need a couple of questions answered system requirements on game

[unmerged(18777)]

Hi to all
i have been playing the old HOI2 Doomsday now for a number of years and so have not been keeping up with latest developments on both the forum and the game scene but just recently my computer through the towel in and now im forced to buy a new one.
Due to money issues i may have to buy a laptop rather than a desktop so after doing some research to look for the best deal i have noticed that a lot of them have the "intel dual core " processor rather then the pentium 4 .

Now as the HOI games were designed using pentium 4 processors i would like to now if these games will still work if my computer has a intel in it, i have heard that some that are designed on one system will not work on others.

Secondly having checked out the new HOI2 games "Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour" on a number of pc games sites some of the system requirement details differ, some say the games will work on windows 7 however on the paradox site it says both games work only on the running system as high as XP can some one clarify this for me because I’m certain when i get my new computer i will get windows 7 in it.
Regards TM1

 

[Count of Reval]

You can run Arsenal of Democracy with Intel Dual-Core and on Windows 7 just fine, no problem.

 

[Amallric]

lol don't worry pentium 4 are intel processors too ^^

 

[Balesir]

Some of our development and test PCs were dual and quad-core running XP, Vista and Win7, so don't worry, we know it works on them OK. One slight warning is that it doesn't use the multiple cores - if you have a multi-core with slow clock speed the game may run fairly slow (the new ESE calculations, especially, are quite processor intensive), but it shouldn't be unplayable on any machine (famous last words... )

 

[Denniss]

but it shouldn't be unplayable on any machine (famous last words... )

Until you reach later stages (1942/43) with all majors in a war and lots of units around fighting. The game seriously slows down on many machines, even the fastest game setting then feels like the slowest setting in 1936.

 

[qwertyuiop2]

Ιn my i5 760 no stall exists even in the doomsday 1945 scenario.

 

[Amallric]

bah i5 is basically the requirement for a comfortable game, especially in multiplayer. But if you're prepared to suffer, you can play even with an Atom.

 

[qwertyuiop2]

And for god's sake, you won't even need a GPU to play hoi2. Look only for Cpu firstly and RAM secondly.

 

[unmerged(200423)]

i play it on a t2450 (yonah dual core 2ghz, but also on a tualatin 1266 it's work good until normal speed) it's great. And, except if you are a wizard, with huge fights (1944 scenario revised for example) you need to slow down the game (if you avoid pausegames) more than CPU limit else the AI can win easily.

A question to balesir.
Why doesn't aod have a multicore support? I guess that AI calculations can be done in a separate thread (i.e. two thread: one for major nations and one for minors) against ESE/combat and other things. (then an atom dual core can do better than a p4 3.6ghz!! )
I love it anyway.

 

[Mjarr]

I've run AoD with Acer Aspire One, 1.6ghz Intel Atom CPU, 1gb of RAM and intel GMA 950 display driver. It was bit sluggish, but tolerable in general. My main PC currently runs Vista with no real issues so far, other than if you're using non-steam version do not install it in the default directory. It seems to be cause of few Vista-only (Possibly Win7 as well?) on AoD.

A question to balesir.
Why doesn't aod have a multicore support? I guess that AI calculations can be done in a separate thread (i.e. two thread: one for major nations and one for minors) against ESE/combat and other things. (then an atom dual core can do better than a p4 3.6ghz!! )

Maybe they'll add it in the hypothetical expansion?

 

[Balesir]

A question to balesir.
Why doesn't aod have a multicore support? I guess that AI calculations can be done in a separate thread (i.e. two thread: one for major nations and one for minors) against ESE/combat and other things. (then an atom dual core can do better than a p4 3.6ghz!! )
I love it anyway.

AoD was done by a very small team starting with licensed access to the Europa engine from Paradox. The Europa engine is older than multi-core PCs, so was not built for them. To make the engine use multi-core capability would have required basically rewriting the engine - which was waaaay outside the team resources, which was why we took the license opportunity Paradox offered in the first place!

 

[Denniss]

Not even the Clausewitz engine used by Hoi3, Victoria2 and others is multicore-capable. Although they seem to plan to rewrite it to use multiple-cores if available.

 

[unmerged(200423)]

Ok thanks.