I was tricked

I bought age of empires iv, very eager to play it… I downloaded it and it was time to open puff! “You don’t have AVX” after a long search I found that it is not possible to play without this feature…

I play somewhat heavier games on my computer like: BF5, Red Dead Redemption 2, etc. My processor is a xeon x3470 oc in a 1060 6g company.

:face_with_symbols_over_mouth: It’s horrible the way microsoft wants to force the upgrade of people as well as in w11, here in brazil to upgrade is not cheap.

Is there any way or mod that allows you to play the game without this feature?

Well, on steam the system requirements state that a CPU with AVX support is needed. So I guess each official statement about the requirements do so too. So IMO using the word “tricked” is not justified here.

First, it is not like AVX is a new technology. It was introduced 10 years ago in 2011! Second, AVX is CPU related, not GPU related. That’s why heavy graphics demanding games may still not require AVX.

But you are not the only one complaining about the necessity of AVX. See for example this thread that contains more information and discussions in favour and against AVX: If they take restrictions from avx i buy it
The community assumes that AVX is required for efficient path-finding, although it is not officially confirmed afaik.

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Hello there! The admins archived threads of this issue, but an user on reddit posted a fix for this, try it!

It is quite a SHAME that a random user had to overcome this, doing the job of devs.

@HolyArtifact92 :kissing_heart:

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I don’t understand the complaint of people asking for games to run since they have Jurassic computers. lol

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FYI, the Intel SDE described is their Software Development Emulator. Using this isn’t a fix in any sense of the word - it’s a workaround that will increase the demands of the game on any hardware you own.

If it works for you, fantastic. But I wouldn’t promote this as a “fix”, or “doing the work of the devs”, because it’s neither.

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Wrapping the game in an emulator to get around not having the appropriate hardware? That hardly seems like doing the dev’s job for them so much as finding a work around that you can then pass of to people who don’t understand what’s going on as a “fix” even though it hasn’t fixed anything.

Sure, you could do extra work to make programs run on CPUs lacking some features, but you’re probably better off just getting a CPU that has the feature since it doesn’t require a state of the art/high end purchase to get it and you gain wider compatibility without relying on emulation.

This is no different than being mad that games no longer support DirectX 9 because you don’t want to upgrade your video card; at some point you’re going to have to pick up hardware with support newer features.

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This is just ridiculous to put the blame into the developers for something that isn’t their fault from the beginning. Hardware changes with time and new features comes with it, and as it was stated earlier it’s mentioned under the system requirements for this game what you need in order to run the game which is low already compared to other games.

You weren’t tricked by them, learn to read the system requirements and then see if you can run it or not, or consider upgrading your computer or just the CPU. Simple as that.

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There’s a reason games come with information about minimum system requirements. That said if you don’t meet them you can probably ask for a refund.

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Tricked by Moore’s law at most.

How arrogance on your part! I found a solution on the youtube with the replacement of two DLL’s
And guess what? THE GAME RUN WITH NO FALLING FRAMES.
proving that this avx is a uselessness created by the developer for super smart people like you to upgrade the pc to play the game. :joy: :joy: :joy:

The solution:

It doesn’t prove that AVX is useless, unless you were checking on a min-spec chip. Otherwise, you’re making up for missing the tech by having paid for a higher clocked CPU.

As for us “super smart people” that were forced to upgrade, we weren’t because most of us didn’t buy subpar CPUs; people with CPUs a decade old can play the game without upgrading.

Don’t project your bad past choices onto other people.

EDIT: Even funnier is that it doesn’t work with the real client, you have to use a hacked version of the game; a little detail that was conveniently left out.

Here’s the source the video is referencing directly:
AGE OF EMPIRES IV - RUNNING CPU WITHOUT AVX (DOWNLOAD) (forrestgumpdaweb.blogspot.com)

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If it’s running well, my cpu doesn’t have avx, that proves yes.

And no, I only used the video dlls in the steam version, it was a lot of work but it worked.

No, because the requirements are set up in relation to the min spec, not whatever arbitrary CPU you decided to buy (clearly a bad one).

So you had to do a lot of work because you bought a CPU with subpar functionality to run a game that’s supported by CPUs over 10 years old?

Sounds like you’re the only one who lost here, those of us who made intelligent purchases aren’t forced to upgrade because we have the technology needed to not do it.

Why this extreme elitism man?
Holy moly, preventing e-waste is a good, not a bad thing.
I have alot of respect for people that stay very long on a system or buy used stuff.

Not everyone has the money or drive/commitment to switch out their system every few years.
And it’s completely understandable that in general people have no idea about instruction sets in CPUs.

The fact that there is a workaround without issues already shows that the AVX requirement can easily be interpreted through software and handled with similar instruction sets such as SSE.

Great that there is a working workaround here, I just hoped they would’ve taken the time to make an AVX independend client.

Where do you get elitism from? No one has ever said that people should have new/high end systems and AVX as a requirement does not mean that.

Then it’s a good thing that AVX has been in CPUs for over a decade so people can continue to use old systems or buy used stuff.

Once again, I’m not seeing elitism on my side so much as ignorance (seemingly willful at this point) on the other side.

