AOE3 Performance

[Aquila76]

Hmm. Still DL'ing the demo. Servers are hammered! Let you know in ~30min.

 

[moonboy403]

oppss...sorry about the post....my 30fps was with aa on high(within your town center)
setting aa on low with everything maxed out plus 12 X 10 would give me a constant 48ish to high 60
framerates don't really dip during battle

 

[martinez]

Originally posted by: Aquila76
Hmm. Still DL'ing the demo. Servers are hammered! Let you know in ~30min.

You're a champion mate. Thanks for giving it a go.

Thanks Moonboy for the clarification.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Civ4 for the win

That's a TBS, not a RTS

 

[Aquila76]

Originally posted by: martinez

Originally posted by: Aquila76
Hmm. Still DL'ing the demo. Servers are hammered! Let you know in ~30min.

You're a champion mate. Thanks for giving it a go.

Thanks Moonboy for the clarification.

Wow. That game KILLS my PC.

1280x1024, High Quality in nV CP, AA/Shader/Shadows Very High, Bloom on: ~15 fps
1280x1024, High Quality in nV CP, AA/Shader/Shadows Very High, Bloom off: ~25 fps
I noticed that was solid, tho. Even when the entire Spanish army was burning my city hall and killing all my villagers ( I suck at these games), it stayed right there.
I feel like I'm back on my old P3 system with an FX 5700

 

[moonboy403]

very high on aa does lower your framerates by a lot
try low...it gives me much better performance on my gtx

 

[lopri]

When everything's on High/Very High, the game looks gorgeous. These people who say "no innovation," etc. about this game don't realize they've been doing same basic things for over a decade. (shoot moving things!)

Well, criticism aside, this game absolutely kills the system - and my system is literally top of the line. Like,

A64 X2 @2750MHz
7800GTX
2x1G OCZ Titanium

And where things are tight, such as forest or battlegrounds, the FPS easily drops to low 30FPS. Not very great. I'm thinking of adding another GTX just for this game.

Also to people who'd say "30FPS is enough for RTS" I absolutely disagree. While staying in a location (without moving camera), 30FPS might be enough, but they don't realize when things get heated you have to scroll through out the whole map like crazy and with low FPS, the laggy feel of mouse becomes apparent.

In short, this game is extremely demanding on the graphics susbystem. (more demanding than Quake4, that's for sure) If one wants to play online and don't want to lose, s/he will need some *rig* or need to lower the resolution/details significantly. Unfortunately, lowering resolution/details affects the visuals considerably.

lop

 

[martinez]

Thanks for all that. Wow, looks like another 6600GT will be a complete waste of time.

@Lopri, agree with everything you said, looks like I'll be waiting for next gen, until then I'll play at med-high settings. I'd rather be competitive than have the game look great. Can't wait till I can have both.

 

[Sunrise089]

Hope this is what you were looking for, Martinez, as opposed to all the crapping in this thread. Some people need to heed the sticky that's been posted by the mods, before they find themselves on vacation.

Ok - I would like to apologize to the OP and others for helping to crap the thread. I was venting at the fact that I feel FPS games take a lot more flak for lack of innovation than other genres, but this thread was not the place to do it. Hope your question gets answered to your satisfaction martinez.

 

[roguerower]

Originally posted by: martinez

Originally posted by: Fadey
AOE3 is crap , it doesnt even look good and game play was to slow.

Compared to what? Show me an RTS that looks as good plz.

Play it online vs a decent player and tell me it's too slow, ROFL.

Rome Total War

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: roguerower

Originally posted by: martinez

Originally posted by: Fadey
AOE3 is crap , it doesnt even look good and game play was to slow.

Compared to what? Show me an RTS that looks as good plz.

Play it online vs a decent player and tell me it's too slow, ROFL.

Rome Total War

Dawn of War. The pyrotechnics in that are downright incredible, and put AOE3 to shame.

The amount of firepower two landraiders, 3 predators and 4 heavy bolter squads puts out has not been seen in anything outside the arcade game Raiden hehe.

