Low framerates

[American Super Soldier]

I just installed this on my laptop, had to tweak the script to get access to very high settings. But in the campaign map I get low framerates. Cant I run this on a GTX 1050 2gb_ Because on my desktop which has a GTX 960 it runs fine, and in user benchmarks the 960 is only abouy 15/19 percent faster than the GTX 1050, so I wasnt exoecting such a large framedrop. I\ve already given this game my dedicated graphics through the Nvidia control panel, but I am not sure whether its somehow using intergrated

[HistoryPlayer]

Not the best person to help but I am also playing with a gaming laptop, in my case I have Nvidia GTX 970M 3 GB and I can play Napoleon Total War with good performance on my computer with everything maxed. To ensure that the game is using the dedicated video card instead of integrated, go to your Nvidia Control Panel > Program Settings, add Napoleon Total War exe, should say something like High Performance Nvidia. May I ask you for your CPU and RAM to ensure that you don't have a bottleneck in other hardware?

This is my opinion based on the years I have been playing Empire/Napoleon Total War: these games, even today, are really hardware demanding, you need a very powerful computer to play them with the highest settings. These Total War games require both a powerful CPU and GPU, those components are equally important, being CPU no less important than GPU, if CPU is not good enough, you will have a bottleneck and low fps. Laptops usually lack of good CPU, I know this problem very well, laptop CPUs are the weakest gaming hardware compared to desktop gaming computers and unfortunately Total War games demand good/top CPUs. Still, I believe you can have a great experience with Total War games but you may need to lower graphic settings to have decent fps. This is done by trial and error but according to my experience, I would try first lowering SSAO, shadows and unit size and see how your computer responds. Basically you have an input variable and a response variable: your input variable is the graphic setting and your response variable is the fps.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by HistoryPlayer:

Not the best person to help but I am also playing with a gaming laptop, in my case I have Nvidia GTX 970M 3 GB and I can play Napoleon Total War with good performance on my computer with everything maxed. To ensure that the game is using the dedicated video card instead of integrated, go to your Nvidia Control Panel > Program Settings, add Napoleon Total War exe, should say something like High Performance Nvidia. May I ask you for your CPU and RAM to ensure that you don't have a bottleneck in other hardware?

This is my opinion based on the years I have been playing Empire/Napoleon Total War: these games, even today, are really hardware demanding, you need a very powerful computer to play them with the highest settings. These Total War games require both a powerful CPU and GPU, those components are equally important, being CPU no less important than GPU, if CPU is not good enough, you will have a bottleneck and low fps. Laptops usually lack of good CPU, I know this problem very well, laptop CPUs are the weakest gaming hardware compared to desktop gaming computers and unfortunately Total War games demand good/top CPUs. Still, I believe you can have a great experience with Total War games but you may need to lower graphic settings to have decent fps. This is done by trial and error but according to my experience, I would try first lowering SSAO, shadows and unit size and see how your computer responds. Basically you have an input variable and a response variable: your input variable is the graphic setting and your response variable is the fps.

As this post says, your CPU will be the main bottleneck, especially on Ultra unit numbers.

A gtx 1050 should be more than powerful enough to run the game.

What you want to go with that, is a CPU with good single core performance that has high clockspeed.

An old i5 running at 3ghz should be plenty to max Empire out with no slowdown. Even a Pentium from the latest generation would be fine too. With AMD, you'd want a Phenom II clocked fairly high at the least, or an FX from the last several generations, and for the newer chips, a Ryzen 3 1200 would suffice.

What you don't want is to be running an older part like a Core 2 Duo, that would mean having to drop settings down, especially the Unit Size setting.

[American Super Soldier]

Originally posted by HistoryPlayer:

Not the best person to help but I am also playing with a gaming laptop, in my case I have Nvidia GTX 970M 3 GB and I can play Napoleon Total War with good performance on my computer with everything maxed. To ensure that the game is using the dedicated video card instead of integrated, go to your Nvidia Control Panel > Program Settings, add Napoleon Total War exe, should say something like High Performance Nvidia. May I ask you for your CPU and RAM to ensure that you don't have a bottleneck in other hardware?

This is my opinion based on the years I have been playing Empire/Napoleon Total War: these games, even today, are really hardware demanding, you need a very powerful computer to play them with the highest settings. These Total War games require both a powerful CPU and GPU, those components are equally important, being CPU no less important than GPU, if CPU is not good enough, you will have a bottleneck and low fps. Laptops usually lack of good CPU, I know this problem very well, laptop CPUs are the weakest gaming hardware compared to desktop gaming computers and unfortunately Total War games demand good/top CPUs. Still, I believe you can have a great experience with Total War games but you may need to lower graphic settings to have decent fps. This is done by trial and error but according to my experience, I would try first lowering SSAO, shadows and unit size and see how your computer responds. Basically you have an input variable and a response variable: your input variable is the graphic setting and your response variable is the fps.

Sorry for the late response, but I am fairly certain that it isn't my GPU bottlenecking anything. On this laptop I have an I5 7300 HQ which from what I remember is a tad bit slower than the one in my desktop, but it should be able to run an older game like Napoleon. In fact, on my desktop I get great FPS on ultra graphics and unit size, + with darthmod's 2x units and 40 regiment saves. I also don't believe it's lack of ram, I've got 16 gigabit ddr4 with about 3000 mhz. It is single channel but It should have no trouble.

I've air dusted and reapplied thermal paste, and I get lag from the very beggining so it probably isn't heating. Anyways, I'll follow your advice and try to tweak the settings. Thanks for the help

[HistoryPlayer]

Your CPU has a base clock speed 2.5 GHz and a Turbo speed 3.5 GHz with 6 MB SmartCache, is almost the same as my CPU i7-6700HQ. I wouldn't recommend to anyone to play Total War games with bigger unit sizes than the ones supported by the game unless you are a hardcore gamer and know what to do, and even worse in a gaming or not gaming laptop. These CPUs, yours and mine, are weak to support big armies. I've even made a research to find what kind of computers can handle really huge armies in Empire and Napoleon Total War and the only proof I could find is from gamers with overclocked desktop CPUs, more than 4 GHz, most of them with Intel "K" series.

Regarding your GPU, Nvidia GTX 1050 2GB has the lowest performance among Nvidia 10s series, wouldn't be better to purchase a laptop with Nvidia GTX 1050Ti that has a better performance and not so expensive? In Total War games these are the settings that usually demands more graphic card engine: shadows, SSAO, antialias, anisotropic filering. I would study carefully with the input variable (setting) and response variable (fps) and I would put the settings according to the results of the response variable. Some graphical settings don't make a big appreciable difference but demands huge resources (example: shadows). I've just have the very basic knowledge of computer hardware but when analyzing GPU specs, VRAM is not the only spec that matters, I was told once that Memory bus also matters among other specs, Nvidia GTX 1050 only has 128 bit.

Generally, and this depends on the person, I am not so restrictive and accept playing with 25-30 fps, if not, I refuse to play the game since below that values I am not comfortable with lag, that's the reason I don't go further Rome 2 Total War. I invite you to try your CPU bottleneck, set up a custom battle 4 vs 4 against the AI and notice the huge lag, this is because your CPU don't support this amount of units, if you try with Empire Total War would be even better, this game has a huge engine limitation and the lag will be more noticeable.