SOW and multi core rigs

[Wolfe_CH]

For those looking for more FPS it's usually not found in the video card. As others have said turn off the Trees. Use the settings in the Options panel, but also turn them down when things get hot by hitting the 'T' key repeatedly in-game.

I have a Phenom 9150e (only 1.8GHz), GF 7600GT w/ 256MB, and 4GB RAM. 64-bit Vista Home. Most of you have a video card that trounces mine.

Setting my video card to 1024x768 and no AA yields the same FPS as setting it to 1650x1050 w/ AA=2!

When things get very heavy my system can hit 5 FPS (then I reach for the T key). In most decent-sized battles I'm in the low double digits (tolerable); in smaller battles mid-teens (good), and when nothing is on-screen mid-20's. I could still use a better CPU, however.


And as norb pointed out, this game isn't a flight sim or shooter game. 30 FPS isn't required at all. Don't get too caught up in the numbers.

My settings:
Uniform Quality: High
Show All Dead Bodies: Off
Display Rifle Smoke: On
Display Arty Explosions: On
Hide Flag Icons: Off
Show Road Path Icons: On
Percent Trees Showing: 50%
Display Off-Map Trees: Off
Max Transparent Tree Distance: 300
Make Walls Transparent: Off
Max Terrain Draw Distance: High
Show Map Objects: High (don't go below High or you'll lose fences)
Show Off-Map Terrain: Off
Max Arty Decals: 20
Max Units Draw Distance: 800
Max Trees Draw Distance: 800
Max Objects Draw Distance: 800
Play Map Sounds: Off
Play Marching Music: Off

And don't forget that 'T' key.


Hope this helps.

- Chris

[leeds85]

I think i've found something that might help ppl get a better fps. With the game settings on default i get 6-8 fps and sometimes the game throws a fit and i get 0-2fps for a few seconds. Taking trees off as we've already said improves slightly and i get 8-12fps with trees off (T-button), more if i uncheck the off-map trees option in the main menu.
But here's the strange thing, all the above is with the default settings. If i change the in game screen res from 1024x768(default) up to 1680x1050 and leave everything else or even crank it up a little i.e uniforms to best. Then i get 12-16fps perfectly palyable or 25-30fps with tress off. 1680x1050 is the native setting of my monitor. Maybe you could try this, find out what your monitor runs at and change in game res to match it.

ps
1680x1050 is also my desktop setting so it could be that by setting to match your desktop might work too.

[parmenio]

leeds85 wrote:

1680x1050 is also my desktop setting so it could be that by setting to match your desktop might work too.

Ditto (not the res but the idea). First thing I did was to set the game res to match my desktop - did the same thing in TC2M. I run a Toshiba latop - it's a Core Duo running Windows 7 64-bit and has 4Gb of RAM but it's not a gaming machine by any stretch and I'm not having the sort of problems some of you guys are reporting.

[Jubal Early]

This is weird I had noticed that increasing the resolution made little difference to my FPS I’m now using the free Fraps to count FPS link here –

http://www.fraps.com/download.php

I increased my screen resolution to 1680 x 1050 and the same for the game and it was running faster for me at 7-11 Also does dropping the AA and AF settings increase FPS for anyone? It doesn’t seem to make any difference to me. Very strange. I wasn’t sure about SOW at the start due to being a TC2M fanatic but I really love this game now sadly my expensive system hates its guts.

AMD Phenom 9750 Quad core processor 2.40 GHZ
4.00 GB Ram
ATi Radeon HD 4850 , 512 MB
64 Bit operating system

I’m getting closer if I could just squeeze another few FPS ad average at 10 id be there. Can anyone with any knowledge shed light on all this?

[leeds85]

Jubal Early wrote:
[quote]
I increased my screen resolution to 1680 x 1050 and the same for the game quote]

Is 1680x1050 the native resolution for your monitor?

[Petrus58]

1st post so hi everyone!

This is really odd, as although I have a quod core (2.4 GHz), I only have 3 GB of ram, and a rather old 8600 GS card, and yet I can play with everything maxed out with very little slowdown. In fact, I only really notice this if I try to move the camera too quickly. I have no idea what fps I am getting, but as far as combat is concerned, it 'looks' ok.

[Jubal Early]

OK all you guys with a Quad core is this any benefit to us?

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/CPU- ... trol.shtml

You can spread the load over your cores with it. I’m 47 years old and am no computer expert so if anyone with the knowledge can help us out perhaps we may find this very beneficial and get more out of our systems and rum SOW better.

[Davinci]

Jubal Early wrote:

OK all you guys with a Quad core is this any benefit to us?

Well, it claims to have been downloaded 21,000 times, and not one person has offered a review about the product.

That tells me, I absolutely would not install that product onto my machine!

You could \ should do a google search about it, and see if you can come up with anything positive about it, before you install it!

davinci

[Arkley0712]

A word of warning...

I don't have a quad core, I have a dual core (AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ 2.01GHz) but I think this warning might be relevant to this thread.

I too was experiencing very low FPS which could only be remedied by downgrading some of the graphical options of the game. However, some of the forum posters had suggested my 2GB of RAM might be the issue so I went out and bought another 4GB of RAM.

Well, having installed it with no problems, I can say it does not appear to have made any difference to the performance of the game, other than that it now loads a lot quicker. If I gained any FPS it was probably only 1 or 2 at the most - not enough to really make a difference.

I don't mind having done the upgrade though, as I'm sure my PC is loving having all that extra memory to play with, but for anyone thinking of doing the same I thought I'd better give this warning. It may not make much difference at all.

[Jubal Early]

I checked it out Davinci and couldn’t find anything negative so took a chance as I’m desperate to get SOW running better on my system. Also tried Game booster but they didn’t make any difference to performance. Im still struggling to average 10 FPS on the scenarios.
Using Fraps last night I played a large scale battle on the Waterloo map with Napoleon Total war with Ultra settings and it didn’t drop below 25 FPS at any time even during cavalry charges and with smoke everywhere. So this baby of mine has plenty of power and is running perfectly but for some mysterious reason it struggles with SOW.
A few observations. Trees seem to hit my FPS I’ve had the axe out and cut 50% down to reach 9-10 FPS perhaps the modders can grow us some lower res trees to give our FPS a boost. When I increase the resolution, AA and AF its seems to make little difference I know if I lowered these in other games id get a massive FPS boost .
Thanks for the information about extra ram Arkley I had thought of buying more but I’m not so sure as I have 4 GB already. Some of us seem to have more trouble with FPS than others and some people with Systems that are not as good as mine are getting better FPS. It’s really weird. Norb has said when TC2M first came out it was slow I just hope something can be done to get better FPS as it’s a really good game.