# Age of Empires 3 Freezes



## andyj941 (Dec 6, 2006)

Hi everyone I was wondering if anyone could help - I got Age of Empires 3 for christmas but have been having a recurring problem with what I think is a graphics issue. I did check the system requirements before I bought it and my Toshiba A200-16Y laptop meets those requirements comfortably.

However during large battles and particularly when ships start firing the game slows and sometimes stops for up to 10 minutes at a time. Its more of a nuisance during naval battles where this always happens. I'm guessing it is something to do with the graphics but I don't know what video card I have or how to go about solving the problem. it just slows then freezes. Please help if you can!

Thanks


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

Most laptops are not for gaming. Your laptop has a video card that has 'shared memory', which means it takes the memory from the main physical RAM. This is one of the most common problems when trying to run a powerful game like AoE3 because the RAM is being used up alot. If your RAM is used up, then the virtual memory will be used... and that is really space on your hard drive so in essence your whole machine will be running 24/7.


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## andyj941 (Dec 6, 2006)

So is there nothing that can be done? I've already selected the minimum graphics options in the game. Why does this happen when I have 2GB RAM when the requirement is only for 256MB?


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

Because the RAM is used up by about almost everything, especially Windows.

There is really nothing you can do except for making sure nothing else is running in the background.

Even so, having a lot of units in a battle will need a lot of memory... I know because it happened to me... I played an 8-player game and it was a free for all... but it was 7-1 (1 being me lol)


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## Majinalchemy (May 27, 2007)

Your laptop is probably overheating, try levitating it between two books, or having a fan under it or something, my friend had the same problem.


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## sup2a (Oct 9, 2007)

im not sure it would be running that slow, i used to play on a old comp, 1.8 ghz 512 ram shared with graphics and it seemed to run alright besides the small amount of lag, do you have vista? that is a resource hog.


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