WHAT THE HELLL!!!!? Empire Total War + 1GB 4870 + Phenom II X4 955 ~ 3.2ghz

UKFX

UKFX

UKFX

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25 Aug 2009
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Specs above:

On ULTRA I can play this game at my native resolution of 1680x1050. Phenom II X4 955 3.2Ghz, Crosshair III Formula iRoG mobo, Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz DDR3, 1010wpsu, Windows 7 home Premium 64 bit, 1gb XFX 4870 GDDR5 and it runs good.

Now the problem I turned Xfire on an left it... I started up the game and didn't realise it was on... I got in to my first, HUGE battle. But this was before deployment. Niagara fort or something had to be taken so I was going to do that, but before deployment xfire is reporting 15fps. An yes, it feels like 15fps. Remember this is before the battle. So I spend a FULL hour changing settings. Resolution, graphics/textures, AA, AF, effects like HDR an Volumetrics. Nothing. All the same, between 11-22 ish fps. Tried with Vsync on an off. Everything in ATI CCC 10.2 is set as default except OPENGL Triple Buffering is on, but only takes effect when the game runs Vsync.

WHY is this the case? What the hell is with this games horrid optimization? I got this game today for £15 and I feel it is hardly work £5 for the shabby performance. My computer should be able to scale this well, but why on earth is there no FPS difference with lower resolutions (from 1680x1050 down to 1280x1024 with med settings, low shadows, some effects disabled etc)?

Doesn't make sense.

I've had this rig 6 months. I can play ALL games on high settings. I get wicked FPS on the BC2 betta at my native res, an yes I know a lots of soldiers need to be scaled but it seems something is going wrong or something is not being used correctly. AVG control interface is in the system tray but not running, Steam is running (obviously), xfire is running but not recording, only displaying FPS.

Any ideas what the course could be folks? Thanks.

(Previous smaller battles had high FPS, more soldiers has diminished the FPS to levels of disbelief)
 
Ooh. My mistake. 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 @ 1600Mhz. Page file is 4095mb just to let you all know.

Sorry about the rage/rant when I originally posted. It just doesn't make sense how the numbers have resulted in a FPS freeze with no change in regards to settings. :confused:
 
Its a very funny game with hardware. I can't play Darthmod with an overclocked CPU, jsut crashes to desktop. The normal game runs fine in ultra but i cant get the extra realism of darthmod.

Can't wait for next weeks Nappy though, the special is getting cheaper everyday at amazon
 
It's worth a shot to make sure you haven't got AA/AF on alpha textures enabled in the CCC.

It can rape FPS sometimes.
 
Yeah I was weighing the choices of Empire and Napoleon. I played the Empire demo a few months back and sort of liked it. I didn't want to skip ahead and get Napoleon though, so I went back in history to a previous title. I like it... but this... I mean... wtf?? :| 15fps. That's a complete joke. It's as if the GAME auto-caps itself under 25 purposely in large battles. Hardly uses CPU apart from to load, clearly doesn't make much use of the graphics.

Any in game options as recommendations for my hardware and resolution? Much appreciated. I'd like minimum 30fps in large battles, so I know I'll never see unplayable frames in the large battles, and the small battles obviously running super fast. Any ideas?

AA + AF = Application Settings
Disable Catalyst AI - Disabled
MipMap Detail - High Quality (Tried Quality and Performance)
AAA - Adaptive Anti-Aliasing - OFF
OpenGL Settings - Triple Buffering = Enabled
 
Sinque said:
Have you tried older drivers?
Click to expand...

That's the one thing I miss in regards to console gaming...

older drivers mean, losing out on performance on some other games which prefer later drivers... switching between multiple drivers would be tiresome.

I'd rather stay at 10.2

I wish ATI would stop dropping enhancements to older games with newer updates. It takes away the point of previous driver updates.
 
