low fps! Why does this game run like garbage?

[MΛRCUS HΞLIUS]

Why is this game not running at a million fps? I have the best gaming computer money can buy and all these old games run at less than 30fps...

[HazardHawk]

You are using an APU to play rather than a CPU. If it is INTEL, the last actual CPU they made was a socket 478 and everything after is an APU (meaning video chip in processor). Rome doesnt play well with APUs

[MΛRCUS HΞLIUS]

It's an AMD Ryzen CPU.

[HazardHawk]

Originally posted by MΛRCUS HΞLIUS:

It's an AMD Ryzen CPU.

Does it have an onboard GPU? If so, it is an APU. It is still a Central Processing Unit, but it is an Accelerated Processing Unit in detail. Newer games are designed to recognize, utilize, and run triggering power as it is needed. Older games do not have that function and often see the true speed before acceleration and simply will not run as it does not meet minimum requirements at its base speed. That base speed was 800mhz to 1.3ghz about five years ago. I have not researched Ryzen to see the current base speeds in APUs, but I imagine the versions with a GPU and need the acceleration are basically still the same. Acceleration is based on demand and runs 1x-5x in boost as needed with a general top speed of about 3.2ghz-3.6ghz. They are also highly energy efficient because only as much of the APU as needed is running.

NOTE: This is laymen's terms. It is a bit more complicated than this, but those are the parts neither Intel or AMD actually want the average consumers to know and understand. If you do not know to look for this information, you will not find it.

An APU may give you graphics removing the need of a video card, but it also takes away all the real base speed of a CPU and uses a multiplier to be able to do that EVEN if you add a video card.

[dev]

The game actually runs smoothly if you use DXWnd. Good bye low fps and mouse lag.

I was only able to get 10 fps with big siege battle and full details with all shadows. But still the mouse was responsive and the game is playable.

[srscorpion]

I ha

Originally posted by stcdv:

The game actually runs smoothly if you use DXWnd. Good bye low fps and mouse lag.

I was only able to get 10 fps with big siege battle and full details with all shadows. But still the mouse was responsive and the game is playable.

I have similar results using my Intel UHD graphics 630. 12 up to 26 FPS in big battles with medium settigs except for Huge units, and High unit detail. All other options except wide screen. Runs smooth as butter 😎

[MANWHATADONGA]

You just answered your own question, old game v new gaming computer.

[Spets]

I have a ryzen 1600 running at 3.8ghz, 16GB DDR4 3200mhz and 1080 8GB GTX. Running 25-30 fps in siege battles. yet get 50-80 fps on high-max on warhammer 2 or warhammer 3 total war.

How to fix?

[HazardHawk]

Originally posted by SpetsNZ:

I have a ryzen 1600 running at 3.8ghz, 16GB DDR4 3200mhz and 1080 8GB GTX. Running 25-30 fps in siege battles. yet get 50-80 fps on high-max on warhammer 2 or warhammer 3 total war.

How to fix?

Those numbers are darn near perfect for a PC. If laptop, then those are incredible numbers.

Try running this game with an APU (embedded graphics) instead of a CPU and in battle can be 1-2 FPS.

[Spets]

Originally posted by HazardHawk:

Originally posted by SpetsNZ:

I have a ryzen 1600 running at 3.8ghz, 16GB DDR4 3200mhz and 1080 8GB GTX. Running 25-30 fps in siege battles. yet get 50-80 fps on high-max on warhammer 2 or warhammer 3 total war.

How to fix?

Those numbers are darn near perfect for a PC. If laptop, then those are incredible numbers.

Try running this game with an APU (embedded graphics) instead of a CPU and in battle can be 1-2 FPS.

I have a gaming desktop
don't have an embedded APU. How do I do that?

[HazardHawk]

Apologies if you misunderstand. I was comparing to running with an APU which is MUCH worse.

The game is OLD. It was written under DirectX 9.01b to play on Windows 98 and be compatible to play on Windows Millennium, 2000, and XP on a single core CPU with less than a GB of Ram. Adding multicore processing slowed the game down because it can only use one core and later when that became multiple cores and 64 bit if could only use half a core and only even see half your resources. While that is plenty to run the game decently and steadily, it is not going to get you FPS. Since all laptops and the majority of computer processors are now actually APUs which have fits with Rome, when it would not even install to Windows 10 in Beta, microsoft blacklisted Rome and we have to figure out why to even get it unblacklisted.

Trust me, the FPS you are getting is much worse for the majority of people which is why they play the eyesore remake.

[Gigantus]

Will applying 'Large Address Awareness' (increased access to RAM) help here? After all the original is a 32bit program, right?
Not applicable to Remaster, mind you, that's 64bit.

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

[punished fiddle]

Use dgVoodoo 2. I've fixed mine game. Got stable and high fps.

[GhostyGG]

I managed to roll back a patch and play 1.5 patch. 1.51 has huge problems with low fps and performance etc.

[Gigantus]

Steam is 1.51 by default (disk version obviously isn't) and the only time I had noticeable issues is when scrolling over large areas with animated stuff on the strategic map - an issue that has been there ever since the game got released due to large numbers of 3D (high mountains) animated (trees) elements.
In battle it happens when you disable the use of sprites (even long distance units will then be rendered in 3D) or have unit models with ridiculous numbers of vertices.
The 'crumbling wall' cut scene is famous for it;s FPS drops but there something else must be playing into it beside vertices.

It would be interesting to figure out what exactly might have been changed by the 1.51 patch with regards to graphic display.

[dev]

The crumbling wall is strange indeed. I would ques that maybe it uses some kind of physics calculations for the crumbling rotating wall pieces and it somehow does that math outside the other game code and they forgot to put any wait() timing on it, so it always sucks your CPU at full capacity no matter what setup you have?