Again, you don’t have to. If you don’t have enough understanding of the topic to make accurate points about it, maybe you should spend more time learning about it before commenting.

Yes, and all the mainline chipsets have had AVX for nearly a decade. To get one without it you really have to be going out of your way to find it with the knowledge that by excluding it you can get a higher clock speed for a lower price.

No, the fact that there is a workaround that one person has said works for them shows that some chips can handle the workload without the AVX instructions, but we don’t have any actual data on what kind of impact it has (particularly on min spec systems, where it actually matters).

Yes, it is great that there is a workaround. Unless there’s some evidence that dropping AVX support wouldn’t hurt users in the min spec range, you’re unlikely to see multiple clients created when the only people who don’t have AVX support are intentionally going out of their way to avoid it.

Again, you don’t need a new or high-end system to have this support; you just have to have purchased a system with any mainline CPU in the last decade or so.

Making the choice to buy hardware that is missing hardware level functionality is always a risk, whether it’s the CPU instruction set or the DirectX support.

The lesson here is that it’s often more valuable to prioritize having hardware support for more functionality than it is to get a higher clock speed (something that rarely actually benefits you).

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If you can’t see the absolute downtalk/elitism here, you are absolutely disconnected from reality.

Depending on the CPU it’s not.
Pentiums e.g. are completely excluded.

Maybe, no reason to be so increadibly rude and elitist about it.

More compatibility = more players.
I don’t really see a reason why this should strictly stand in the way, if already technically still possible.

That’s true.
I’d love to read some feedback by multiple ppl with different systems.

This is true to an extend, but I’d still give the benefit to the doubt to the customer that doesn’t have AVX support since we are talking about an increadibly niche, geeky, hardwaresided note.
Most ppl just measure stuff by FPS such as:
My relativly new total war runs at 50fps for me and I'm perfectly fine with this performance today

I still stand by it.
The more compatibility the better.
It prevents unnecessary e-waste and opens up the game for more systems.
Softwaresided locks like these are in really big discussions in european law right now exactly because they produce e-waste unnecessarily.
Of course that doesn’t mean that you own customers absolute endless support, but we already have proof now that AVX doesn’t seem to be as important as the raw strength of the CPU itself.

This doesn’t change the fact that you can still be using a 10 year old PC, so the continued attempts to act like AVX support forces people to have modern, high-end systems is patently false and claims to the contrary are either ignorant or outright lies.

Your attitude in your reply to me is why you are getting the attitude you are; there’s no elitism here, I don’t think you know what that means.

More players does not automatically cover the cost of supporting things that are technically possible, if it did every game would have native Linux versions.

The fact that cheap CPUs have been around for a decade that can use AVX, and that mainline CPUs would have it, means that the number of people who can’t play without it is small.

Whether or not the cost of supporting people should be a consideration is a completely different discussion. In our world it is a consideration.

No, we see that raw strength can offset lack of AVX support, which only applies to people who can afford higher end CPUs.

Having AVX support likely allows for a wider range of CPUs to be supported overall, and the number of AVX users likely doesn’t warrant trying to support two versions of the game for PC.

This is not relevant here since you can use decade old hardware to play the game; this is not the same as requiring an expensive system in order to use the software.

In fact, if anything supporting lower clock speeds with decade old technology makes it even less likely that most users will have to upgrade to play.

All I’m saying is that if the AVX barrier is arbitrary in a way, which it seems to be since there are communityposts and software workarounds for it, then it shouldn’t be there in the first place.

I don’t see a reason to allow non-AVX supported CPUs to use software and different instruction sets for those tasks.
It doesn’t have to be either/or.
More modern CPUs still benefit from the full IS performance potential.

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It’s not arbitrary just because some people with beefy CPUs can handle the game, and there needs to be a good reason to support multiple versions for the same OSs just because some people decided to prioritize clock speed when they decided which CPUs to buy.

Having AVX support should allow older, less powerful systems to play that otherwise wouldn’t, which means that while lack of AVX support is a barrier to entry, so is not having a fast enough CPU to play.

Without numbers to show that more players would benefit from lack of AVX support (unlikely given the age and ubiquity of the technology) vs the number of players who wouldn’t be able to run the game without it.

Acting like AVX support doesn’t matter because a couple people with strong CPUs can play is quite literally elitism.

I’m willing to bet that more people have purchased slower CPUs over the last 10 years than went out of their way to get high speed CPUs without AVX.

How about we bind it to performance than rather than AVX support?

Clockspeed has nothing to do with the competence/power of the CPU itself.
Just in the same generation/architecture.

It’s the exact other way around.

“You can’t play the game without AVX IS supported CPU” is obsiously not true.
How about making it more compatible and have a classic performance benchmark and if the CPU can handle it, let it handle it?

I have no idea why you are so fixated at clockspeeds.
There is no reason to restrict players with CPUs that can obviously run the game just fine by using different instruction sets as compensation.

AVX is obviously not the limiting factor here, but CPU strength.
CPUs can handle the game without having AVX.
And if that’s the case, then they should make it more compatible in that instance, since it doesn’t seem to be the deciding factor.
If the calculations actually benefit from AVX, then they can use it, but it doesn’t mean it needs to be mandatory.