Not to mention that Nvidia knockoff GPU you're using!

yeah..typed too fast and did not read what I had posted.  4g ram and NVIDIA.  Anway, funny remarks aside, I am still surprised about the choppy response.  I will say that the card has 1g of onboard memory rather than 512 as some have.  In any event, will hopefully find a setting combo that will at least make the game worth my time.

I don't know......I'm using a nvidia 7300GT and it plays it well (talk about your old cards).

your card is pretty garbage bro, and the game (especially in large battles) can get pretty intense, even though the models are old.

Don't be in too much of a rush to get a new card; Empire is not going to be silky smooth unless you buy serious overkill. With that said, your card is pretty much at the low end.. did you scroungs it up from your old PC, by any chance?

Still, it's above normal minimum requirements, so if you want to hold on to it for half a year and then get an even better new card for less, that's an option.

As for Empire, I find it's finally a good game with 1.6+. VERY good, even.

With SLi mobo's you can add a second card (unlinked if they are not a matching pair) and set one to be a physx card only so your main one can handle the good stuff!  But I'm not sure if Physx is supported in all games.  A bit of googling may give a bit more info. 

I was not planning on getting a new PC until the old one died abruptly so I just picked this card up for $34 bucks so I could get the maching back up and running.  I have all the setting in Empire set to Medium and it runs fine enough.  I still can't figure out why Steam will not update it to 1.6 though.  Anyway, I will probably run it as is for awhile and then get a better card later...of course then I have to worry about the power supply, etc so we'll see.  Hey, atleast Elemental will run better now!