Hi everyone,

I just bought me a new x1950pro and ocz gamexstream 600watt, plugged everything in, fired it up. Of course I uninstalled my old nvidia videocard drivers, and then used driver cleaner pro to remove the remains. I restarted after each step as well. When I went to go play Age of Empires 3, my performance was so much worse then it was with my old videocard (7800gs). While it's not unplayable, I find it hard to believe my x1950pro was actually a step down in ANY game. Any suggestions? Thanks!

EDIT:

Issue:
To summarize the problem, it's basically my performance in Age of Empires 3 The War Chiefs is less then expected. Performance in Age of Empires 3 (no expansion) the game runs fine.

Attempted fixes:
Updated Windows (XP pro 32bit)
Updated graphics drivers, careful to clean out old drivers
double and triple checked settings inside of game, and inside videocard control panel
Installed and played game inside of Vista, same problem
Updated game (1.10, unless there is a specific patch for the expansion that I couldn't find?)
Installed, and re-installed game.
Tried running game without sound.

Technical Specs:
Windows XP pro SP2 all current updates (including DX9 Feb. update)
CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case
OCZ GameXStream 600watt PSU
Asrock 775 dual vsta (windows default drivers)
OCZ Gold DDR400 512MBx2 3-3-3-6
Ati X1950pro Catalyst 7.1
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer driver: 2.09.0007
WD 2500KS 250GB 16MB 7200RPM SATA300 X2 (not raid)

*Screenshots to show performance difference farther down.

Did ya check the vga guide on this very site?

The old VGA charts do have Age of Empires 3 listed, but not my videocard. And nothing even close (x1900xt 256mb, x1900gt...). However, my card should be faster then an x1800xt, and it gets a higher score then a 7800gs.

I also tried re-installed the game (uninstall, restart, delete traces of game, install, patch to latest 1.08 ). I also am using the latest ATI drivers I could find, 7.1. I also made sure my PCIe 4x slot wasn't slowing things down:

"So what did we see during our tests? Other than 3DMark our 7900GTX performed nearly the same on both boards despite the ASRock only having a 4x PCI-E slot. It?s extremely doubtful that you?d be able to tell what motherboard was being used if you couldn?t peek inside the case." -Legit Reviews

And since the 7900gtx is a faster videocard then mine, it would saturate the bus even more.

I really don't know what else to do

Thanks for your reply though, I didn't think anyone was going to help.

Don't worry about the lack of response. This is a slow section of the forumz. If you'd like more immediate help, I'd check the hardware section.

Good luck.

I am replying to hopefully get a fresh response from someone. Just for a more clear understanding, here are screenshots from the game with my frames included:


I double and triple checked my settings, and made sure ATI CCC wasn't setting AA or AF either. I still have no idea what else to try! I've also updated to 7.1 Catalyst drivers since as well, that didn't change anything. I've also tried this game in Vista, same problem.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, but obviously the game runs fine in AoE3, but as soon as I fire up the expansion, thats when I have problems.

Are any other users reporting the same in the AOE3 official forums? Maybe they have a fix.

Maybe the expansion does something differently in terms of graphics that explains your speed drop.

But my first and most important piece of advice is to check the official forums. Best place to start with any issue you may have with a game.

Actually I have, and didn't get much of a response either. I have looked for anyone with the same problem, and this seems to be a very unique problem.
LINK

At least you've got a mod working on it there. Hopefully that email produces some answers for you.

WOOOO I FIXED IT!!!!
Hurah!
All I did was rename age3x.exe to age3.exe (the expansion .exe was named the same as the original age of empires 3 executable)

What? Talk about random fix of the year.

No kidding eh? It obviously is a problem with my videocard drivers then. It isn't applying the same sort of optimizations to AoE3 WC as it does to AoE3, renaming the file causes my videocard to think it is only AoE3, and kablamo, problem fixed.

After realising this, I renamed the Fear Extraction Point to the original exe file as well, I gained about 10% performance.