Game demo embarrasses my pc!

[Thresh25]

Hmm. well to me it really doesn't matter one way or another. I could just save myself 20 bucks or so going the amd route. decisions decisions. but ****, power supplies are pretty expensive. i picked my x finity up for like 50 bucks if i recall.

 

[philbar71]

well, there are cheaper alternatives, but that corsair is a very good brand and will last you a while.

also that extra $20 would be well worth it.

 

[Thresh25]

All right, I'll either go with that corsair, or how would this do...

Amazon.com: OCZ OCZ600SXS StealthXStream 600W Power Supply with Four +12V rails, ATX, and 120mm Fan: Electronics

 

[philbar71]

^ that's a pretty decent psu. you probly should stick with newegg (might have a better price) and thier rma process is easy.

if you dont want to spend the money on the corsair then the OCZ will be fine.

 

[veg1992]

Its thrashing my rig because the HD sucks (IDE ftl) while my friend who has a lower end CPU and an HD 4670 (which is = to an HD 3850 pretty much) and less RAM with a SATA RaptorX drive gets better loading times...

 

[kmote]

Seagate Barracuda IV ST380021A - disk reads 75MB in 3.04 seconds (25.03MB/s).
Seagate Cheetah ST373455LW - disk reads 384MB in 3.00 seconds (127.96MB/s).

 

[Thresh25]

I don't think my HDD sucks though, it's SATA at 7200 rpm i believe. got it a lil over a year ago but I think it's fast.

Edit: last thing, would I see a big increase in getting pc 8500 ram, or would my 2 gigs of pc6400 be plenty fast?

 

[veg1992]

It could be your GPU?

or

Maybe you haven't defragged your HD or ran CCleaner on it

 

[HAVOC]

So I installed the new Empire Total war demo. to start the game up it took about 10 minutes of load time, then to load each map/battle it took an additional 5-10 minutes, and then after each battle to return to the menu the same thing.

As some of you know, I have teetered between a whole new system, or just a video card update. I was starting to lean towards a video card update, but this incredibly slow load time wouldn't be improved by a new video card would it???

I've got a 2.3ghz dual core, 3 gigs of dual channel pc6400 ram, and a sata hdd. Is this stuff really that outdated that I can't even load fast anymore?? Or would just a video card update do the trick? Keep in mind I am running on a 26" monitor at 1336x768 resolution.

Your experience isn't because of YOUR PC.

1.) GameSpot Forums - Empire: Total War - load times
2.) Empire: Total War Demo Released - Voodoo Extreme
3.) Blue's News: Comments - Empire: Total War Demo

I had a very similar experience with load times in all the places you mentioned.

When the game did actually load the performance was fine at highest settings.

my video card is HD 4850X2. CPU: Opty 180 @ 3.0Ghz 2G of DDR3500 HDD: 300G WD Velociraptor
24" acer LCD @ 1920x1200 - WINDOWS XP SP3

This system although isn't latest and greatest plays everything maxed out perfectly.

 

[Thresh25]

Ahhh thanks a lot man. I am somewhat relieved. Maybe I won't have to throw money out the window then.