I was using an RX 6950 XT before, the game would run good in the early game (consistent 60 fps with vsync on), but as the game made progress to mid-castle, the game started to have severe stuttering (10-20 fps on average, with 1% lows being as low as single digit, the frame time was so bad), making late game 4v4 mass fights borderline unplayable.
2 days ago I went back to my 10-year-old R9 370 X (whose performance is a mere 1/8 of an RX 6950 XT). I did not tune down the graphic settings so I expected the performance to crumble, but it was quite the opposite. On a 4v4 game with 200 pop limit, the game ran at consistent 40 fps in the early game, late game mass fights somehow still retained a consistent 30 fps through out the entire game, the 1% lows were never close to single digit and the frame time was also smooth.
As much as I hate to say it, but after searching on google and the official forum, looks like many people with RX 6000 series cards have the exact issue I was experiencing. And among all the games I play while using the RX 6950 XT, AOE2DE is the only game to have this issue.
I tried reinstalling the game, disabling all my mods, tuning down game graphics settings, verifying game integrity, tweaking stuff on the Radeon Software, using old versions of drivers. So far, the only approach that actually fixed this issue was swapping the graphic card.
I did notice that while playing on the RX 6950 XT, the GPU usage was quite low. almost as if it’s “slacking off”, while on the R9 370 X, the GPU usage was near 100% and the fans were always howling while playing.
For now I’m planning to get something like an RX 9070, if there are RX 9000 series users, I would like to know how the game runs.
Some other info about my hardware if they help pinpoint the issue:
Ryzen 9 3900 X + 32 GB DDR4 + Windows 11 Pro 24H2