Optimum Mount and Blade Gaming

[duckmoose]

I don't like the process of trickling in large forces one cluster of men at a time via the reinforcement method, so I play with around 200 men.  However this is often not enough to prevent the trickle effect.  It is also prone to lag and makes fighting in the thick of the battle very ineffective.

However, I've heard people speak of using a 400 or 600 man cap in battle.  I can't see how this would be playable.

Does anyone have any idea if this is possible on any kind of machine?  I'm looking to upgrade my computer sometime soon, and if there is any hope of performing a battle relatively smoothly on those kinds of settings I would be elated.

I currently run an AMD dual core 4400+ with a 512 MB 8800 GT and 2 gigs of RAM.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

Try turning down the resolution to it's lowest setting and see if you need any tips.

 

[duckmoose]

It helps a bit, but does no one have any idea what kind of video card/processor/etc. could help Mount and Blade performance further?

 

[Equus]

You could try reducing the size limit by, say, 10 guys at a time until you get somewhat better performance. Maybe the drop in troops wouldn't be as noticeable then.

 

[duckmoose]

Well, I was more interested in figuring out how to bring my system up to what I want to play smoothly rather than vice versa.

 

[sirinan]

People will have different opinions on what's considered playable... I haven't heard anyone mention using 400-600 in a battle though, which might give you some idea (it probably won't be pretty, even on a good machine.)

 

[Aldwen]

People will have different opinions on what's considered playable... I haven't heard anyone mention using 400-600 in a battle though, which might give you some idea (it probably won't be pretty, even on a good machine.

I play with 400-600 in a battle. in fact my battle sizer is set to 1000.

However, Mount and Blade will never spawn 500 vs. 500. There will always be at least one wave when the battle seems to get around more than 300-400 men strong. I couldn't tell you any exact numbers but I know for a fact I've been in battles where each side has at least 300 men. IIRC there was only a small reinforcement of maybe 30-50 near the end.

Here is a quick picture of a siege I did a while back featuring a cumulative total of around 800 men. Granted it's a siege, so not everyone was spawned at one time, but here is wave number one...

So, yes there are machines that can run it. I run everything maxed out and with GE as well but I still have to turn of character shadows to stop major frame rate hits during these battles, but even then I still do take a hit. I'd say when I look at the epicenter of a massive battle I get around 20*30fps. So it does slow down, but it's still perfectly playable.

System...
Intel Q9300 Quad Core @ 2.5GHz (Over-Clocked to 3.0 [could go higher if I wanted])
Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2 x 2GB [Timing- 4-4-4-12])
*MoBo Supports up to 8GB but I run on XP
Radeon HD 4870 512MB

 

[duckmoose]

Very cool!  Thanks for the reply.

Do you have get crashes concerning corpse numbers?

And I will have to try the character shadows thing.

 

[rasz]

Hmm, does M&B use more than one core? can anyone turn Task Manager On, start a battle and then check if mre than one core is maxed?

I would suspect the key is the fastest clocked Intel CPU you can find + HD4870/GT280.
Intel, because they got 25% better IPC (instructions per clock, means AMD cpu has to be clocked 25% faster to equal the performance).

I got crappy Intel Core solo 3GHz (overclocked) and old GF7900GS (also overclocked) and run the game 1600x1200 with GE, battlesizer 161 + tweaked battle fields (max size set so people are not cramped on small field). I also had to turn down shadows a notch + game gets choppy at night (I suspect dynamic lightninig).

 

[Frankoman]

I run on battle size 450 Full Graphics with no lag. I could probably go up quite a bit and still have great gameplay. I get about 40 fps with the game on 83% Visual.

My PC -

Dual 7600 512 mb Graphics Cards
Core Duo 3.2 Ghz Processor
2x 2 gig Ram Sticks
1.5 tb Hard Drive Space (spread over 3 hard drives)
24' Envision Wide Screen Monitor

 

[duckmoose]

I keep experiencing unplayable slowdown in large battles on hilly/foresty terrain.  It's not normal lag it's almost a complete standstill with punctuated freezing.  I'm wondering if perhaps RAM plays a crucial role as I only have 2 gigs and both of yall seem to have 4 gigs. 

 

[kazuma]

For those of you with the nice computers, what is the screen resolution?

