Eep, are you sure you want a Celeron? They aren't made for gaming at all, and Pentium 4's are getting cheaper now - I suggest you by that. Also consider an AMD Sempron.

How many men? I'm not too sure - maybe under 2,000.

Does BI lag more? Well, it certainly does on Multiplayer more than Rome did.

[This message has been edited by Ichbinian (edited 11-04-2005 @ 06:22 PM).]

Okay, thanks Your probably right, how well will a sempron 3400 64bit run.

I dont play multiplayer so that wont effect me that much.

[This message has been edited by tankman (edited 11-04-2005 @ 06:38 PM).]

Sempron will run it pretty good.

Skip the Semperon, if you can get the Athlon64. A good price point is the AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor (Venice) Socket 939 right now. That's a 90nm process, with a 14.4 GB/s total delivered processor-to-system bandwidth and a 6.4 GB/s memory bandwidth. Do NOT get a Semperon unless you cannot afford the extra $65-75 for the Athlon64 (Venice!!). If you are cash-strapped, then buy the XP, not the Semperon! It has much more "guts", which you can easily read about if you want tech details.

Good hunting!

Yeah, getting a Sempron is like getting the AMD version of Celeron... Might as well just keep your current one, really. Anyway, I don't think you'll even need to upgrade to play BI on relatively high settings. It's more intensive on graphics than on the CPU, and your graphics card is pretty ok.

Okay that's some very good advice and I will follow through on the athlon64 upgrade.

PS. I bought RTW and BI yesterday, and can play with more than 6000 men lag-less, celerons aren't all that bad after all(OC'ED).

Given your *particular* configuration, there are several things that make an upgrade from a ~3.4GHz Celery to a ~3.4 or 3.5 Athlon64 marginal:

1. You have more than 512 MB RAM. The known memory leak issue that plagues RTW patch 1.3 and BI takes much longer to manifest itself (the slowdowns) than people that run 512MB or less (typically 6 hours or so before shutdown or reboot is necessary).

2. The timing (and presumably the CAS latency that I'm sure you understand if you are an overclocker) factors: e.g., if you have 2-2-2-2-5 RAM, that allows CPU requests to be fulfilled with far less waiting... that is a significant factor in CPU-limite games like RTW.

This means that an Upgrade to Athlon64 will cost for the CPU and a new MB (~$100), and the increase in performance will not be as dramatic as say a 2.0 GHz Celery (or even AthlonXP or P4 at 2.0). If you wait 6 or 8 months, when the 'knee' in the price of the Athlon64 drops the 4.6 and 4.8 GHz versions down from $500-$900 to about $200, the "bang for the buck" will be significant for RTW and other games.

There is another "free" performance enhancer: Dual channel RAM. There is a catch, though. Your motherboard must support it, and you must run Identical (preferrable vendor matched!) RAM (e.g., 2x512MB Hyperion to get 1GB, or 2x1GB to get 2GB). I don't know if your current rig supports Dual Channel. nVidia nForce2 chipsets, for instance, do support Dual Channel.

So my personal bottom-line advice in your exact case is to save your $$ (if budget is a factor) for the moment (keep your 3.4GHz Celeron), and wait until you can get an Athlon64 and motherboard running in the mid-4.xx GHz range.

performance enhancer: Dual channel RAM.
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yes my motherboard and CPU support DDR2.

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So my personal bottom-line advice in your exact case is to save your $$ (if budget is a factor) for the moment (keep your 3.4GHz Celeron), and wait until you can get an Athlon64 and motherboard running in the mid-4.xx GHz range.
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sound advice indeed.

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1. You have more than 512 MB RAM. The known memory leak issue that plagues RTW patch 1.3 and BI takes much longer to manifest itself (the slowdowns) than people that run 512MB or less (typically 6 hours or so before shutdown or reboot is necessary).
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memory leak?? how did that happen!!

PS. whats a memory leak?!?!

