Does my pc support AoE2 DE?

Hello guys,
As the title describe it, my pc is an old fashioned pc from 2012 (more or less).
It has an AMD Athlon X4 860x (3.7ghz)
Ram DDR3 1333mhz (4gb)
Nvidia GTX 960 ddr5 (2Gb)
Hdd Westen digital Blue (1Tb)
Connection -good-

Can it hold aoe 2 de nicely (even with low-medium graphics?)
Hope for answers, cause I want to buy it

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Hello Rigna99, welcome to the forums!

So, it is possible enough that the game will run fine, for the most part, on low settings. But you can expect longer loading times and struggles with performance on games with many units, such as 4v4s.

Take note also that the general game performance have been increasingly optimizing since the launch, you can expect it to get even better on the future.

This topic have a discussion about how the game runs on setups with 4GB of RAM, with also some tips. If you end up buying the game, I would be glad to see a brief about your experience as well!

Hey, I run DE using a PC with some similar components: an AMD Ahtlon X4 860K and a GTX 750 with 1 GB VRAM; 8 GB RAM DDR3 1333 Mhz and an SDD. The game runs smoothly for me with advanced graphics features turned off, except for small speed rampings since half of January (so the performance of DE has actually decreased over time as far as I’m concerned, my GPU seems to be on the edge of ‘good enough for smooth play’). So your CPU and GPU should probably be good enough.

I’m not sure about the rest of your setup, 4 GB RAM and HDD seems kinda bad for these days and a bit behind compared to the rest of your PC. If possible, consider buying an SDD and installing your OS and games on there (250 GB could be a good start, it’s what I use); you could reuse the SDD if you ever upgrade to a new PC. 4 GB RAM is a bit low, at least I know that 8 GB of RAM total is good enough to run smoothly, it would be nice if you can double your current RAM, but don’t spend too much on it since it wont be reusable on a new PC.

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Have you ever gave the CPU integrated graphics a try? I truly believe that they could perform better than your GPU.

Oh, and it’s been reported that turning the v-sync on can help with performance in more modest setups.

dedoritos don’t give those tips man, gtx 750 destroys badly any integrated GPU from AMD unless its vega 11 from latest APU 2400g.

Now answering the topic, your cpu has bad IPC (instructions per cycle), so you have 4 weak cores, the game needs a high IPC CPU to run well, you might be able to play it but it will lag when the population and actions increases.

The game now uses less RAM but it uses more VRAM, it shows 2 to 3 gb of RAM usage and 3.70 GB of VRAM, which is a lot, when you don’t have enough VRAM the computer uses RAM, so your gtx 960 with 2 gb is not going to be enough and less with the 4 gb of ram.

For single player and campaigns it might be enough, but for multiplayer it wont be enough, even if you upgrade the RAM, those old AMD cpu’s with weak IPC can’t handle the game at 4x4 200 pop and i am telling because i had to change mine to play this game.

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For me the performance feels pretty much the same between 1v1 and 4v4, The speed ramping since half of January is happening kinda randomly now and then, even early game on 1v1, so I’m guessing it’s the 1 GB VRAM limitation since that’s below minimum specs while the rest is at recommended or better. So for me the AMD Athlon X4 860K seems to not be a bottleneck for DE. If GTX 750 1 GB VRAM + 8 GB RAM is just enough for a smooth game, then GTX 960 2 GB VRAM with 8 GB RAM should be sufficient, right? (therefore my thoughts that his GPU is fine and his RAM isn’t. Buying 2x 2GB or 1x 4GB of extra RAM is an order of magnitude cheaper than a better GPU).

My PC build is from 2015 though and the OP’s is from 2012, so maybe his motherboard or CPU or some other thing might be a bottleneck with older technology. Using a desktop for 7 or 8 years is fine I think, but stretching it to 10 or more years you can’t expect to keep up with the newer games.

Thanks for the v-sync tip, I might try to see whether it makes a difference.

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He has an AMD Athlon x4 860K, no integrated APU (AMD Integrated video card - like intel integrated graphic card)

For the 8gb or Ram, I really hope I can fix it, because I got 8gb, but one is giving some problems, basically I have 8gb but when browsing/gaming it goes to 3.8gb then all the rest goes to hdd RAM (virtual RAM).
So basically I can play Smoothly if I fix that.
Thank you for the tips guys :slight_smile:

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I’m here again,
Bought the game, and tried to benchmark test it.
it crashes everytime, i got graphics “low”.
The problem seems to be my defected RAM.

I will try to fix it, in the meantime I want to try with only 4 Gb.
Start game video lags a little, but that’s all about HDD.

Playing in multiplayer to make the difference is the response time of the internet connection. Video memory refers only to the resolution with which you play. For a 24-inch monitor, 1024 MB of dedicated video memory is more than sufficient. Basically if you play locally, in acronym sland, most likely the game will be fluid, while playing online, the performance of your computer will have to do with the speed of data exchange between server and client. Having a good computer is not the same as having better performance if the delay in data exchange is very high. The difference in performance is noticeable when you have a great computer and local games, besides I like the speed and to get it you turn off all the graphic effects


Summary
Operating System
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
AMD FX-8320 @ 4100MHz 27 °C
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
16,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 840MHz (9-11-11-29)
Motherboard
ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 R2.0 (CPUSocket) 31 °C
Graphics
SMBX2450 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7850 Series (Sapphire/PCPartner) 35 °C
Storage
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZRX-00L4HB0 ATA Device (SATA )
119GB Crucial_CT128MX100SSD1 (SATA (SSD)) 27 °C
Audio
Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)

I’m a bit confused to what this reply has to do with mine, or with the topic at all.

