Help! Game is SOOOO Slow...On My M11x

Suggestion: Given your processor, run the game with cloth-map only.

How? Why? I can play so many other games with all the details on high! 

I don't understand why this game would run slower than Crysis, Empire: Total War, Starcraft 2, Borderlands, Fallout 3, Dragon Age...you name it. All of them have run smoothly at 30+ FPS and this one won't? 

Mr. Frogboy, please don't tell me that...

Yeah what he said above...

I have a core 2 duo E6400, 9800gt, and 2gb ram on XP... why should I need to run on a cloth map only when nearly every modern game including dragon age, mass effect 2 gets well over 30 fps....

I love this game but I'm sorry the performance is terrible right now...

Ah, thank you, DeliJoe. I've been researching my issue for the past half hour and it has only strengthened my fervor. I'm certain that this game should run better than it does. It is not my computer....

Please fix this. 

Thank god its not just me,SPEC..Intel 3ghz quad,6gig ram,3 TB sata 2 hard drives,Ati 4870 hd 1gig,Win7 64.This rig runs anything I've played crysis,Napoleon total war,dragon age the lot.Yet this game runs like a lame dog,8-30fps ave 14fps.Every time my toon moves the f.o.w forward i get a 1-3 sec pause aswell,its just not acceptable this game ISNT ready,from what i played in beta i was told it would be much better,its NOT.In fact there is less content less hair styles,less clothes etc etc,ATM im not very happy with this game and im a big fan of ALL your other strategy games.

Alienware is an expensive brand. It doesn't matter if its alienware, dell, hp, or grandma's homebuilt. The parts inside are what count.

8 Gigs of ram is fine, but it doesn't usually contribute to performance as much as a CPU. Its like an enabler, if you don't have enough your other components will be waiting for stuff to load and overall performance will be very very slow. Anything around 4 gigs today is fine for nearly every game.

1.73 ghz dual core processor? I bought a 14" toshiba lappy for ~500 two years ago with a 2ghz C2D. There are many processors out today that are well beyond 3ghz for desktops (a 3ghz dual core intel processor is under 90 bucks nowadays). A very large number of laptop processors are 2-2.4ghz, they tend to go as low as 1.6ghz now but not much lower. Apparently the base speed for a SU7300 is 1.3ghz... lol, thats more of a netbook processor - its not meant to be a full sized laptop processor. While it may be an impressive processor because of its efficiency (low power consumption), it is not particularly meant for cpu-intensive gaming.

After looking up the actual model of your lappy, it is a tiny little 12" thing. This game isn't meant for the average netbook. Your graphics card outclasses your processor by a wide margin. The GPU is perfect for gaming at the resolution of a netbook. However, the processor just doesn't cut it. It might be worth it to look into seeing if your computer can support one of the faster (2ghz+) models. I'm not familiar with your particular model or the newer laptop parts at all and lappy cpus are rather expensive to the tune of 200-350$ for the moderately fast ones. If you are able to upgrade it, and its not built into the motherboard you might be able to sell your old one. But seeing as there are no stand alone SU7300 processors for sale... you might be out of luck

Bottom line: on the product page, the minimum requirement for a processor is a 2.4 GHz Processor, with a recommended 2.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor. The suggested video card is rather weak, and the ram suggestion is relatively low (2gb). You have a netbook that just isn't built to handle CPU intensive games. 

@Jeslijar

I appreciate your response, but as I said before, this "netbook" (I wouldn't classify it as such) handles every game I've thrown at it - including other "CPU-heavy" games - and it has performed admirably. I think the problem I'm having is mostly memory-leak driven, but it could also just be poorly optimized. You don't sound terribly familiar with the M11x, but you should know that it performs incredibly well on every game I've ever played on it. Period. 

You may classify it as a "netbook", but it has garnered a lot of respect for being much, much more than that. It's a gaming computer that handles many, many modern games at or near their highest specs and DOES NOT SLOW DOWN. This game should not be doing this. I'm certain. 

/end rant. 

Just chiming in to back up the fact that the M11X is a bit of a gaming beast. Mine runs Borderlands and Left4Dead2 in high detail at high framerates. It is a proper gaming machine. Incidentally, measuring a CPU's worth by the clock speed went out of fashion a long time ago

I have yet to find a game that the M11X really struggles with. I'm playing Elemental on my main games machine - and to be fair, the performance is pretty terrible on that as well, especially when there's a city on screen. I'm at a loss to explain way.

Yeah, I think the key word here is CPU power. I'd like the game to run a little faster too but I really think you'll need more then a 1.73 GHz processor. Maybe the 64bit version will run good once it's out?

Is there a tweak people with slow processors can implement to make it run faster (in 3D mode)?

I don't mean to be inflammatory but in gaming terms your processor is about 4 years behind and your GPU about 2 years, at least.  You're well below the recommended GPU and CPU specs for games like Starcraft 2 and Dragon Age (Duel/Quod 2.4 Ghz with 8800 gts/gtx recommended) so I'd find it interesting if you can run them at high/full detail at 30+ fps, as not even my 2 year old lappy can do that and its gpu/cpu are rated higher than yours. 

Having said that, there does appear to be some performance problems with this game, as people with very good systems seem to be experiencing poor frame rates as well - madpaddy being just one example of this.  There's no way that somebody with a 4870, 6 gigs ram and a 3 gig quad should be getting 15 fps on a game like this.

