Why So Slow?

[Kepheren]

I purchased this game some time ago but only recently got around to trying to play it. Was puttering around with it this morning to try and figure out the game play and noticed that it runs ridiculously slow even at the top speed setting. I turned that all the way up and it still took a bit over three hours to get through the first five months.

My computer can run Stellaris, CK II and EU IV without any appreciable lag. Is this game a bigger hog of the computer's resources than those games or is it supposed to work that way? I'm a bit confused by it so thought I would ask the good folks that know.

Any thoughts?

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

1. Every tick is an hour, not a day like in other games
2. Pics and Specs or it didn't happen...

 

[SolSys]

I can't really tell if it is slow or not [hard to judge without specs], but in HoI the smallest time unit is an hour. Could it be the reason for the seeming "slowness"?

 

[jpapple]

If you are experiencing excruciating amounts of 'lag' you should wait till the Cornflakes update comes out on thy platform, as such with that update the game will run incredible paces faster than what it runs as of now...

 

[Kepheren]

Not real sure to show how to give a pic of it running super slow but here are the specs as best I understand them. Not a savvy computer user here....

Running Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 1200 quad-core processor 3.10 ghz
Ram 8.00 gb
64 bit operating system, X64 based processor
Nvidia geoforce 210

As for the Cornflakes update, when is that due out? I tried to play some more after I first posted this question and it takes half an hour to proceed another two weeks and then locks up entirely....always on June 16th 1936 for some reason. Not sure whats up with that but it happened three times and I rebooted between each so it's beyond me as to whats going on.

 

[jpapple]

As for the Cornflakes update, when is that due out?

The 8th of March

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

Not real sure to show how to give a pic of it running super slow but here are the specs as best I understand them. Not a savvy computer user here....

Running Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 1200 quad-core processor 3.10 ghz
Ram 8.00 gb
64 bit operating system, X64 based processor
Nvidia geoforce 210

As for the Cornflakes update, when is that due out? I tried to play some more after I first posted this question and it takes half an hour to proceed another two weeks and then locks up entirely....always on June 16th 1936 for some reason. Not sure whats up with that but it happened three times and I rebooted between each so it's beyond me as to whats going on.

For starters I'd say get 16GB of RAM - that's what you need today with all that fancy stuff working in the Background. I cannot talk about the Ryzen because Im not a big AMD fan since they burned me...my 6 Year old Core i7 has no problems whatsoever until Lategame.
I never heard of that GPU you could rum some benchmarks and compare the results.

Hint: If something takes for ages you might want to check if the BitDefender (MS Antivirus) or any other AV Software is Scanning it on the Fly....i once wanted to Open a 500MB zip File which wouldn't Work until I realized the BitDefender took 50% drain on the System Scanning it

 

[Daddl]

It should take only a few minutes to go through 5 months on fastest speed 5. If this problem only affects HoI try reinstalling and have a look if any anti-virus software or something interfers where it shouldn't. The game should not really be lagging until everyone goes mad on number of divisions around 1941 or so in this version.

 

[Kepheren]

To be honest I have no idea what most of that stuff is either. A friend rebuilt my pc after it melted last fall and put all this stuff in. All I do know is it runs the rest of Paradox stuff without much problem so I wondered what was up with this game. Thought it would work better than it has so far.

 

[PG908]

Your GPU is 9 years old, and well below the minimum. You might need to look into your graphics settings and disable most or all of them.

Your CPU is fine, and should see significant improvements next patch. It's definitely not the reason it's taking you several hours to run a few months, especially the starting months.
Your ram is fine, you quite literally have enough to run hoi4 from a ram drive. It's not that 8gb is a lot these days, it's just that hoi isn't a large game.

I'm surprised your GPU can run stellaris at all. It's generally much more demanding, but I suppose if you're running small galaxies you could get away with it since you claim to be running it fine.

In fact, userbenchmark suggests that the minimum requirement of the GTX 470 is about 1,600% faster than your current GPU, although that may be skewed by the 512MB (1/2 a GB) GTX 210s. At any rate, it's in the bottom 1% of GPUs on the site. You would probably run better on the integrated graphics, although that hurts your cpu performance, which hurts your overall performance.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I purchased this game some time ago but only recently got around to trying to play it. Was puttering around with it this morning to try and figure out the game play and noticed that it runs ridiculously slow even at the top speed setting. I turned that all the way up and it still took a bit over three hours to get through the first five months.

It seems something is not working well at all in that case.

I measured HoI4 performance recently and my new computer (fairly high spec Gaming) ran through all of 1936 in 4 minutes 11s when I turned up the speed to max ( which tells the computer to run the game as fast as it can ).

 

[billcorr]

Your GPU is 9 years old, and well below the minimum. You might need to look into your graphics settings and disable most or all of them.

Right.

Decreasing the graphics settings may be the easiest method.

Also, consider (as part of the graphics test) turning off the little men , sprites, 3D models (or whatever they are called).
For your attempt to gain better speed, choose icons only.

