GTX 295 and Empire: Total War

yah but why would I rollback drivers? I am afraid another game won't work right then it's not worth it to try I would rather have an idea of what nVidia is doing with their drivers we are all the way up to almost v. 200 drivers and Empire: Total War has been out for almost a year so the drivers for it should work quite well by now.

I had a similar problem but i know how to fix it (more or less).

1. Go to Nvidia control panel
2. Go to Manage 3D Settings
3. Go to Threaded Optimization on the list
4. Change it from 'auto' to 'On'

This gave me a noticeable performance increase in Empire, and many other games (only in some others the only way to tell was FRAPS, since it was over 100 most of the time). Now even huge battles are smooth.

Lol. The guy asks for suggestion and when you offer one, he says No!
The same thing happens to me in Age of Empire where upgrading from a 9800 GT to a GTX 260 did not improve framerates during 8 player battles.

See, This is why I buy Nvidia cards, the ATI drivers are terrible, and just don't work.

Even though Nvidia products are more expensive, slower, and produce more heat, and don't support DX 11, and use more power when they do all that fun stuff, It's still worth it since you get stable drivers, and cards that just work, 100% of the Time.

The other day my HD 2600, Which is like a thousand years old, and has no effect on the current cards/drivers, ran into driver issues! How do you explain that!

Nvidia has NEVER NEVER EVER EVER had ANY problems with drivers.

The other day I heard ATI realsed some new drivers, version 196.75, that were frying cards!

EDIT: This one is for you BMX!


/Sarcasm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you think about it really hard, you might be able to figure it out!

Or I can even edit it for you!

I know, 196.75, Is an Nvidia driver killing cards.

oh ok you're an ATI guy, no that's confusing. Are you kidding me ofcourse I have rolled back drivers on the 295 I got the 295 the day it came out, I knew it wasn't a card that was going to last, it uses a ton of power, it only supports DX10, for a card that was $500 is dual GPU, uses a ton of power, only supports DX10, one of my favorite games that I wanted to play didn't work nearly at all I think I made the right decision to sell it for $300 to upgrade my friends computer.

Empire used to be a mess on my 4850 and 5850 (horrific shadows, partially invisible buildings). Then, by way of patches (perhaps) and the new 10.3a drivers (from 9.12 HF), all of that was fixed.

I tried every which program setting in the nVidia control panel nothing made a difference. I can't belive your 295 works you're so lucky, had it always worked or did it more recently start working better because of new drivers? I am baffled. I noticed you have ddr3 ram which will improve performance (I have ddr2 oc 1120) and you have a gamer sound card which could improve performance a little bit. Comparing our systems there really isn't a big difference and it should have come down to graphics processing power which we both had exactly the same of on a 2.0 PCI-E slot, so it doesn't make any sense why your game runs well and mine didn't. I am jelous I would have held onto my 295.

No yannifb has a uniqe situation, I have read a lot of posts that Empire: Total War does not performe well on a GTX295 for whatever reason even with dual gpu mode off. Bottom line a lot of people were having a hard time with this card and that game.

How long ago did you sell your 295? Before the last patches? Some major graphical/processing updates happened to the game about mid way through.

It seems that you got the very first 295s, i got the newer single pcb one (which shouldn't make a difference unless your card was overheating). I have a feeling it was just a faulty card.

well since you have a cheaper card now you can upgrade to a dx 11 card with the money you got back. I'd recommend a 5870 since the price will drop soon when the fermi cards come, or if you want get a fermi card.