A new version of Windows always comes with some anxious questions: will my old games and software work with the new OS? Especially for games that stood the test of time, like Age of Empires II. Especially now that Windows 10 is a free upgrade, it’s ever so tempting and the question is ever so burning.
The answer is quite simple, yes, Age of Empires II HD is compatible with Windows 10, but it does not stop there.
Windows 8
Windows 8 has always been a bit of a controversial Operating System, but it also affected Age of Empires II HD. Windows 8 has a really nasty font-related memory leak, and when we changed the code to patch the leak in 4.0, we really hurt performance for a lot of players. However, Windows 10 handles fonts far better with a superior caching mechanism. What this practically means for your computer, I cannot tell, but I can share my personal experiences.
- Patch 4.2 on Windows 8: 30 fps
- Patch 4.2 on Windows 10: 100 fps
These were measured on a laptop with the following specs:
Intel Core i7-4702MQ Quad-core 2.20 GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760M
16GB DDR3 L Memory
120GB SSD + 1TB HDD
1080p resolution
If you’re not on Windows 8 and would still want some performance gains, you still have patch 4.3 to look forward to, where we managed to decouple the game’s rendering from the rest of the logic, boosting framerates up yet another notch, up to 160 here. But some of our test desktops managed to crank out 240 fps.
So should you upgrade? We cannot judge for you, but we would recommend it, especially if you’re on Windows 8. Windows 7 users will not have the gains mentioned above, but everyone will enjoy the performance boost from patch 4.3 regardless. Coming soon™.
Are you able to buy the game on disc like all others? Is HD only downloadable? My husband and I like playing vs each other and we don’t want to have to pay for the game twice to have it downloaded on both our laptops. He is Windows 10 I am Windows 7 and we miss playing..
Are you guys kidding me I am NOT going to downgrade to Windows 10 where I lose control over when updates are downloaded and installed! Please patch this for Windows 8 and 7!!
The game is supported for WIn7,8 and 10 =)
I know it’s supported but if there’s a memory leak or performance issues, all OSes should get the fixes, not just Windows 10. Windows 10 is currently FAR FROM being an acceptable OS. Saying than Windows 8 had a bad memory leak with fonts so you should upgrade to Windows 10 makes me feel like ForgottenEmpires.net is allied with Microsoft. 🙂
It’s more a bug with windows really, all Age2 bugfixes are pushed to all platforms, but different OSes just behave differently.
OK. 🙁 I hate Windows 10, no amount of any persuasion will change my mind, it’s just too awful, full of bad changes. But I am a huge fan of AOE and ForgottenEmpires. If it runs better on Windows 7 than 8.1, I will gladly go back to it. 🙂
Can somebody please share a working AOE any version for download. thanks