Medieval 2 Total War Tweaking

Hi guys ive just bought this game and its runs without to many problems but with my specs being of the lower end of the spectrum, namely 2gbs of ram, XFX geforce 6600 and amd athlon xp 3000, is there anything I can do to increase performance? Ive looked for a tweaking guide on the net and just cant find anything that could help.

replace all the parts with newer parts?

helpfull... Am starting a new build in Febuary if all goes to plan!!!

I mean there are guides for tweaking performance in games like Call of Duty 2 where by disabling certain features via a text editor and or command console. Just wondered if anybody had any advice on that...

Hi, yeah ive also got this very nice game. The only times i run into trouble is some of the big castle fights with FPS dropping as low as 3. I would say while the game uses a lot of ram you should have enough so thats not a problem.
Basicly you need to sacrifice some of the eye candy for performance. Set your graphics card to performance setting there should be a preset for that in your card software. Then once in game go to video settings, click on advanced. Turn of Anti Aliasing and make sure the V-Sync is unchecked, The Campaign shadows and reflections also seem to be big resource users so uncheck those. Shadow details should also be on low. Then you need to decide how you want the Unit, Building, Effects and Grass detail to appear in game obviously the lower the setting the more performance you will get. Also in the Game settings the Unit scale does have an impact again the lower the size the more performance, there is also an official patch out for the game you can get from here http://www.worthdownloading.com/game.php?gid=1957 . Hope this helps.