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Eh? Can't be. I remember you saying that your current RAMs are PC3200, which isn't DDR2.

I don't know what the memory leak issue is about either, and I'm curious to hear more about it as well... Definitely new to me.

Anyway, I feel that there's no need for you to upgrade at all to play RTW or BI, tankman. Your system is definitely good enough for the game. IMHO upgrading now wouldn't be worth the money. It would be better, as Wartrain has said, to save up and do one major upgrade later on. If you can afford to wait for another year, why not? AMD's going the DDR2 road around the middle of next year. The ATi X1 series will be out latest by end of the year, so prices for other cards will drop as well. You have plenty of good options next year.

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DDR2 is not Dual Channel. DDR2 refers to the way the memory data is transferred (electrically), and Dual Channel means there are TWO physical memory controllers (most PCs only have one) operating in tandem (simultaneously), each carrying "half the load". This allows faster throughput at a given memory bus frequency. There are other technologies that speed up memory access/transfer, too.

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A memory leak occurs when a programmer fails to properly account for using and releasing RAM during program operation. This is a hallmark of poorly programmed code and/or badly (inadequately) tested code. Patch 1.3, unfortunately, has memory leaks. And Patch 1.3 was improperly tested before release (as far as I have seen commented from the developers, patch 1.3 was only tested "in-house", then unleased upon the RTW gaming world).

At any rate, in the programming and software project management world, this is a major screw-up.

How did this happen? Likely this way (speculation, based on my experience in software development): "They" programmed the game, in-house users who were (or had become) very familiar (and bored) with gameplay, "tested" the specific errors fixed and refixed in the development cycle, and eventually, time "constraints" caused the "testers" (not typical users anymore) to play for short periods, on top-flight test machines (e.g., fast CPUs and 512MB or more of RAM, with little or no "typical" real-world user applications (and the attendant codecs, drivers, DLLs, registry entries, etc.) installed.... and guess what? They never noticed things like Scipii and Brutii AI defects, or the absurd memory leaks. The memory leaks manifest themselves over a long continious play period. The more RAM, the longer it takes to "notice." So a "quick" 30 or 45 minute "playtest" of the latest "fix" will not reveal it.

In effect, the public who bought the BI or whom use the 1.3 patch (e.g., me) *are* the playtesters, and "we" are doing the job that the retail price of the game pays "them" to do.

Hopefully, "they" will announce the 1.4 patch development, and create it using modern methods (e.g., meeting the needs of users, testing with users!) of software test, such as taught at universities like Stanford in America and KTH in Sweden today. What we got in the 1.3 patch was, in essence, a "beta" or "pre-beta" version, *not* an acceptable final release software product.

The bottom line is that with the 1.3 patch and 1GB of RAM & all other applications on your XP machine closed (nothing running in the background), you should close RTW and reboot XP about every 6 hours, as a rough rule. If you don't, nothing catastophic is likely, but you will, over time, notice growth of your swapfile and a slowdown, eventually impeding or even paralyzing your system.

Hope this explanation didn't get too technical, but you can do several things to minimize (but you cannot cure) the effect of the memory leak issue in Patch 1.3:

1. Ensure you have (or can grow) a large swapfile.
2. Have a lot of RAM (your 1GB is good).
3. Close all unnecessary background services and programs while playing RTW.
4. Pagefile (called swapfile in Win9x):
4.a. Keep your pagefile drive defragmented
4.b. Put your pagefile on its OWN, exclusive partition
4.c. Put your pagefile on a separate physical drive (in first 1/3 of drive).

Oh, maybe you can write to Acitvision, Sega, and The Creative Assembly and tell them if you pay for a retail product, you expect it to be fully *user* tested and debugged! And get working on Patch 1.4 as soon as possible.

BTW, Patch 1.2 has no leaks that I know of.

How do I access my pagefile and do that stuff you said?

