Too heavy ?

[kamelot]

Well, it seems to me the system requrements of H V are too high. I've just changed my MB, CPU and video Card, and no I have nForce4, 512 MB RAM, Radeon X550 video card 128 MB. I can barely play the game and sometimes so sluggish, so virtually it cannot be played. I did a fresh Windows installation - the same. Does anyone have the same problems? Is there something wrong with my PC?

[Indral]

i have a machine that runs H5 with no problems, but still i'm not satisfied with the engine at all.

when viewing from a lower angle (to see more terrain), the game gets slow, and that's annoying. the game engine could use a lot of optimization, and i hope it will.

[5il3nc3r]

I have a P4-3.2GHz, 1Gb DDRAM, Radeon 9800se and the game plays like a charm at max, without AA and AF.

And the lower camera view isn't meant to be played in, it's for screenshots.

5il

[Bandobras Took]

Well, it seems to me the system requrements of H V are too high. I've just changed my MB, CPU and video Card, and no I have nForce4, 512 MB RAM, Radeon X550 video card 128 MB. I can barely play the game and sometimes so sluggish, so virtually it cannot be played. I did a fresh Windows installation - the same. Does anyone have the same problems? Is there something wrong with my PC?

The minimum memory requirement will be a slow down. Once I upped my Ram above the minimum (and possibly above the recommended), I had less problems with slowdowns.

Also, my hard drive died over the weekend, so I had to get a new one and reinstall windows. Heroes 5 is at least twice as fast now that I've cleared out a bunch of old crap tying up my system's resources.

[ClownRoyal]

@ kamelot:

I would definitely suggest you get more RAM. That is the cheapest upgrade for a computer, and can make a big difference in playing or not.

Also, do you turn off all the "extra" stuff that makes the game run slower? If you don't have money for upgrades at the moment, and you really want to play, you can lower the screen resolution, graphics level, and disable the extras. That might at least allow you to play.

[kamelot]

@ kamelot:

I would definitely suggest you get more RAM. That is the cheapest upgrade for a computer, and can make a big difference in playing or not.

Also, do you turn off all the "extra" stuff that makes the game run slower? If you don't have money for upgrades at the moment, and you really want to play, you can lower the screen resolution, graphics level, and disable the extras. That might at least allow you to play.

I believe I am at the lowest possible level of all the extras. After a full system restart, the game can usually be played, but after for example a "standby" something goes wrong and I cannot play. So I have to make restart every time I want to play. Also, my free memory is about 300 MB before the game loads...I guess the problem is in the RAM ammount. I'll have to buy some more.

[Paradox]

I have a P4-3.2GHz, 1Gb DDRAM, Radeon 9800se and the game plays like a charm at max, without AA and AF.

And the lower camera view isn't meant to be played in, it's for screenshots.

5il

that "it's for screenshots" thing does my head in, thats just an excuse because their engine sucks.

[Indral]

I have a P4-3.2GHz, 1Gb DDRAM, Radeon 9800se and the game plays like a charm at max, without AA and AF.

And the lower camera view isn't meant to be played in, it's for screenshots.

5il

that "it's for screenshots" thing does my head in, thats just an excuse because their engine sucks.

roger that.

the scene's polygon count and other load factors when viewing from a low angle, are nowhere NEAR the scenes usually seen in other graphically intense games, and still it runs like 5x slower.

[MrSteamTank]

@ kamelot:

I would definitely suggest you get more RAM. That is the cheapest upgrade for a computer, and can make a big difference in playing or not.

Also, do you turn off all the "extra" stuff that makes the game run slower? If you don't have money for upgrades at the moment, and you really want to play, you can lower the screen resolution, graphics level, and disable the extras. That might at least allow you to play.

I believe I am at the lowest possible level of all the extras. After a full system restart, the game can usually be played, but after for example a "standby" something goes wrong and I cannot play. So I have to make restart every time I want to play. Also, my free memory is about 300 MB before the game loads...I guess the problem is in the RAM ammount. I'll have to buy some more.

When I try to load maps half the time it stops loading altogether and I have to restart about half the time and I have 1 gig of dual channel ram. Everything in my computer is double or higher the system requirements and it still chugs when I zoom out anyways. It's just a poorly designed engine.

[Fallen Angel]

If your looking for a way to boost performance without purchasing RAM (though always a good idea!), you can try closing some of your computer's continuous processes. These can be viewed and closed under the "Processes" tab in the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del).

My computer's just below the minimum requirements, but I can do this and play for hours with hardly any lag in the game. Just be sure you don't close any processes that are necessary for your OS.

[Leon_Shore]

To the OP, there is a work-around to the problem that doesn't cost you anything. I'm also stuck with 512mb of memory, and it stuttered big time. A way to get rid of the majority of the slowdown is simple.

Go into your game options, and turn up your 'player speed' one notch. For some reason, the game is twice as smooth when I did this. I'm not sure if it's a bug, but it worked for me. I was contemplating replacing my memory, but it's not even an issue anymore.

[ThunderTitan]

The game also seems to work best at 1024.

[cornellian]

As far as I can see, HoMM V is a very graphics card friendly game. I ran it in a machine with GeForce FX 5200 w/128 mb card, a nearly four year old model, without any problems and very few slowdowns at low settings.

However RAM is a must for this game, and I would recommend at least 1 gb of it, to get an acceptable fps, especially with a lower end graphics card. Most newer games take outrageous amount of memory if you let them, I have seen F.E.A.R. taking up as much as 950 mb of memory in my system..

However you can free up or create memory within the system and don't have to buy a memory unit, though obviously it would be the thing to recommend in the first place. You can:

1) ctrl+alt+del and close the extra programs that run on your computer, even better you can adjust which software runs on your start up with Start\ Run \ msconfig.exe and in 'start up' tab there, but make sure those softwares aren't vital for your computer (get rid of useless stuff, messenger, java update scheduler, dvd burning tools and etc. are among the most common in any computer)

2) Defrag your computer, if you haven't in the last six months. I advise to defrag every 3 months if you heavily modify the harddisk setup (a.k.a. installing/uninstalling), every 6 months if you don't. Make sure that you disable firewalls, anti-virus etc., anything that would have administrative power on your computer, before you run defrag, for it is very likely that you'll have to restart and/or won't get optimal results if you don't.

3) If you have a big harddisk, you can create a big virtual memory (VM) by manually setting the swap file size in your harddisk. There are many detailed descriptions in the web how to set those numbers manually, and there is usually an approximate amount that goes best with a particular setup so I cannot give you specific numbers to set to; however you can always try and err yourself, and using a benchmark application would definately help to see the best amount for your setup. Most will say twice the size of your physical memory, but I'd come to see that, it is not exactly a hardcoded way, so experiment with it.

Hope this helps...

[Saurus]

Well, it seems to me the system requrements of H V are too high. I've just changed my MB, CPU and video Card, and no I have nForce4, 512 MB RAM, Radeon X550 video card 128 MB. I can barely play the game and sometimes so sluggish, so virtually it cannot be played. I did a fresh Windows installation - the same. Does anyone have the same problems? Is there something wrong with my PC?

Unfortunately, the game is not even supposed to run as smootly as H3 or H4. It is supposed to contain more eyecandy at the cost of accessibility. This is a deliberate decission and affects even those with high-end machines.

I recomend that you play H3 instead. It's much more fun to play when the
game runs smoothly witch H3 (and H4 also) does.

[djtc]

I'd say you really at least 1GB of DDRAM to get the best out of it.

Even though I have a 3,2GHz with high-class video card, I got slowdowns (!) until I upgraded from my 512MB RAM. (Which by the way says the engine sucks alot).