Terrible performance

[leovn119]

10750H, RTX 2060, 16 GB RAM, laptop

I'm getting 20-30 fps at most in really small battles. Performance doesn't change at all even if I lower the resolution or set all the graphics settings to low. I've tried changing the priority through the Task manager, unchecking the hardware mouse box, running the game on compatibility mode, so far nothing has worked. I already spent over two hours trying to get it to work so I can't get a refund anymore. Does anyone have any advice ?

[Darkfall]

I found that limiting the game to specific cores can help (something about the age of the game not playing nicely with modern multicore CPUs.

Go to Task Manager -> Details -> Find Empire at War.

Right click on it, then select "Set Affinity" then un-tick "All Processors".
After that select CPU 0 and CPU 2.

That said, don't expect mega performance, I'm running this game on a 5950X + 3090 and it's perfectly playable, but...it's not at a level that one would expect for such a setup.

[leovn119]

Why specifically CPU 0 and 2 ?

[leovn119]

So I did it but for some reason it doesn't seem to affect what processors the game runs on, HWMonitor still shows the other cores as having higher utilization than Cores 0 and 2 at times, while 0 and 2 themselves range from 0 to 4 %

[Darkfall]

Originally posted by leovn119:

Why specifically CPU 0 and 2 ?

I may be wrong (someone please correct me if I am), but if I remember correctly, task manager lists the Intel cores in pairs.

So CPU 0 = Core 1 thread 1, CPU 1 = Core 1 thread 2.
By putting it on Core 0 and 2, you should be assigning the game to the first 2 cores.

However, since you've not had any noticeable improvements, do try just 0 and 1 or just core 0, see if it does anything.

[leovn119]

Originally posted by Darkfall:

Originally posted by leovn119:

Why specifically CPU 0 and 2 ?

I may be wrong (someone please correct me if I am), but if I remember correctly, task manager lists the Intel cores in pairs.

So CPU 0 = Core 1 thread 1, CPU 1 = Core 1 thread 2.
By putting it on Core 0 and 2, you should be assigning the game to the first 2 cores.

However, since you've not had any noticeable improvements, do try just 0 and 1 or just core 0, see if it does anything.

Just did it, but it doesn't seem to be working. I don't just mean that the game runs the same, I mean setting the affinity doesn't seem to be making the game running on a single thread. On HWMonitor, the core utilization doesn't seem to reflect the fact that the game is only supposed to run on core 0. Other cores seem to actually have more utilization while I play the game. Is this normal ?

[Björn]

you do know that a 32bit engine doesn´t support multi core...

[Darkfall]

Originally posted by Björn:

you do know that a 32bit engine doesn´t support multi core...

Pretty sure that you're incorrect about that.
32bit / 64bit refers to the number of bits that the application uses to address the memory, how many cores the app uses, should be (to my knowledge) independent from that. Remember, there are 32bit duel core processors out there.

That said, the game was designed for single core 32bit processors (if I remember right) so there won't be any multicore enhancements baked in (and if there are, it will be for dual core, not more). That that causes the performance to (sometimes) be weird on high core count CPUs.

@Leovn199
Have you looked through this guide, there may be something that you've not tried yet:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1540415613

[KilledJoy]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1393249570

Game is severely under performing in terms of compatiblity with modern hardware. tldr version is doesnt matter how much a super computer your running here the game has severe troubles detecting or using most of it.