Let us know how the test goes!

 

[wright1331]

I purchased this game some time ago but only recently got around to trying to play it. Was puttering around with it this morning to try and figure out the game play and noticed that it runs ridiculously slow even at the top speed setting. I turned that all the way up and it still took a bit over three hours to get through the first five months.

My computer can run Stellaris, CK II and EU IV without any appreciable lag. Is this game a bigger hog of the computer's resources than those games or is it supposed to work that way? I'm a bit confused by it so thought I would ask the good folks that know.

Any thoughts?

At top speed it takes about 30 seconds to go 1 month in my game, and my pc is over 3 years old (built with average parts back then). So it has to be some setting you have or something with your pc

 

[Kepheren]

If my pc is so out of date I don't know why or how it can run Stellaris....but it just did on a large galaxy with the new expansion for over an hour. Whatever the case you were correct and changing the graphic settings had a HUGE difference. Played with that for about an hour too tonight and burned thru about four years. Would have probably gone faster still but I was stopping and starting a lot to get the hang of the game and try to learn new stuff. Looks like that was the answer to my problem.

 

[adam_grif]

Not real sure to show how to give a pic of it running super slow but here are the specs as best I understand them. Not a savvy computer user here....

Running Windows 10
Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 1200 quad-core processor 3.10 ghz
Ram 8.00 gb
64 bit operating system, X64 based processor
Nvidia geoforce 210

As for the Cornflakes update, when is that due out? I tried to play some more after I first posted this question and it takes half an hour to proceed another two weeks and then locks up entirely....always on June 16th 1936 for some reason. Not sure whats up with that but it happened three times and I rebooted between each so it's beyond me as to whats going on.

I almost spat out my drink reading this. This video card is actually significantly worse than Integrated Intel graphics and is well below the minimum specifications of Hearts of Iron 4.

If you didn't want to upgrade to a crazy video card, but wanted a nice modest solution that won't cost a lot, consider purchasing the recently released Ryzen 2200g or 2400g. It's an integrated package that has modest graphics (suitable for solid performance in Hearts of Iron 4, Counter Strike GO and other graphically simple games) and will be a power boost on the CPU side also. Warning though, these APUs only perform well if you have "Dual channel memory", i.e. if your 8GB is made up of 2 separate 4GB sticks. If it's a single 8GB stick, they will perform much worse due to bandwidth limitations.

The other option is to keep your CPU and replace your GeForce 210 with almost any other cheap video card on the market. At the budget end of the spectrum, an Nvidia GT 1030 or AMD RX 550 would be good cheap upgrades (less than 100 US dollars). The video card market in some countries is extremely broken currently, with all well priced medium and high end cards sold out, or being sold for exorbitant prices. Your CPU would be suitable for pairing with something as strong as a GTX 1050to or 1060 for most games, if you wanted to be able to play high end games. But you don't need to go that high just for HoI4.

 

[bERt0r]

I'm pretty sure he has to turn graphics down to lowest and turn off day/night cycle and the game runs fine.

 

[Vohen]

I almost spat out my drink reading this. This video card is actually significantly worse than Integrated Intel graphics and is well below the minimum specifications of Hearts of Iron 4.

If you didn't want to upgrade to a crazy video card, but wanted a nice modest solution that won't cost a lot, consider purchasing the recently released Ryzen 2200g or 2400g. It's an integrated package that has modest graphics (suitable for solid performance in Hearts of Iron 4, Counter Strike GO and other graphically simple games) and will be a power boost on the CPU side also. Warning though, these APUs only perform well if you have "Dual channel memory", i.e. if your 8GB is made up of 2 separate 4GB sticks. If it's a single 8GB stick, they will perform much worse due to bandwidth limitations.

The other option is to keep your CPU and replace your GeForce 210 with almost any other cheap video card on the market. At the budget end of the spectrum, an Nvidia GT 1030 or AMD RX 550 would be good cheap upgrades (less than 100 US dollars). The video card market in some countries is extremely broken currently, with all well priced medium and high end cards sold out, or being sold for exorbitant prices. Your CPU would be suitable for pairing with something as strong as a GTX 1050to or 1060 for most games, if you wanted to be able to play high end games. But you don't need to go that high just for HoI4.

Him already having a ryzen, it would be a waste to get the 2200g imo, he could get a much better gpu than the integrated for basically the same price.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

Is there any mod that turns down graphics quality to the lowest? Kinda like Fast Universalis for EU4
If so, get it so that train-wreck Graphics card holds you down as least as possible

 

[davej]

The game for me definitely has speed issues past 1942 or so. It's worse with multiple wars. I've had a few games where I'd go out for a couple of hours and let it run, so I could get construction and production done.

I wish you could set a tick for x hours instead of 1 hour. Probably not code compatible though.

 

[Fanstar1]

GT 210 is not at all for gaming, that is probably your source of issues. Ryzen 3 1200 is decent enough.