Hey Thantos whats your email id . we can trade some tactics and help each other out

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The quick answer for XP is Start Button - Settings - Control Panel - System - Advanced - Settings - Advanced - Virtual Memory. From that page, decide the drive(s) you wish to have pagefiles on, click on that drive letter, enter the custom size: for simplicity, choose a size of 1024 in both the initial and maximum size boxes, and this will give a gigabyte of VM -- and then click the SET button. To REMOVE a pagefile, choose the drive letter, then enter a an initial and maximum size of 0 (zero), and click SET. Any NEW pagefiles you create will be made immediately. Any pagefiles you remove will require a reboot.

Simple guidelines:
1. Have one pagefile on one drive.
2. Prefer a separate physical drive, if possible.
3. Prefer a separate partition.
4. Prefer locatation in the first part (the fastest ) of the hard drive, to eliminate fragmentation.
5. Prefer custom size, set to SAME initial and maximum. This eliminates a huge amount of untimely Windows "background" work resizing as you work/play.
6. Its OK ot have more than one location set, but I personally don't, to improve speed.
7. If you cannot create a separate drive, at least defrag the drive where the pagefile resides, then set the size to say 20/20 (initial/max), reboot, then set it to 1024/1024).

DO NOT completely remove all pagefile(s) from your system (e.g., have zero pagefiles... you need at least one pagefile on one drive, size about 20MB or more, somewhere on your system).

Happy hunting ...

[This message has been edited by Wartrain (edited 11-17-2005 @ 05:52 AM).]

thanks wartrain, I did what you said on the Page File.
my page file is at 2GB(is that to much?).

PS.my Cpu is at 4.1 ghz now(38C idle 49-51C full load).

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If you have a static pagefile, its OK (static means both values are set to be the same), assuming it is defragmented by being on a partition all by itself.

With 1GB of RAM that you have, however, I'd normally set machines to 512 MB or 1GB. The reason is that windows normally won't actually need lots of pagefile for most of today's programs, unless you are doing certain things (esp. graphics) with say, Adobe Photoshop or Premiere. For basic gameplay like RTW, 1GB swapfile will be fine. My machine I'm using at the moment has 1GB RAM, 512MB swapfile. The things that help the most are low fragmentation (swapfile has its very own, private partition to live on ), fastest place on the hard drive (keep entire swapfile in the first 25% or so of the hard drive to ensure this), different physical drive than boot (e.g., a 2nd or 3rd hard drive), and static (both numbers set to same value, e.g., 1024/1024, even though windows will complain).

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That is good. Its similar to the ranges I allow. Typically, I cap machines at about 52C, either by fan speed stepup (more RPMs at 52C to keep temp from rising more, albiet more fan noise), or by type of heatsink. Your 51C and the good power supply you have will help insure a long CPU life.

If you have a static pagefile, its OK (static means both values are set to be the same
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yes I do have a static pagefile

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by being on a partition all by itself.
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I'm not sure what you mean.
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That is good. Its similar to the ranges I allow. Typically, I cap machines at about 52C, either by fan speed stepup (more RPMs at 52C to keep temp from rising more, albiet more fan noise), or by type of heatsink. Your 51C and the good power supply you have will help insure a long CPU life.
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whew!! thats a sigh of relief on my part, I was worried my CPU was going to explode because of the voltage I have it on(max!),but none the less it runs very stable.

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And what exactly is the voltage?... Anyway, I doubt it'd be very high? Your temps are pretty low for that o/c, unless you're using water-cooling.

Thanks Wartrain!

I_Alexander, both my MSN and E-Mail are listed in my profile.

I prefer MSN though, for obvious reasons.

And what exactly is the voltage?... Anyway, I doubt it'd be very high? Your temps are pretty low for that o/c, unless you're using water-cooling.
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1.75 I thinks,and no I dont use water-cooling just heatsink and fan. the Proc is a presscott core--so thats a pretty good temp for that CORE.

PS. is there a graphics card that can have 3000 or more men on screen and not lag on med-high or max graphics?? is there such a card??