Besides that, look, I’m no computer expert (as you can easily guess by seeing me oferring unnintentional misadvice earlier in the thread), and surely you’re right, to some extent, about online play being more complicated in terms of how the game will be put togheter and run.

But It’s not as simple as that. Even less on a game such as AoE2DE, wich uses a dated engine that has many difficulties for proper resource usage. Resolution display and client-server communication come into account, but there is also graphical, script and input calculations, sprite and texture loadings, real time renderizations, etc. etc. etc. for the GPU to deal with, and 1024MB alone can often struggle to maitain the game running fine on busiest moments.

By default, the computer is designed to share with the video card the optimal amount of RAM to properly fulfill most tasks but, in special circumstances, the user can step in and increase or decrease amount of shared memory, as needed. The video card is just a data converter and a certain resolution can contain a certain number of characters, converted to the rgb signal that turns on the sub-pixels of your monitor. DirectX and scripts that communicate with your video card are processed by the cpu. If you think the game is too heavy to handle all the data to be processed, well, your computer is overloaded with operations to perform. In my computer setup, the performance problem is evident only by playing multiplayer. If played on LAN the latency does not exist and the game always works smoothly.
Dedicating RAM to the video card can certainly be a great way to increase your PC’s graphics performance, but when these don’t turn out to be enough the only real alternative to cope with the thing is to buy a video card and in the connect it to your computer, so you have a dedicated solution.
When choosing, consider key parameters such as overall processing power, number of active graphics processors, amount of video RAM, independent cooling or presence, required wattage, physical size, and compatibility with the video slots on the motherboard.

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Guys, just fixed my RAM increasing a lot the Virtual RAM on HDD (as one of 4gb or RAM is defective).
After literally 5 minutes of waiting to the game to launch, I tried a benchmark saying 1138.2.
Obviously slow loading but in game looks quite smooth.
I tried making a lobby with 2 AI (+me) the game has long loading screen (showing up civs, “the fire” animation in the background is a little choppy).
The game is quite smooth, with some lags when doing stuff (placing some buildings).
Fps 125- I want to ask devs to make possible to lock fps, the solve my problem (drops from 120 to 80/90), that show lags.

I will also make disk defrag to help hdd bottleneck (and buying an 8gb RAM on Ebay)

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Oh, I understood what concerns you now
 Well, the multiplayer on that game have some particularities on the functioning. Does it still play clogged when its only you and some AI?

That’s nice to hear!! I had an topic with some tips for performance, but since it’s kinda aged I stopped recommending it. Feel free to check, anyways.

As I said, the long loadings are expected due to your amount of RAM, mainly. I would find really nice to hear more for you about playing with this specs on this topic, if you don’t mind, of course. And remember to give V-sync a try.

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V-sync slows down game performance and the monitor must be compatible. The ideal is to have a monitor with a frequency of 144 Hz. My monitor have 1920x1080 60 Hz. To increase memory, if you have a usb 3 key and a usb 3 port, you can use it just like a ram memory. The game is slow to load even with all systems
 Tried on Ryzen 5 2600 and radeon rx470 asus
 I prefer to play with the old amd fx and an obsolete sapphire 7850. Playing multiplayer both configurations do not exceed 78 fps
 I get better results at the expense of all the fake banchmark surveys, designed to sell fresh meat LOL³

Thank you for help, i checked your topic and there is some good stuff in there.
I will keep this post updated, since there many things I want to test out.
About vsync
 My screen is crap, so I want to stay with vsync off, and going with a little better graphics (like anti-aliasing), as I used it on “low” settings, everything turned off.

Luckily, I’ve been able to test the game on a high spec pc, the game run perfectly, love it.

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Activating V-Sinc and some texture improvements I get these values
 About 20% less performance.
In the next post I leave only V-Sinc activated and overclock maximum LOLÂł

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Enabling V-sync drops a little performance on my side too. This tip is generally meant for more modest hardwares, as I said. But keep running tests, the more we know the better!

Performing high-resolution tests without overclocking shows that the performance of the game loses a 20%. In the second V-Sync test, always enabled, but disable graphics improvements. In all cases even by dropping to the minimum of video resolution, a bad result is returned on the use of the VRAM of the video card. One of my parents
 If 2Gb of DDR5 are saturated, 4Gb should saturate at least 70%, 8 GB at 50%. In any case, the performance limit in this case is conditioned by the use of video memory. How many characters should you generate on each frame to return a snapshot? :slight_smile:

V-Sync enable
 It is evident that the high-resolution gpu with no effects works at 3% more than the lowest video resolution. The only constant and VRAM memory requirement. The frame rate ranges from 60 high resolution to low resolution 62. Without V-Sync enabled my system generates an average of 74 fps with graphics at the lowest levels.

There is also no need to use V-sync, as there aren’t artefacts nor tearing.
We just need the option to decide whether to lock fps or not.
Doesn’t make sense having 120fps on a 60 hz (fps) monitor.
A drop from 120fps to 80fps Because the performance isn’t stable is worse than a stable 60fps.
If we had the chance to lock fps (- Like Minecraft for example) we would have smooth gaming, at 60fps, no framedrops.