I have a 2018 laptop running Windows 11 but it has some trouble running AOE2DE smoothly, especially in 3x3 or 4x4 multiplayer.
These are my specs:
Intel Core i5-8350U, 1.70 GHz, 4 cores
Intel UHD Graphics 620
8GB RAM
256GB SSD
I only use the laptop for AOE2DE. I would like to get better performance (I only play with the lowest graphics settings), at least being able to easily pass ranked benchmark test.
Should it be enough to upgrade the RAM to 16GB (or 32GB)? Should I also upgrade the SSD to a faster one? Or is it hopeless with the relatively slow CPU and integrated graphics and should I look for another laptop?
in this case, cpu is also a limit, that integrated gpu is faster than required gtx 650, not by a lot, but its not the big limit here, same with ram, the U 8th gen i5 tho can only do so much, i have a very similar system spec myself atm, and can confirm i’m always limited by cpu not other components
"farely new "
No specs no info.
2. You need certain options enabled in the bios, if you dont do that you cant install windows 11.
Anyway, thats offtopic
Yes, a new budget gaming tower would probably be much better than this laptop. But I got the laptop for free and spending a few hundred bucks on a new computer is a lot of money if I only use it for one game…
While your laptop may fill the minimum requirements, it is not a recommended option to play with it, more RAM is not going to help you enough, if you wonder why, the reason is:
1.- The cpu works at low frequency and throttles when the device is getting warm.
2.-The integrated graphics are not enough to run the game at good resolution or details.
You need a new pc to play the game, any desktop cpu from 2018 and onwards would do the job and a GPU of 4 GB will be enough for aoe2, i would recommend you in case of a budget to get a ryzen 5600g, if you only play aoe2 that APU is more than capable to run the game without any lag even on michi and it is relatively cheap, pair it with 16 GB of RAM and that would do the job, but if you want to keep playing on a laptop then i guess you should look for one with an intel 11 gen cpu’s or ryzen 5000 series.
thing with cpus that have U in the name is they’re 15 watt models, they’ll throttle to just above the almost never specified base frequency, so if it says up to 4 GHz turbo, then the actual base ends up being about 2 GHz, meaning its far slower than a non power limited desktop would be
im gonna be honest bro 1.7ghz is kinda low. given that this is a laptop the turbo boost of PL2 will only last like 25 seconds at the 3.6ghz or something and clock back down to 1.7ghz.
even considering “new”, 8th gen is like 5 years old, almost 6 and this game is very dependent on the CPU frequency. quad core is good with 8350U generation arch but I recommend at least 2.5ghz+ otherwise u’ll have lag issue doing multiplayer with lots of units.
its likely not hardware but restricted by MS that win 11 requires TPM. probably can change settings in bios if its supported/unlocked but i doubt it. they lock those up to ensure e-waste and peopel always buy new things every year.
honestly, i’d recommend at least 3.6 Ghz desktop, then higher it goes the better, one note, it doesn’t matter if you pick amd or intel, they’re about equal these days
Generally laptops aren’t great for gaming except for gaming laptops because they don’t have good thermals. Regular laptops simply run too hot which is gonna result in a performance dip.
That’s most likely the reason for your bad performance. That one is pretty old so you won’t have great single core performance (the most important spec for aoe).
That might give you problems as well but as long as you play on 1080p with low graphic settings should be more or less fine.
32 is overkill, upgrading to 16 can (!) help out a little. In fact I used to play on a similar device and upgrading from 8 to 16 gave me better performance but you should check your ram usage first to make sure it’s not a waste of money.
However keep in mind that even if you do upgrade ram the main limiting factor will be the cpu. Upgrading ram will give you slight performance boost at best. If you wanna get large performance boost you will need to buy a new device.
The 1.7 op mentioned is just the base clock their device will boost to over 3 ghz. Generally clock speed isn’t really something to look at nowadays as every cpu which was produced after 2015 or so easily boosts to over 3 ghz. In the end it’s simply about single core performance which is still rather low with a cpu like the 8350U even if it can get to 3.6 ghz.
my point is the U series chip will run very close to base for majority of time, that 3+ GHz boost is only a short burst, it isn’t long term, my case, i run a i7 8565U, base 2 Ghz boost 4.6 Ghz, yk what i see ingame when playing, 2 Ghz, that kind of drop isn’t insignificant
Well yeah it won’t run at full turbo speed sure but in my experience they’ll run much closer to turbo than base clock. I had an 7500u laptop once and it stayed stable at slightly below 3ghz instead of 3,4 ghz. In theory it should be similar for the 8th at least.
32GB isnt over kill if one wishes to play this game on UHD. thats assuming other application on the computer by the users dont have memory leak issues. I have 128GB on my laptop and recently my steam was using 65GB due to memory leak and I didnt even notice it until things started to lag.
this game isnt exactly good on managing system resources, look at the bugs filed/reported not fixed for over 1+ year now. the best bet is to get something decent and not worry about tiny details later on.
lets give COMPLETE info here so users arent having headache down the road. OEMs design AND will design based off of intel specs. the glory days of design out of spec for extra cooling are long gone and the thin/light weight floods the market.
thin/light weight means they will go with intel’s TDP rating, hence Pl1 and PL2. the base clocks is PL1 and heatsink/firmware and fan curve will be designed around PL1 and PL2 for only mere 28 seconds boost. he’ll get the 3.6ghz for like 30 seconds and downclock to PL1, anything more than that he’ll overheat and be forced to undervolt if he wish to maintain higher clocks on his processor, thats assuming the laptop allows undervolting, which is another thing intel and MS with other oem actively trying to NOT let users do.
I honestly would not bother with xbox one. Multi billion dollar company can’t even find the support to add in basic features such as adding friends, inviting into a game that is supposed to be SUPPORTED on it’s own platform. Steam is really the way to go for now, don’t pay more to settle for less.