 

[imported_g33k]

Dawn of war has pretty good grphx. The only trouble with it is you can't control individual units, only squads. Never got quite into Rome Total War. O yeah AOE III rox.:thumbsup:

 

[chinkgai]

x2 @ 2.8ghz
bfg gtx oc oc'ed higher
gig of ram (ddr512 @ 2-2-2-5)

1600x1200 everything on max (except aa cuz it turns everything white -_-) aa is off

avg 44fps w/bfg @ stock
avg 48fps w/bfg oc oc'ed

this is with the demo, i havent tried retail yet cuz of school...will get around to doing it this weekend

btw, does max aa work for u guys at 1600x1200? everything turns to black and white for me when its on max

 

[Therk]

2005-10-21 17:28:04 - age3
Frames: 5573 - Time: 122282ms - Avg: 45.575 - Min: 27 - Max: 123

with:

A64 3000+
Radeon 9600 XT
1 gig ram

1024x768, everything maxed out including AA on HIGH, only shadows were left on LOW.

 

[swatX]

Originally posted by: Fadey
AOE3 is crap , it doesnt even look good and game play was to slow.

i could say the same about your life...



anyway AOE3 is a really nice game. been playing it for the past week ( ) anyway, you need a good gfx card to play it smoothly. even with a 6800gt it somewhat gets as low as belo 20fps.!!!

 

[aatf510]

Originally posted by: lopri
When everything's on High/Very High, the game looks gorgeous. These people who say "no innovation," etc. about this game don't realize they've been doing same basic things for over a decade. (shoot moving things!)

Well, criticism aside, this game absolutely kills the system - and my system is literally top of the line. Like,

A64 X2 @2750MHz
7800GTX
2x1G OCZ Titanium

And where things are tight, such as forest or battlegrounds, the FPS easily drops to low 30FPS. Not very great. I'm thinking of adding another GTX just for this game.

Also to people who'd say "30FPS is enough for RTS" I absolutely disagree. While staying in a location (without moving camera), 30FPS might be enough, but they don't realize when things get heated you have to scroll through out the whole map like crazy and with low FPS, the laggy feel of mouse becomes apparent.

In short, this game is extremely demanding on the graphics susbystem. (more demanding than Quake4, that's for sure) If one wants to play online and don't want to lose, s/he will need some *rig* or need to lower the resolution/details significantly. Unfortunately, lowering resolution/details affects the visuals considerably.

lop

Okay, I have a GTX too so I use fairly high settings, however, it's really hard to find the game graphics that attractive.

Don't get me as the type that only play FPS. I do play some BF2, but I do think Quake is one of the most stupidest game, and I didn't even have to patient to finish off Farcry (I got it for free), I only loaded that up to check out the awesome graphics.

I do prefer to play RTS game, and some of my favorite titles include Red Alert 2 and AOE I. I still remember spending over 10 hours a day battling everyone in my dorm with a serial cable on my PII-300 laptop.

However, I can only say that I was excited when I first heard the release of AOEIII and become totally disappointed after 5 hours on the demo. well, maybe the full version is 300% better than the demo?? Can someone tell me?

 

[martinez]

The second demo is much much better than the first, google it. Anyone who is saying the game looks crap based on the demo needs to realise they always look much worse(ensemble demos). I don't know why they sent out the first demo it was horribly slow, the second demo I get much better frames and the overall smoothness and the minimised UI make a hell of alot of difference. I still can't play it at the highest settings with AA, which is when it does look amazing.

 

[jevans64]

Martenez...

I just bought the actual AOE III game today. I will run the tests on the two systems listed in my sigs since I will install it on both anyway.

What do I need to do to get the FPS for the stuff you want me to test? FRAPS?

I did play the demo with the hardware in my sigs at 1920x1200 and didn't notice any slowdowns. I am betting that your card will be fine at the 1280x1024.

My demo settings are:

1920x1200x32
Refresh = 60
VSync = On
AA = Low
Shader = High
Shadow = High
Water Reflections = High
Bloom Effect = On
High Poly Models = On
Terrain Detail objects = On
Partical Quality = Normal

 

[martinez]

Yes I used Fraps. On the second demo I can play the game without noticable lag at settings I couldn't with the first demo(plus I think it looks better at the same settings). Hopefully they optimised the gold edition even more. My copy arrived yesterday in Philly at my Fathers place. He's whipping it over to Aussie for me. It doesn't come out over here till the 25th @ the earliest. I should get mine a day or two before that .

 

[Mickey21]

Very nice, glad you could get an arrangement like that to get the game a little early. Well worth it. I havent tested the actual framerate, but I too noticed an issue with AA on my wife's computer which has dual SLI EVGA 7800GTX KO's. It gives the white screen problem as someone mentioned above...

