Total War PC requirements

[Incendio]

I have a new desktop computer that I won't use much for playing games because I also have a gaming laptop but I've just installed Rome 2 Total War. I am aware about how difficult is to run a Total War game so Rome 2 will be the latest Total War in this computer but let's have a look at the recommended settings:

CPU: Intel Core i5 Second Generation
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 1024 MB DirectX 11 compatible card

Mine:

CPU: AMD A10-7800 Radeon R7 3.50 GHz
Memory: 16 GB RAM DDR3
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 750 2 GB VRAM DDR5 DirectX 12

I am not able to play it on High/Ultra. But what is more, I am not able to play Empire Total War on Ultra as well, in this game the requirements are lower than Rome 2 (Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, Memory: 2 GB RAM, Graphics: 512 MB VRAM). Curiously, Napoleon Total War and Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai run fairly better than Empire Total War with everything on Ultra. Anyone has experienced these performance issues? Why Empire Total War has worse performance than Napoleon and Shogun 2 even considering ETW requirements are lower than Napoleon and Shogun 2?

I will buy Medieval II Total War + Kingdoms for my computer, if I am lucky, I will be able to play it decently.

[Frunk]

This is probably more likely to get a good response in The Basement.

Thread moved from General TW Discussion.

[Jaketh]

Empire was the first to use the warscape engine and as I recall it was plagued with stability issues and poor optimization. Shogun 2 in its current state is one of the most polished, optimized and stable total war titles that has ever been released and thus far hasn't been surpassed in overall quality to this day (Warhammer 2 remains to be seen.)

[Incendio]

Medieval II Total War runs fine, except with lots of units, lag just a little.

Regarding Rome II Total War, I have been testing multiple settings. This is the best settings I can get without sacrificing too much quality: Everything on ultra, except shadows on medium, trees and grass in very high, no alpha vegetation and particle effects on high, synchronization and SSAO unchecked. With such settings I get 36.2 FPS in performance test. Do you think 36.2 FPS (27 min. 51 max.) is good enough to play Rome II Total War?

[Condottiere 40K]

I would take the sixty buck Pentium G4560 as the base for a gaming rig.

Apparently, all things being equal, it would only start bottlenecking with a GTX 1080.

[Incendio]

I probably found the problem. After a lot of testing, I can run Total War games with few units and max. settings but I can't even run Rome I with this computer and large armies. My theory is that my AMD processor is not fully compatible with Total War games. At least I learned an important lesson: do not buy any computer with AMD processor if I want to play Total War games...

[Condottiere 40K]

I think you took the wrong lesson from this.

With the arrival of Ryzen, I saw the writing on the wall, and sold off all my AM3 computers, luckily at above the going rate, and they can run Total War games fine. If later Total War games are optimized for four cores or more, you probably cannot beat performance per buck from the new Zen architecture and AMD pricing structure.

The coming Coffee Lakes are supposed to be a ten to fifteen percent improvement, with a ten percent increased premium; you'll have fantastic performance, if you're willing to pay the cost with an additional expensive motherboard and an aftermarket cooler.