Edited:

Something to do with Catalyst AI, then I realised it's relation to multi-GPUs
 
Last edited:
Just entired the same battle, the deployment phase. Catalyst AI turned to ADVANCED. FPS now 30+~.... note, I didn't have firefox an pages open before either, so this seems promising. I will now try it again with Catalyst AI set to normal.

If someone could give me some info on creating profiles, because it seems ATI have ballsed that part up. (No menu or check boxes in a profile section, instead having to change your current settings to make a profile)
 
Sorry for the endless posts but I'm writing this similarly as updates.

Just changed it back to Normal in Catalyst AI. Went into the game, also 32+ never dipping below 32 but going anywhere between there and 50fps... this is while floating over a large vast army with the distance in view with tons of trees and buildings... also raining. Settings were defaulted in game before the battle.... to HIGH, I left it defaulted. Previously I had tinkered them in game, perhaps this was the cause for low FPS? I also messed with the settings individually to create custom changes, maybe custom is bad?

I'll try everything now on ULTRA (default ultra @ 1680x1050, Catalyst AI on Normal)
 
It could have been something running in the back ground mate.

Seen AV scans mess with peoples heads when they start up during games before.
 
Yeah played on Ultra settings, 1680x1050, 4xAA, 16AF, blah blah, all that with Catalyst AI on default (normal), an blah... played the battle after I deployed my people and it ran from 35 FPS with the large overview of the battle from med high (biggest hit on FPS at this height), with the distance well in view, while the battle was raging... smooth as silk. Sitting mostly around 50fps. Hell. I'ma crank up the effects in the options. Thing is AVG wasn't running anything. It's scheduled for 12PM in the afternoons. :| Tis weird.

I suspect that changing OPTIONS whilst in game causing problems. I remember putting all settings on medium turning AA off, AF on trilinear , shadows low, 1280x1024 and zooming in to ground level facing the floor, no units in sight, just grass... fps was 15. Now FPS goes to 80+ at 1680x1050 Ultra, as expected!!

Oh well, tip revealed to some ATI users. Don't change options whilst in game. Empire doesn't like it. :)
 
Note. Is 81 degrees on 1GB 4870 bad when Under load playing Empire? I suspect it'd probably reach about 85 after many hours of gameplay? Is this OK for todays cards. XFX say the max safe temp is 105 on this card.
 
runs like a 1 legged dog on my 4.3Ghz C2D and GTX280 too, it's not just you :) :(
 
must have been changing options in game. Literally in a game, pausing it, or before deployment, pausing it changing settings and having it load those settings before going in game.

After posting endless messages here and testing it, I loaded Empire Total War, changed the settings to ULTRA all over, but left VSync off (can easily have it on with no problems) and SSAO or whatever it's called off, because that simulates light and shadows on everything, an that does lower FPS quite a lot. Apart from that everything is on.

Those of you getting issues, exit the game, default all your video card stuff if you changed anything to try run the game better, change your options to a reasonable setting in the MAIN menu, then load your game. I went from 15fps to 50-70fps.

:D Hell. I was getting 35-50fps on this last huge battle with a wide snowy landscape on those max settings mentioned while recording with Xfire. :D Tis awesome.

Temps CPU - 40, GPU 81. Is this GPU temp OK for many hours of gaming?
 
UKFX said:
Note. Is 81 degrees on 1GB 4870 bad when Under load playing Empire? I suspect it'd probably reach about 85 after many hours of gameplay? Is this OK for todays cards. XFX say the max safe temp is 105 on this card.
Click to expand...

if 105 is the max safe temp and you're at 81 you're quite far off aint you..
Itll shut down when it gets to a critical temp will it not?
 
It has done it again. I changed ONE little option in the menu while on the Campaign map, an turned SSAO on... dropped frames like a BOMB, so I turned it off and turned Vsync on. FPS never recovered. Only fix, to exit game completely, restart... play at ULTRA settings, at 1680x1050, 4xAA 16xAF, blah blah blah... high FPS. So this is the issue. Change settings first entering the game on the main menu.
 
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