Empire: Total War - Pentium 4 / 7200GT

You can get the demo for free off steam or other places.

That'll tell you if it runs, and if it's worth getting.

Like most RTS games even if it looks really good it is still a very CPU based game.

Still I think it should run well, though you might have to adjust the settings. Still I would download the demo like mad said to make sure.

I don't think it would be that playable...

I doubt the game will run well; you might want to give Midevil2: Total War a shot though; it runs on a modified R:TW engine, so it should run about the same as R:TW did.

I needed to make serious graphical compromises to run MII:TW on an Athlon X2 4600+ and a Geforce 7950GT.

O, cool I'll give that a try, didn't know that.

I actually don't know that it will run that well on that pc. I've got an Athlon 5200+ x2 and 2 gb ddr2, as well as a 9600gt, and I want that game as well, but I ran the demo, and it ran ok I guess, but seemed painfully slow to load on my pc.

^^ Yup, it worked find, loaded fine, just the graphics where horrible, and the lag was unbarable.

So that looks like a no no to the 7200GT. Might get a 8600GTS DDR3 for the system and be over with.

Well nice to see another user that use a p4 still  

Anyways yeah. You need these specs.

Operating System: Windows XP 32(service pack 2), Windows Vista 32 OS.
Processor: 2.4 GHz Single Core Intel or AMD equivalent processor.
System Memory: 1GB RAM (XP) 2GB RAM (Vista).
Graphics Card: 256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card (shader 2.0 or higher).
Sound Card: Directx9.0c compatible sound card.
Windows compatible mouse & keyboard.
15 GB free uncompressed hard drive space.

P4s (Prescotts and Ceder mill) are ok but don't have very much performance and even with my PD 805 at 3.35ghz it lags a bit but is ok for RTS games like AOE3 and Rise of nations gold. The 7200 is the worst part of that rig so any thing like a 9500gt or better like a 4650 will do wonders for that box. PS while you are installing the new card clean out the dust and replace the thermal compound with Arctic Silver 5 (just a pea sized blob in the middle of the cap on the cpu) then all should be good for a year or two.  

Empire will require a lot of upgrades to that computer to run decently. I'd suggest going Medieval II + Kingdoms, then get a bunch of mods like stainless steel or whatever is your fancy. MII will still require some graphics upgrades, but empire would pretty much require a new computer.

I don't think so, it had no problem "loading" infact it was pretty swift. It just the graphics detail was horrible. I checked my CPU reading after I quit the game, and it was only useing 74% of the CPU at most during the game play. So CPU wise, its O.K. Just the GPU.

  I love Pentium's, I don't know why people hate them so much, you just have to have the right one I guess. Like, with HT, 2MB cache, and 65nm tech that keeps it nice and cool.

Currently I'm useing a Pentium to be here, the computer is just as fast for normal browsing/downloading/light gaming.

As I said before, when I was playing on the 8800GT and the P4 that I own, I was getting 80FPS+ on maxed out settings for CoD4. (1024x1024 I think.) It's not a bad gaming chip if the game is more GPU dependent, then CPU. Like UT3 played supurb, Far Cry 2 etc etc.

The only games that I refused to play on a Pentium was GTA IV, as I knew it would be an epic failure. And Crysis, and that's just becuase I hate the game overall, and wouldn't want to play it.

Pentium D's are pretty good, you just need to own one with the 65nm tech, so it runs way cooler. I was playing GTA IV with the 8800GT getting 35fps+ on medium-high.