in all honesty my sole reason why I bought it

I can tell by your signature that your a bit of an ASUS lover

How has your experience been with other Z77 motherboards? I have generally figured the Sabertooth is not worth the money it costs, also how is the thermals with that board? Can it actually survive without installing the little fans on it?

I'm getting a new board, and at the moment I'm considering MSI's mpower. I was looking at ASUS's sabertooth, but, well, its features just didn't seem to match its price. I am also still considering ASUS's Maximus V Gene, but I'm not a fan of mATX boards.

Is there a reason you went with Sabertooth instead of Maximus V Gene?

[Jopel]

I can tell by your signature that your a bit of an ASUS lover

How has your experience been with other Z77 motherboards? I have generally figured the Sabertooth is not worth the money it costs, also how is the thermals with that board? Can it actually survive without installing the little fans on it?

I'm getting a new board, and at the moment I'm considering MSI's mpower. I was looking at ASUS's sabertooth, but, well, its features just didn't seem to match its price. I am also still considering ASUS's Maximus V Gene, but I'm not a fan of mATX boards.

Is there a reason you went with Sabertooth instead of Maximus V Gene?

And lover of Corsair The main reason why I went with Sabertooth instead of Maximus (or any ROG-mobo) was the clean and mean look
It actually does its job fine without the little fans on it (looks ugly with them installed), although it gets some degrees higher.
I never got any experience with other Z77's (I went from a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 with PHII 955 to this).

You aren't gonna waith for Haswell and/or Z87? I was thinking of getting a new board and CPU some months before october

[Totalheadache]

I am waiting for the 2nd 7970 which I ordered at the weekend when I found a way to make more room for the card. The one GPU fan is now almost right on top of the GPU which I thought wouldn't work at all because of the restricted airflow but some stress testing showed only a pretty small difference in temperatures which was surprising.

I hope to do some testing related to the frame latency / micro stutters issue, especially regarding TW games ofc . That topic adds a whole new dimension to GPU performance since it shows that average/minimum framerates are only show half of the truth. Another read: hardwarecanucks.com nvidia-gtx-titan-vs-sli-crossfire

can cleary see those "spikes" over the ideal 40...with the xfire setups. def shows single powerfull gpu has a more consistent framerate.

thats said am sure your 7970's gonna be kick ass, just the odd game here and there not playing ball. tomb raider is def a game i would have loved to have played on a xfire setup completely maxed out..as it was I had to tweak a few settings.

[Biggus Splenus]

Well, we are alike I love ASUS and Corsair too, and if a competitor has a better solution to them, well, it needs to be a lot better for me to even consider getting it over their own (which never happens anyway, ASUS and Corsair are stupendous ). The Sabertooth is definitely very clean looking, but I'm not sure if that makes up for the Maximus' superiority. The Sabertooth does have a few convenience features that Maximus doesn't, like the USB 3.0 header, I love the horizontal ones.

I'm not sure if I'll be waiting for Haswell I already bought a H100i, and I'm not sure if that will fit the new 1550 socket. If I find out that it will any time soon, then I'll wait, if it doesn't, then I'll make a PC with the best of 1155

Still waiting for DDR4 and GDDR6 over here though.... apparently both are less than 2 years off from release (warning, this is Splenyi speculation, reader discretion is advised)

[Jopel]

Well, we are alike I love ASUS and Corsair too, and if a competitor has a better solution to them, well, it needs to be a lot better for me to even consider getting it over their own (which never happens anyway, ASUS and Corsair are stupendous ). The Sabertooth is definitely very clean looking, but I'm not sure if that makes up for the Maximus' superiority. The Sabertooth does have a few convenience features that Maximus doesn't, like the USB 3.0 header, I love the horizontal ones.

I'm not sure if I'll be waiting for Haswell I already bought a H100i, and I'm not sure if that will fit the new 1550 socket. If I find out that it will any time soon, then I'll wait, if it doesn't, then I'll make a PC with the best of 1155

Still waiting for DDR4 and GDDR6 over here though.... apparently both are less than 2 years off from release (warning, this is Splenyi speculation, reader discretion is advised)

The H100i will be compatible with the new socket, since 1150 will have the same space as the 1155
Well the difference between ddr3 and ddr4 will have (besides the synthetic tests of course) not that much difference in r/l the first years my guess.