Video Card Poll and Discussion

[RebBugler]

To determine your current VGA's texture file size capabilities go to the SOWGB.log file located in the Work folder, this is the file you open to find errors and general loading info. Near the top of the file, after mods are loaded, you'll find a similar line like this: 09:50:01 Ansi:16, TexH:16384, TexW:16384. The number 16384 in this example is what this poll is asking for--texture file size capability. This is my card's specs, so I'll begin this off by checking the first option, 8192 (8K) or above.

This is important information for improving overall performance with future SOW releases, hopefully EVERYONE that cares about bigger and more elaborate battles and battlefields will participate.

[Stellar Duck]

Mine was 16384 as well.

Do you need any other information on the card or is this enough?

[RebBugler]

Mine was 16384 as well.

Do you need any other information on the card or is this enough?

Thanks for asking, the answer is no, and it provides me with a lead to explain more about the rationale of this poll.

Fact - The more texture sheets being read by a video card, VGA, the slower the game performance, less FPS (Frames Per Second) rates--the larger the sheets the more graphics per sheet, thus fewer sheets for the same number of graphics

Presently SOW sprites are packed on 2048 (pixels) sized texture sheets. I am in the process of adding TC2M sprites to the game and I am packing them on 4096 sheets. I figured this was no problem since my last two B&F upgrades have used the 4096 sheets for flags. Only a couple of folks had to opt out of the upgrades because of ancient or very cheap cards. I feel it's worth it for the performance boost the rest of us get, the other 99% or so.

The texture packer that SOW uses goes up to the max listed in this poll, 8192. So, you see the possibilities for future performance boosts if enough folks have capable video cards.

[Stellar Duck]

Mine was 16384 as well.

Do you need any other information on the card or is this enough?

Thanks for asking, the answer is no, and it provides me with a lead to explain more about the rationale of this poll.

Fact - The more texture sheets being read by a video card, VGA, the slower the game performance, less FPS (Frames Per Second) rates, so, the larger the sheet the more graphics per card, thus fewer sheets

Presently SOW sprites are packed on 2048 (pixels) sized texture sheets. I am in the process of adding TC2M sprites to the game and I am packing them on 4096 sheets. I figured this was no problem since my last two B&F upgrades have used the 4096 sheets for flags. Only a couple of folks had to opt out of the upgrades because of ancient or very cheap cards. I feel it's worth it for the performance boost the rest of us get, the other 99% or so.

The texture packer that SOW uses goes up to the max listed in this poll, 8192. So, you see the possibilities for future performance boosts if enough folks have capable video cards.

Thanks for this explanation!

I don't know a whole lot about this stuff so sometimes it's nice to know what goes on under the hood.

Having added some mods with higher res flags, yours actually, and it's splendid, and what not didn't seem to affect anything on the frame rate side, which leads me to suspect my rather low frame rates are CPU bound. Still this isn't a game where I feel it suffers much from running at 10 fps in a major engagement.

[voltigeur]

These days many people with older machines can easily boost their graphics capability without power upgrades by getting an Nvidia 750 or 750TI (preferred) - these are low power cards that only run off the motherboard power and don't need separate power cables. Plus they are quite fast and very reasonably priced. Well worth looking into and the game certainly 'comes alive' with better cards and cpu's.

cheers

[Davinci]

The texture packer that SOW uses goes up to the max listed in this poll, 8192. So, you see the possibilities for future performance boosts if enough folks have capable video cards.

I voted in the 8192 slot also.

Hey, Reb - this sort of reminds 'Me' of something that 'Norb' said years ago, probably not the exact quote.

Something to the effect of ''no matter what 'he' does to speed the game up'', we as Modders are constantly going to keep adding stuff to slow it back down.

Well.....I know that I'm guilty of that!

davinci

[RebBugler]

Hey, Reb - this sort of reminds 'Me' of something that 'Norb' said years ago, probably not the exact quote.

Something to the effect of ''no matter what 'he' does to speed the game up'', we as Modders are constantly going to keep adding stuff to slow it back down.

Well, if this poll reflects everyone indicating the top three options, then us modders will have a valuable tool to improve performance. Of course, we know what happens then, it then allows us to add more stuff, thus negating the prior boost in performance.

[Saddletank]

My log file showed 8192, but my card is an Nvidia GTX 460 SE which is well over 3 years old and which I now consider at the end of its gaming life. I think if people are buying games like SoW and expecting them to run on cards with less memory or speed I don't think you need to pay too much attention to that segment of the market.

[Stellar Duck]

My log file showed 8192, but my card is an Nvidia GTX 460 SE which is well over 3 years old and which I now consider at the end of its gaming life. I think if people are buying games like SoW and expecting them to run on cards with less memory or speed I don't think you need to pay too much attention to that segment of the market.

Hmm. People might be deceived by the looks. I mean, this is game is a bit of a resource hog, and people may think it's not because it doesn't look like Total War.

But I suppose that's hard to avoid if people will not read.

[voltigeur]

I think if people are buying games like SoW and expecting them to run on cards with less memory or speed I don't think you need to pay too much attention to that segment of the market.

Absolutely agree Saddletank. Even though some people will hold onto their machines for years, they will get replaced due to part failure or bit rot anyway.

This is a great opportunity with the new engine to take the graphics capabilities to the next level, and will help to attract a new market of gamers out there who already have modern hardware, but might have been put off previous game engines due to the 'look' of those graphics.

cheers