Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Benchmark (1050 Ti) and The Misleading Official Recommendation

The great RTS masterpiece by Microsoft Studios Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is out now, and of course many people are eager to play it with much better enhanced graphics and play it in 4K edition. But the game isn't going to be playable for every PC owners, even if you have specs that surpass the official recommendation on Steam by Devs.

I tested AoE II:DE using a superior rig that the misleading recommendation but the benchmark results proved that you can't play the game using such recommendation.

Official recommendation	My rig
OS: Windows 10 64bit Processor: 2.4 Ghz i5 or greater or AMD equivalent Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GTX 650 or AMD HD 5850 or better DirectX: Version 11	OS: Windows 10 64bit  Processor: 3.60GHz i7-7700 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Nvidia® GTX 1050 Ti DirectX: Version 11

The game is a RAM/VRAM intensive which makes the gameplay a catastrophe even when setting the graphics to Low or Medium.That's for multiplayer, and loading screen takes long time (between 40s-7mn), and for single player, it becomes a nightmare when the number of players exceeds 3, you'll start experiencing a drastic drop in framerate and too much lagging.

 

I tested all the graphics presets (Low/Mid/High/Ultra) in 1080p, and 8GB RAM or 2GB VRAM seems more like a lie to me, Microsoft wants to sell the game under any circumstances. 

For players who are into ULTRA settings, it is recommended to have at least 16GB RAM, and 4GB VRAM to be able to play it in 4K resolution, but with the mentioned lies from Devs. I don't think you can play the game with just a GTX 650 or AMD HD 5850.

On the other hand, the game isn't a CPU-intensive and an i3 or i5 is sufficient, nor GPU-intensive though. but RAM and VRAM are critical in online/multiplayer matches if you're a pro gamer, who 

cares about UHD resolution and ULTRA graphics presets.

 

Even single player will suffer lagging and terrible situations, it's either set everything to low (and have too much RAM) or don't exceed 2 players.

 

The video below shows detailed benchmark using my rig compared to the official recommendation: