Medieval 2 Total War computer specs

[Darth Wong]

Link

Apparently, we need:

• Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP
• Celeron 1.5GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor.
• 512MB RAM
• 8x Speed DVD-ROM drive
• 11GB of uncompressed free hard disk space
• DirectX 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card
• DirectX 9.0c compatible 128MB video card with Shader 1 support

None of those requirements are particularly onerous (although a slow processor like that will probably chug with big armies), but I haven't really kept up on GPU terminology. What kind of card do you need for Shader 1 support? Will I have to ditch my cheap old Radeon 9600 cards and get something new?

[Dominus Atheos]

None of those requirements are particularly onerous (although a slow processor like that will probably chug with big armies), but I haven't really kept up on GPU terminology. What kind of card do you need for Shader 1 support? Will I have to ditch my cheap old Radeon 9600 cards and get something new?

Radeon 9600 has SmartShader 2.0, so no.

[Arrow]

That's rather tame. I was expecting the min spec to be far more demanding (hmmm - efficient programming at work? Or marketing BS?). I can't wait to see if I can hit 10K+ units in a battle.

[Gandalf]

My video card (Radeon x300) will probably need an upgrade. When the camera zooms out to about two hundred metres away from your men on the field, they turn into potatoes.

Otherwise, it looks to be something I can do.

[Darth Quorthon]

I'm a bit surprised. From what I've seen, I'd expect the minimum requirements to be a bit higher, but then again those are just the bare minimum. Also, that's one of the biggest installation sizes I've ever seen - 11 gigabytes. I'll be very interested to see what the "recommended" specifications are. A lot of the games I've been looking at lately seem to recommend a video card with Shadermark 2.0 support and 256 MB of ram. I'm looking forward to letting my X1950XTX have at it.

I looked around a bit, and I didn't see any other requirements listing. Gamespot shows the release date as November 14th.

[AniThyng]

Presumably this spec will grant you 25 frames per second average with everything turned to "very low", if the screenshots are representive of "high"

But yay, I can theoratically run this on my notebook!

But 11 gigs of HDD space? That is a hell of a lot of textures.

[Vympel]

I'm looking forward to letting my X1950XTX have at it.

Same

Incidentally, 11 gigs? Jeez. It's probably all the videos.

[Dartzap]

Now thats just nifty, my own rig should be more than able enough for this. Huzzah!

[Lord Woodlouse]

Wow, I was expecting to have to upgrade. Though I suspect those specs are a little off for good (read: acceptable) performance.

[Akhlut]

Haha, holy shit. Except for the 11 GB part (80 gig hd with about 60 gigs used thus far), my ~2 year old eMachine should be able to handle this game fairly well. This is a very pleasant surprise.

[Darth Wong]

The HD space is a given for a modern graphically intensive game. Luckily my computers are sporting 320MB Barracuda 7200.10 SATA2 drives.

[Alferd Packer]

Hmmm, so the debate begins: Do I crank up the detail for smaller unit sizes, or do I have huge, blurry armies? Choices!

[Vyraeth]

That's rather tame. I was expecting the min spec to be far more demanding (hmmm - efficient programming at work? Or marketing BS?). I can't wait to see if I can hit 10K+ units in a battle.

I guaruantee you if you're just at those minimum specs, you're going to have to put every setting at minimum, and even then I have a good feeling the game'll play very choppily.

The most important thing I'd think is the proc, because in most games that I've played, I've noticed that having a higher proc speed can be a huge help, of course this largely depends on the game. I've noticed, specifically, with Rome: Total War that higher RAM rather then proc speed was more important (I.E. going from 512-1GB was a big improvement), althought I believe Medieval 2 is on a new engine, so it's really hard to say.

Anyhow, I don't want too sound too grim, just trying to forewarn you, in-general the minimum specs are just the specs you need to get the game installed, but don't guaruantee any sort of enjoyable playing experience. Hopefully I'm wrong about this game, because my system, my proc especially is lagging behind, but I'd say if you're willing to ugprade for this game then you go ahead and upgrade if you want to get the max out of it, otherwise, I think you'll be disappointed (especially with a game in the Total War series, where massive armies are centerfold).

[Darth Wong]

The relevant parts of RTW's minimum system specs were a 1GHz Pentium3 or higher with 256MB RAM and a 64MB DirectX 9.0b video card.

I actually played RTW on a 1.4GHz Celeron with 384MB RAM and a 64MB GeForce2 MX video card for quite a while (which was pretty close to the minimum spec) and it was actually pretty good, although I had to use normal unit sizes rather than large ones and fire arrows tended to slow down the display. It wasn't until BI came out that I had to abandon that rig for a much more powerful one in order to play the game without frustration. So if historical precedent is any indicator, the game will actually be playable and the gameplay experience won't be too bad if you're near the bottom end, but of course, you can have bigger armies and more eye candy with a bigger rig.

[Arrow]

<snip>

I'll be playing this on an E6600 and 7950GX2. The reason I'm commenting on the low end spec is because they can indicate something about the high end experience (ie, 10K+ men on the field, hacking each other to glorious bits!), assuming that spec is actually playable and not a slide show (and assuming the AI scales efficiently to handle larger units, and the graphics code is efficient for all the high end effects).