Do you get jacked in the forest battles?

 

[Aldwen]

Hmm, does M&B use more than one core? can anyone turn Task Manager On, start a battle and then check if mre than one core is maxed?

None of my four cores is maxed, but they are sharing the load pretty evenly, each core varying around 20 to 30%.

*Edit* Hum, weird seems it fluctuates. Or something, just checked with my last battle and only one core was being used...  Odd, perhaps someone else with a multi-core processor should check. My computer may have been doing something in the background I was not aware of. Aw well, I'll check again tomorrow if no one else does.

As for my resolution I play at 1680x1050 


@duckmoose
I've never personally experienced any lag in hilly forests, but from what it sounds like (happening only in hilly forests) it sounds like your card may have a problem rendering tons of trees, grasses, and then applying dynamic lighting to the lot. Hilly forests often have a lot of shadows all over the place because of the dynamic lighting and the full plant life shadows. So it may be that...

When it doubt, remember that shadows are usually the cause of a lot of problems. Nix those first then go from there. When I kill of character shadows in large battles I usually get a 5-10fps boost.

As for the corpses I've only ever had one problem with that, and that was when the corpses really started to mount up. It was a rather large battle of 600 or so men and both forces were evenly matched so there were bodies covering literally every inch of the map. I actually CTDed because of it . I had looked at the epicenter and kaboom, CTD, the error I received was something about "Failed to lock vertexes." Since then, on overtly large battles (400+) I usually set the limit down to 40 just be safe.

My computer wasn't struggling at all, but I think M&B just has some issues regarding such obscene numbers.

 

[Pii100]

If you get lag in big battles, turn ragdolls to only few/off.

I've noticed that ragdolls are lag number one in my game.

 

[duckmoose]

I've tried altering shadows of all sorts to no avail.  When the standstill bug happens no graphics changes correct it.

 

[Lionheart X]

If you are going to get a new PC and plan on using Xp make sure you only get 3Gb, thats the max XP can support, 4Gb is just a waste of the extra 1Gb. But it depends on your budget on what your going to get, otherwise id say get a quad core 3.0 or higher, 3Gb of ram for Xp 4 if your using vista, and a GX280

 

[Aldwen]

If you are going to get a new PC and plan on using Xp make sure you only get 3Gb, thats the max XP can support, 4Gb is just a waste of the extra 1Gb. But it depends on your budget on what your going to get, otherwise id say get a quad core 3.0 or higher, 3Gb of ram for Xp 4 if your using vista, and a GX280

Not entirety correct... plus Vista is crap.

This is posted regularly over on Tom's Hardware and was original posted by one Scotteq....


[quote author=Scotteq]
In 32 bit Windows operating systems, the total addressable space available is 4GB. If you installed total 4GB memory, the system will detect less than 4GB of total memory because of address space allocation for other critical functions, such as:

- System BIOS (including motherboard, add-on cards, etc..)
- Motherboards resources
- Memory mapped I/O
- Configuration for AGP/PCI-Ex/PCI
- Other memory allocations for PCI devices

Different onboard devices and different add-on cards (devices) will result of different total memory size. e.g. more PCI cards installed will require more memory resources, resulting of less memory free for other uses.

This limitation applies to most chipsets & Windows XP/Vista 32-bit version operating systems.

If you install a Windows operating system, if more than 3GB memory is required for your system, then the below conditions should be met:

1. The memory controller which supports memory swap functionality is used. The latest chipsets like Intel 975X, 955X, Nvidia NF4 SLI Intel Edition, Nvidia NF4 SLI X16, AMD K8 and newer architectures can support the memory swap function.

2. Windows XP Pro X64 Ed. (64-bit), Windows Vista 64, or other OS which can address more than 4GB memory.[/quote]

 

[Lord Kinlar]

The only problem is you won't be able to find an identical 2 + 1 GB memory pair. You have to choose between 3x1 GB or 2x2 GB. 2x2 would be my choice. 

 

[Lionheart X]

Still a waste of 1gb, Xp will not be able to utilise itas well as higher versons and vista, an actually if you know abit about pcs you can make vista run perfectly with no problems, ive never had any afte making a few small teaks

 

[rasz]

Ram doesnt matter that much, game on high settings uses only 600MB