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How to enable the Enhanced Graphics (UHD) settings.

By Mad Developer

Hello and welcome!
I am going to show you in this guide how to enable the Enhanced Graphics (UHD) option in Age of Empires2: Definitive Edition on Steam.

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Created by

Mad Developer
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Category: Modding or Configuration

Languages: English

Posted

24 Nov, 2019 @ 4:46am

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Guide Index

Overview

Introduction

Method 1

Method 2

Thank you!

Comments

Introduction

Many people have trouble with activating the Enhanced Graphics (UHD) options in Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition because the setting is greyed out in the ingame's option menu.

The reason for this is because the Enhanced Graphics contain a higher resolution, UHD version of the games textures. These textures are 16,3GB in size and are not contained in the games installation. You have to download them separately.

There are two ways to do so.

Method 1

1. Navigate to the Steam Store page of the Enhanced Graphics Pack. Either use the search bar, click on the "Shop Page" Button in your library and scroll down to the dlc section of the game or click on this link.

2. Make sure that Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is closed and click on download. The download should begin and the game start.

3. Once the download is finished, head to the ingame options menu, hit the graphics tab and

Method 2

1. Go to your steam library, right-click on the Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition and hit "Properties".

2. A new window appears where you need to click on the DLC tab in the top left corner.
Activate the checkbox for the Enhanced Graphics (UHD) DLC and close the window.

3. Launch the game to start the download.

4. Once the download is finished, head to the ingame options menu, hit the graphics tab and

Thank you!

I hope I helped you. Please consider a like and feel free to ask in the comments for further help.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

9 Comments

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ederlazuta 21 Mar @ 7:44pm

Thank you!!!!

One-Winged Angel 16 Feb, 2020 @ 4:55pm

ah i see. Thank you so much! That doesn't seem worth the hassle. The game looks pretty good as it is.

Mad Developer [author] 16 Feb, 2020 @ 12:11pm

@MnM
I probably found a solution to your problem.

https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/game-crash-with-enhanced-graphics-uhd-on/61136/13
The UHD pack is +30GB big and tries to load ~14GB into RAM when you start a match. Your PC probably has 8-16GB of RAM, which isn’t enough. When your system hasn’t enough ram, the pagefile.sys file will store the data that doesn’t fit into the RAM. It's a virtual extension of your RAM.

It’s size can be adjusted, which likely leads to the problem. Yours is too small. There are many online guides of how to change size of the pagefile.sys.
The pagefile.sys probably needs to be on the same partition / harddrive as your game. It’s by default located in your windows folder, so it might be necessary to install the game on your C drive. Otherwise, the pagefile.sys could get moved but because of the slow speed, it is not a good idea to move it to an HDD drive.

I hope this helps you out. If you need more help, feel free to ask.

One-Winged Angel 15 Feb, 2020 @ 10:18pm

well my graphic card is a 1050ti and my processor is an i7 8th gen so it should work. There is no error message sadly. It just crashes when running the benchmark test.

Mad Developer [author] 15 Feb, 2020 @ 8:57am

@MnM
No, a 4K monitor is not needed to use the UHD graphics pack. The texture resolution and the monitor resolution are not connected in by any means.

Regarding the crash, pointing out the cause is not that easy.
While your hardware definitely does support rendering UHD content (literally every hardware ever does), if it is powerful enough to output an enjoyable experience is something different since the UHD graphics pack is quite demanding on your hardware. I also could not imagine having a too weak hardware being the cause for the crash exept your gpu really has way too little memory.
Do you know your PC specs?
What I would suggest is updating all the drivers on your system, especially the graphics driver.
(Either using Nvidia Geforce Experience or AMD Gaming Evolved software depending on your gpu manufacturer).
Also, when the game crashes, is there some sort of error message somewhere?

One-Winged Angel 15 Feb, 2020 @ 8:40am

my game crashes when running the ranked benchmark with UHD on. Does that mean my hardware does not support UHD? is a 4K resolution screen compulsory?

𝐀𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐁𝐞𝐲𝐤 26 Nov, 2019 @ 10:13am

aha ok ty

Mad Developer [author] 26 Nov, 2019 @ 10:10am

It depends on your hardware. The fps will be lower with the enhanced graphics pack enabeled. In my case, if you have a crowded map and you zoom completely out, the fps will drop a bit. But in my case it is not really distracting and only If I really zoom out to the maximum. Besides that, it runs completely fine on my.
Note that I haven't tried it out yet on a 8 player map with over 4000 enteties on one screen :D

𝐀𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐁𝐞𝐲𝐤 26 Nov, 2019 @ 7:55am

Hello, thank you , i have a question , my question is if we load the Enhanced Graphics Pack we got the fps drop ?

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