Age of Conan

So I have a new-ish computer. Its not the greatest machine in the world, but its got enough processing power and RAM to run pretty much everything thats on the market gamewise today... except Age of Conan apparently.

System Specs:

Acer tower

AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+

3 gigs of DDR2 ram

Nvidia 8400GS 512meg videocard

Windows Vista Premium 32bit

Good monitor, plenty of harddrive space...

The game chugs along on the lowest possible settings, barely, usually ranging from 2-15FPS (though anytime it climbs over 10FPS is super rare). Is there something im doing wrong? Ive even gone in and disabled alot of the crappy vista programs that run automatically in the background.

Anyone with constructive comments/thoughts/help... please help :)

I would really like to play this game, and I hear tell of people with systems that are MUCH less powerful, running it with ease on low settings.

EDIT: Forgot to put in the processor speed heh

Video card is pretty bad man, AoC has every surface covered in normal mapped textures which push shader chips to their knees, something a minor card like the 8400gs wouldn't be particularly well versed at.

If you can't replace the card.. you should consider changing drivers in the hopes you can gain a magical 5 fps somewhere. Also make sure the background running programs are cut to a minimum.

So a better videcard is the answer to my problems? What would you recommend?

Don't feel too bad. I have a Nvidia Geforce 9600 GT SLi and sometimes the graphics still become a bit choppy... not as bad as 2-15 fps but a wee bit choppy. Oh ditch the Vista and downgrade to Windows XP SP2  (you get that option till June 2008). Vista = currently very bad for gaming.

Depends how much you're willing to spend..

8800GT 512+ would probably set you up with high

8600GT 128/256 might set you up on med if you're lucky

Not sure at ATi these days.

You can still play the game with that card, just don't expect it to be very fast. at all.

mbe an 8600gt?

Theres a place where I can downgrade to XP for free? >_>

I wouldn't bother downgrading, vista isn't far behind XPs performance with service pack 1. So long as you have the extra ram, and you do- it shouldn't pose as any FPS problems.

_nothing_ will save you from having to upgrade that card to get a good framerate / med detail.

I have Vista 32 bit  with with SP 1 and have played a wide spectrum of games off line and on line with and without SP 1 with no problems.  Its not that bad and not imo worth spending money to downgrade it.

EDIT : I have 2 gigs of ram and have run : SWG, LotRO (which looks about equal to AoC graphics), EVE, CoD4, C&C3, and everything on the Orange Box pretty flawlessly.  And I hear 2 gigs will be fine for AoC if not I shall upgrade.

Avoid the 8600 if you can spend $30 more. Grab a 8800gs and play it maxed out for around $100.

edit - the 8800gs is being re-branded as the 9600gso. Its the same card so either one will do.

Does anyone else have the feeling that this game might end up like Crysis? I'm talking from just computer you need to run this game anywhere near decent.