ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 Unplayable?

[thebunny]

I bought Civ4 for my wife for her birthday (well, at least partially...) and it arrived today. After installing, I ran into the black landscape issue which I fixed by turning off AGP Speed in the SMARTGART settings for the Omega drivers. The game now runs, but is pretty much unplayable due to choppiness and laginess while moving the camera around and while accessing the interface. I've tried all the usual suspects - installed latest drivers, disabled AV, checked for spyware, shut down all unnecessary programs, defraged, etc. But no help. Her laptop specs are:

P4 1.8 Ghz
512 MB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (32 MB), using the latest Omega drivers
XP Home Edition SP2

I realize that these are at the low end of the requirements for Civ4, but I would still expect the game to run somewhat well at the lowest graphical settings. Are there any suggestions for improving the performance for Radeon 7500 users? Are there any Radeon 7500 users who have gotten past the black terrain problem and are playing the game smoothly?

[Franklinnoble]

The only way the game is marginally playable is if you leave the AGP on, then run the game, but go into the world builder and reveal all tiles.

Which sucks - it still seems "dark" all over the map, and you still end up doing diplomacy with a pair of eyeballs and dentures.

Firaxis needs to fix this. A LOT of people have this chipset. It meets the published requirements to run the game. I can't believe they didn't encounter this in testing.

[Gully Foyle]

I thought the floating eyeballs and dark map were T&L issues? Does the 7500 have T&L support? If it doesn't, I'm surprised Firaxis listed it as compatible.

[thebunny]

The 7500 does have T&L support, but I believe it was the first card to support it.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by thebunny
The 7500 does have T&L support, but I believe it was the first card to support it.

Which means there's a software solution to be had here.

[thebunny]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


Which means there's a software solution to be had here.

Yeah, this is what I'm hoping for at least. Interesting note... If I set AGP Speed back up to 4x and change the CIV4TechInfos.xml file by setting bMapVisible = 1 everywhere, terrain shows up and the game runs very smoothly, even at the highest detail levels. The only problem with this is that all the terrain is dark. But until a patch is released to fix the T&L problems, it might be the best alternative.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by thebunny


Yeah, this is what I'm hoping for at least. Interesting note... If I set AGP Speed back up to 4x and change the CIV4TechInfos.xml file by setting bMapVisible = 1 everywhere, terrain shows up and the game runs very smoothly, even at the highest detail levels. The only problem with this is that all the terrain is dark. But until a patch is released to fix the T&L problems, it might be the best alternative.

That's basically what I did. But revealing the entire map right away takes a lot of the strategy out of the game, and the dark terrain isn't easy to look at for extended periods of time.

[TheVeryMoon]

i have an ATI 7500, so i'll give this a shot. where do I go to d/l the driver and how to I install it?

[ElConejo]

I have a Radeon 9800 IGP 320M 64MB with T&L and I have no idea how to get new drivers or any of that jazz... I have almost resigned myself to waiting for a patch...

[Nailfoot]

Civ4.com says a 64 meg video card is required. I have the 32 meg 7500 in my laptop, but I play no games there. I was unaware of a 64 meg version of the 7500, but that may be your problem.

[apethedog]

I can play the game on my dell inspiron with that same graphics card, and don't encounter any graphical problems at all. The game does crash for me after some playing - sometimes ten minutes, sometimes almost an hour... but during the time I play it, it seems to run well. I can even run it on high detail setting at 1024-768 resolution. I don't suppose it'll keep running this well once I uncover more land and cities, though, but anyway - it runs on the mobility 7500.

However, and this is important, if you want to play games on this video card, you can't rely on dell's drivers. I don't think they've updated them in years. You'll need to install the omega drivers.

Do a google search for ati, radeon, and omega - and you'll find them soon enough. Then where you can download them, download the version that goes: "good for all mobility cards". That one is good for ours too.

It really makes quite a difference when you want to play games.

[batteryacid]

Hi
have the same Problem- got past the black terrain with new omega drivers and AGP set to disable- have still troubles with black sea and faint terrain colors (resources are ok , pigs and cows can only be seen when not animated at lowest graphic options)

have still got the "toast cityy screen (no hammers and coins) as well as all GF 4xx users which makes the game ultimately unplayable- I mean this is ridiculous- I can play Dawn of War and Jedi Knigh 3 and even Serious Sam without troubles, BUT NO CIV 4 - this can´t be true

[Atahualpa]

I bought Civ4 for my wife for her birthday

I hope you're still married!!

[thebunny]

Omega drivers for ATI Radeon cards can be found at http://www.omegadrivers.net. I always use these drivers since vendors don't do a good job keeping their video drivers up to date.

Latest update... Using the "reveal entire map" technique I can get around the black terrain (though the cheshire cat issue remains). My wife played several games this weekend and it seems after some time the terrain eventually starts showing correctly, until at the end of the game the entire world is visible and lit correctly. Even at medium graphics settings, the game was very playable with very little lag. We even played a network game on a huge map last night, and although it slowed down a bit at the end (which I would expect), it was still very playable.

So hang in there Radeon Mobility 7500 users, as it would appear that this card will work fine with Civ4 once they fix the cheshire cat/black terrain issue (which is not just related to T&L support it seems).

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by thebunny
Omega drivers for ATI Radeon cards can be found at http://www.omegadrivers.net. I always use these drivers since vendors don't do a good job keeping their video drivers up to date.

Latest update... Using the "reveal entire map" technique I can get around the black terrain (though the cheshire cat issue remains). My wife played several games this weekend and it seems after some time the terrain eventually starts showing correctly, until at the end of the game the entire world is visible and lit correctly. Even at medium graphics settings, the game was very playable with very little lag. We even played a network game on a huge map last night, and although it slowed down a bit at the end (which I would expect), it was still very playable.

So hang in there Radeon Mobility 7500 users, as it would appear that this card will work fine with Civ4 once they fix the cheshire cat/black terrain issue (which is not just related to T&L support it seems).

Yep - this has been my experience as well.