Absurdly low FPS on a powerful computer

**Big_Smoke** · April 11, 2013, 09:54 AM

Yes, It's one of those threads about FPS. After lurking on the internet to find a specific solution for my computer, I decided to make a thread.

I have the latest Dell XPS 15. It's specs are far above the recommended ones. I've seen older, less powerful rigs running this game fine at 50-60 FPS, on high and even ultra.

I've settled for a simple High graphic quality. Antialiasing is MAA, shadows are high. All the little boxes are unchecked (distortion, SSAO, V-sync...).

Yet, I only get between 20 and 30 FPS. And it drops at 15-20 FPS when I zoom in on a large melee. It never goes above 35 FPS.

This laptop is capable of running BF3, the Witcher 2 and even more modern, demanding games, in very high, and get solid 60+ FPS. Yet shogun in high or medium won't get past 40 FPS.
THis is quite annoying, especially since Shogun was one of the reasons I bought a new comp to begin with.

Obviously I use the latest stable drivers for every component. I'm on windows 8. I have no overheating problems (it's not hot).

My specs are :

3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3632QM processor
Windows 8, 64-bit, English
Silver Anodized Aluminum and 15.6" FHD 1080p Truelife WLED Display and Skype-Certified HD Webcam
12GB¹ DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
750GB 7200 HDD with 32GB mSATA
Slot Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM

Yes I checked my drivers

So why can't I run this game on high-ultra and have good FPS? Am I the only one?
I will distribute rep for the kind souls who gives some input

**john duca** · April 11, 2013, 10:03 AM

windows could be the problem..look on the forum , i saw some threads about this

**Vioras** · April 11, 2013, 10:38 AM

Install avanced system care or gamebooster and turbo boost or set pc to gaming mode with gamebooster, many useless programms will quit.
And always turn of depth of field, it eats fps.

**AtheistDane** · April 11, 2013, 10:44 AM

The culprit is your graphics card, the GTX640 is not a real gaming card - in fact its even slower than the GTX550ti of the previous series.

The Total War series are very GPU intensive, much more so than the games you mention (BF3, the witcher etc.), those games are more CPU intensive - and you have a good CPU in your laptop. The graphics card really matters if you want good framerates in S2TW, and on top of this all the Total War games are really badly optimized when it comes to multithreading ie. it doesn't use more than 1-1½ core (thats why close-up melee is so laggy - everyone experiences this).

If you still have the opportunity to give the laptop back to the shop you bought it from, you should really do that and get a laptop with a GTX660/660ti instead.

**Vioras** · April 11, 2013, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by AtheistDane

The culprit is your graphics card, the GTX640 is not a real gaming card - in fact its even slower than the GTX550ti of the previous series.

The Total War series are very GPU intensive, much more so than the games you mention (BF3, the witcher etc.), those games are more CPU intensive - and you have a good CPU in your laptop. The graphics card really matters if you want good framerates in S2TW, and on top of this all the Total War games are really badly optimized when it comes to multithreading ie. it doesn't use more than 1-1½ core (thats why close-up melee is so laggy - everyone experiences this).

If you still have the opportunity to give the laptop back to the shop you bought it from, you should really do that and get a laptop with a GTX660/660ti instead.

That's wrong Shogun 2 is more cpu intensive then gpu intensive, but he is right it's the graphic card.
I have seen some benchmarks and the fps of this card at medium 1920x1080 settings no aa should be 25-30 and on highest settings 1920x1080 4xaa not more then 11 fps

**Big_Smoke** · April 11, 2013, 10:35 PM

Originally Posted by Vioras

That's wrong Shogun 2 is more cpu intensive then gpu intensive, but he is right it's the graphic card.
I have seen some benchmarks and the fps of this card at medium 1920x1080 settings no aa should be 25-30 and on highest settings 1920x1080 4xaa not more then 11 fps

Benchmark can be inaccurate. 25-30 FPS on highest is what I get with my 3 year old father's computer, who is on all point inferior to my computer (including the graphic card).

And I know many people who have 512 MB graphic cards, lower ranked then mine on benchmark test, who run this game 40-50FPS on high.

Also is 60 FPS really smoother, or is it unnoticeable on the scale of a total war battle? Is it as obvious as a first person shooter? In a FPS I can't play anything lower than 60FPS because of the huge difference. Is it the difference the same here?

**Altimis** · April 11, 2013, 11:00 PM

How many troops you try to run? 10k? 20k?

The more troops computer loading, the more computer needs calculating power to calculating the troops loaded on screen.

**crunchyfrog** · April 12, 2013, 06:04 PM

Originally Posted by Big_Smoke

shadows are high.

You're GPU is not very fast, shadows is a very hard on the GPU. Try turning it down.

**AngryTitusPullo** · April 13, 2013, 08:10 AM

It's a powerful computer yes but unfortunately not a powerful gaming computer. From what I know mobile GPU perform much less that the equivalent number for desktop. GT640 certainly is no gaming GPU.