Medieval 2 runs terrible.

[seregrail7]

Got the game the other day, however after about an hour, the world map started to run terrible. So I just restarted the game and all was fine again. However, today right from the start it ran terrible. I've tried putting the settings down as low as they can go and it still runs terrible. I've tried disabling all other background tasks and still no luck. The Battle map has also started to run terrible. I've scanned for viruses and malware, and nothing has turned up.

By Terrible I'm talking about 1 FPS.

Win XP
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
768MB RAM
6600GT 128mb AGP with the latest drivers

[AlfonsoVIII]

Your graphics card is bare minimum, and your XP Athlon seems a little slow, even though its 2.16Ghz, its Socket A.

[Aristocrat]

Turn your settings down (yes the campaign map has settings that can be turned down and/or off), also, what you describe to me (the decrease in performance) screams that you are running of memory.
So disable any superflous background tasks you have running in windows, such as anti-virus, firewalls (which can be a big cause of this I have found...they progressively use more and more memory in certain situations) and other stuff.
Also do some checks for spyware and viruses just in case.

[Chernabog]

Hi,

The CPU should be fine (might slow down on battles with more than two full stacks).

The memory could be a problem depends how hungry windows xp is in the background.

The Gcard is not the quickest but should still handle medium to high @ 1024x768 (maybe just turn off shadows) without any problems.

I can give you two rig examples that can run this game, one on high and one on medium.

My Rig:
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2500+ overclocked )
2GB DDR400 (Generic, CAS3)
Gigabyte NForce2 Ultra Mobo
GW BLISS GS7800+ (Expensive but worth the money )
19inch Widscreen Flatpanel

I can ran max everything at 1440x900 with Large unit sizes. I havent had a battle with more than two full stacks yet however so I might have to tone it down a bit, we shall have to see.

My Friends Rig:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
768MB DDR266 (Generic, CAS2)
MSI Nforce2 Ultra Mobo
ATI 9800 PRO (Softmoded 9800 SE AIW)
19inch CRT

He runs at medium to high at 1024x768, no shadows, aa off and af tri with Large unit sizes. Again, havent seen a bigger than two stack battle yet ...

[seregrail7]

Did half of you not read my entire post? It used to run perfect on medium settings, textures on low obviously, and no shadows at 1280*1024. Then it just started to run really bad. So I switched to the lowest settings, and it ran the exact same way. I even stated I disabled all other background tasks.

[DarK_RTW]

Sounds like something changed in your computer. Spyware and viruses can take up 99% CPU time that would make the game so slow, if not viruses then hardware failure.

[Chernabog]

well if its not nastys or background tasks then im guessing its something overheating.

Your gcard or cpu might have a fail safe on it that when it reaches a certain temperature it will scale the speed back a bit to stop itself getting too hot thus cutting your pc's performance.

Take a look at the various fans in your case and clean off all of the dust from them if there is any and then see what it does.

Alternatively leave the case open and point a big desk fan at it and see if that has any results.

Do any of your other Graphically and CPU intensive games have any problems?

[seregrail7]

I ran Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and it runs fine for me on highish settings. It's just Medieval 2 I'm having trouble with.

[foolio]

what are backround tasks? because im having the same issue, the battles are all choppy PLZ HELP!!!

[justice7]

Change to Shader1 instead of Shader2

It made a WORLD of difference for me. The game was nearly unplayable using Shader2.

I am also running Windows Vista.

Athlon64 3500+
BFG 6800GT 256MB
2x512MB Corsair (Dual Channel DDR400)
320GB SATA II 7200RPM
Creative X-Fi XTremeMusic