Doesnt FRAPS also affect your framerates when it records? Anyways as already figured out, it looks like even the best video cards at this time wont give you complete freedom. My rig plays the game fine with everything turned all the way up at 16X12 and I didnt notice any lag really. Pretty darn smooth until I get my 200 troops in a rolling raid blowing everything out of existence... Trying the game on medium difficulty right now because I dont really know the game or how hard the AI is and I am about the end of Act 1. Enjoy the game...

 

[lopri]

I took screenshots with different shader settings. Everything else is set to max, and I OC'ed my GTX to 490MHz/1400MHz.

Shader Low / 80 FPS

Shader Medium / 52 FPS

Shader High / 47 FPS

Shader Very High / 34 FPS

Note this is not one of those intense battle scenes.

lop

P.S.: It's very easy to take screenshots to compare with RTS.

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

I have everything on high with low AA and I get 29-30FPS at the home screen (AOE3 didn't like my XL at 460/1150 so I had to tone down to 452/1148). In game I generally get around 20-50FPS as some have mentioned. I've found that if I turn AA to "high" performance drops isn't all that huge though it just stays at around 30-35 FPS most of the time . . .

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3

 

[Nickrand]

hey martinez, this is Nexu from agesanctuary (don't post there too much) and mrfixitonline, I don't think you'll get too many of the guys around here to respect a RTS, but like you I know whats up with AoE3.

That aside, I'm currently running a A64 3000+, 1gp 3200, FX5900XT. Just so happens that I should have a 6800 vanilla sitting at home when I get there after work. If I can figure out how to download and use fraps I'll try to post a few numbers from each for ya even though it isn't exactly what you were looking for in the OP (although I'm interested to see what I gain of course ).

 

[Nickrand]

man, after a little testing this game really made me feel like I didn't buy enough gpu

Although a 6800 for $160 was cheap and finding 6800GT's for less than 280 is a chore, so I'll live with this socket 754 agp rig for the time being.

Anyways - everything cranked all the way up on 12-10 was giving me basically 0-1 fps on both cards.

I tested the game in a bunch of different settings, there are so many graphics tweaks, I think shaders, AA, shadows have the most impact on FPS in that order. But the difference between shadows on medium and shadows on high is HUUUGEE!!

Anyways, here's my gain and possibly my play settings:
12x10
no bloom
shaders medium
shadows high
AA low
high poly - yes
terrain detail - yes
terrain texture - high
model texture - high
texture filter - high

FX5900XT = 15
6800 = 50-52

changing the shader from medium to high drops the FPS to 39-40. I haven't started playing games yet with the new card but not sure I'll be able to play on high.

 

[martinez]

Originally posted by: Nickrand
man, after a little testing this game really made me feel like I didn't buy enough gpu

Although a 6800 for $160 was cheap and finding 6800GT's for less than 280 is a chore, so I'll live with this socket 754 agp rig for the time being.

Anyways - everything cranked all the way up on 12-10 was giving me basically 0-1 fps on both cards.

I tested the game in a bunch of different settings, there are so many graphics tweaks, I think shaders, AA, shadows have the most impact on FPS in that order. But the difference between shadows on medium and shadows on high is HUUUGEE!!

Anyways, here's my gain and possibly my play settings:
12x10
no bloom
shaders medium
shadows high
AA low
high poly - yes
terrain detail - yes
terrain texture - high
model texture - high
texture filter - high

FX5900XT = 15
6800 = 50-52

changing the shader from medium to high drops the FPS to 39-40. I haven't started playing games yet with the new card but not sure I'll be able to play on high.

Hey Nexu,
Yeah looks like the settings I have settled on and that you get similar performance from your 6800 as I get from my 6600GT.

Still, you got a nice upgrade for just 160 sheets, and given your rig a bit more life for sure.

@Lopri- thanks for those screenshots, as you can see the game looks really crap eh

Seems to my eye to be not a great difference in IQ from medium to high, but high to V high is very noticable as is Low to medium. Beast of a game if you're getting 34FPS with just your explorer standing next to a pretty swamp.

wife's computer which has dual SLI EVGA 7800GTX KO's

Now that made me picture you coming home and saying "happy anniversary honey, I got you this l33t SLI rig", Wife.."what's an SIL rig thingy?" You.."nevermind, you'll love it, trust me"

But seriously, thanks for your comments I think you're right about not having the complete freedom, especially playing online, I can't imagine anyone being able to play it at highest settings in a 2v2 or more. I can't wait to sink my teeth into it.

@Dark1
Looks like the X800XL struggles too, but definately getting much higher frames than me at those settings. Thanks for your response.