I feel your pain.  I actually sent a private message to Frogboy about my same issue and that I really could not run the game after the 2nd build of the game during the beta.  This is not a dig against Frogboy at all as I believe he knows best about his game BUT there is some confusion on what can run this game.  I have a Pentium 4 3ghz with 2gig ram and an nvidea 6800 video card.  Not a huge machine and one that needs to be updated soon but it runs Empires, Sins, GC II and many others with no issues.  FrogBoys comment was that my machine is below specs and that I should run in cloth map mode.  Perhaps the key is that it is a single core machine but I for one had an understanding of what was needed to run the game but that is apparently incorrect.

Having said all that...now I can make an excuse for upgrading to a new machine..."look honey, I can't run current software anymore...we REALLY need to upgrade!".

Starcraft 2 works fine in pretty high detail on the M11x, just FYI

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-WfIr-z3MY&feature=related

Um the 6800 graphics card alone makes you way out of date.

Poorly optimized  hardware drivers maybe? I'm playing on a I7-920 (@stock speeds), 4 gigs corsair ram, xp sp3,  with a pair of xfired ati 5770's, at 1920x1080 max EVERYTHING and its smooth as butter...

Rune...no not really...according to the documented specs...it qualifies...that is my point...it will run it in map mode BUT nothing specifies that the minimum specs will only run the cloth map mode. I think that is worth mentioning. 

Try supreme commander 1 lately? With the bigger games of that your computer would crawl slower than a newborn.

Out of all the games you listed (Crysis, Empire: Total War, Starcraft 2, Borderlands, Fallout 3, Dragon Age) only Empire:Total War is somewhat CPU intensive. Though with the settings turned down it is manageable. Crysis is GPU limited usually, as far as I know the others are mostly GPU intensive.

Your laptop has a 1366x768 resolution which is about half the pixels to render as a normal 24" monitor (1920x1080 is pretty common for those). If you didn't know, resolution matters when it comes to frames per second. A small resolution makes a low power pc perform much better than it appears. In CPU intensive games resolution matters much less for performance. It can literally mean you get double the FPS at 1366x768 than at 1920x1080 in most games, but in a game that cpu is everything your computer will chug.

And like I said in my first post... Brand doesn't matter. A computer is a collection of parts. It costs 1150 to order a basic M11x on their site which includes the 350$ extra for 8gb of ram (lmao...)

For 1150$ I could build a quad core computer that OCs to 4ghz with 6 gigs of ram and has a crossfire 5850 setup which would get at the very least three times the performance your laptop gives. No monitor, but you don't really need crossfire, and those GPUs are 300$ take one out and theres a very good monitor at a reasonable loss in gpu performance. Still would run most of todays games on ultra with just one GPU @ 1080p.

I average around 15 FPS. If I use the cloth map I average around 60 to 70 FPS. My laptop is Asus W90Vp, Core to Quad 2Ghz (overclocking makes no difference), 6GB, xfire 4870. Latest drivers on everything. I can live with it, but don't see why I can't get at least 30FPS.

Ok, these may be obvious suggestions but:

1. Try lowering the resolution the game plays at.

2. do you have anti-aliasing on? If so, try turning it off.

Never ever gonna play a game without AA

Frogboy, how about the LOD settings in the city improvements? I've seen some market buildings where the LOD's are like turned off, i can see tiny daggers laying on the table while zoomed out near the cloth map limit.. If these tiny items you cant make out anyway were popped out at such extreme ranges, perhaps peoples preformance would be better?

Play on 1280x1024...no AA... same low framerate

It could be driver issue granted, but it's definitely not my computer...

I've tried various resolutions and 2xAA on and off. There is virtually no difference in the FPS. It could very well be a driver issue. Cat 10.8 should be out Wednesday, it's rumored to have some xfire improvements.

@Jeslijar

You're focusing WAY too much on the numbers and not on the actual performance. Please watch video of the M11x on Youtube and how well it handles just about everything. Empire: Total War is definitely CPU heavy and it runs just fine with medium to high settings (30-40fps). I crush Supreme Commander 1 AND 2 with it. Well, maybe not crush, but they run well enough that I'm okay with it. This is a TURN BASED strategy, which means that the CPU isn't being asked to do a million different things all at once PLUS the 3D animations, etc.

You can "LMAO" all you want, but this computer is powerful, affordable and ULTRA portable, so the $1350 I spent on it feels really, really worth it. Especially since I'm at a firehouse half of my life.

You're borderline trolling....

@RedFury123

You can look at the specs and all you'd like, but there is video evidence of what I speak of and I know it to be absolutely true considering that I play all of those games just as I said. Google M11x video of Starcraft 2, Empire: Total War, L4D 1+2, etc. You will see a machine that is very capable of handling ALL OF THESE GAMES. 

Just not Elemental. 

I have three computers, one a AMD Turion x2 2.2ghz, 4gb ddr2 ram, nvidia 8400gs. game runs great, but then around 200-250 turns then it really slows to a crawl around 14-20fps even in cloth map. Next AMD Phenom 9550 X4 2.2ghz, 4gb ddr2 ram, nvidia 9800gt superclock ed. the same thing again. Last one AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition 3.2ghz, 8gb ddr3 ram, nvidia 480gtx, and again the same thing. So I think it is more of a memory leak issue not a processor problem! Empire total war and Crysis had huge memory leak issue and they fix them! So I know Stardock will fix this problem and I want to say one of the best TBS games I have played in a long time great job Stardock!:)