Is anyone paying attention to the serious GeForce Fx5xxx problem?

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Just to bring this growing problem to people's attention, the Civ4 UI basically slows to a crawl for most people using the GeForce Fx 5xxx series of graphics cards, despite running the game under the lowest graphics settings and despite meeting or exceeding even the recommended system requirements.

The people over at civfanatics have been tracking this issue in this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133116

... but so far haven't received any response from Firaxis or come to any solutions.

This is a serious flaw in the programming and ought to be looked into by those responsible for patching the game, etc. And, yes, I realize that the FX 5xxx series isn't the most respected video card in the world, but Christ. When people with much inferior cards are running the game with no problems, you have to wonder if something hasn't gone terribly wrong.

Just thought I'd give this issue its own thread over here in case anyone has figured something out or, perhaps, those people working for Firaxis who visit here might be able to shed some light.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

My specs:
P4 1.7GHz
768MB PC 3200 RAM
150GB HD, defragged recently
GeForce FX 5500 256MB (latest drivers)
Windows XP Pro SP2 (fully updated)

Running Civ4 with:
Lowest graphics settings
1024x768

Problem:
Everything is painfully slow, to the point of being unplayable. Especially scrolling around the map. There is a lag of a few seconds before anything will respond, like units, buttons, mouseovers, etc... By contrast, Pirates! (which uses a similar engine and has almost identical system requirements) runs flawlessly on my system.

[Solver]

Try setting SyncInput = 1 in the INI and post if that makes the issue better.

Other options include, in the INI, MinimapTrilinearFilter = 0

[snoopy369]

It runs fine on my 5200, so I'm not sure what specific problem you're having Try cutting the animations out, or even see if it'll run better in windowed mode perhaps?

Also, does it run better on smaller maps?

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Did both of those, no luck.

Oh, and I should mention that I did some reconfigurations to the INI, as per the instructions in the thread I linked, all with no luck (and no one there had any luck either).

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by snoopy369
It runs fine on my 5200, so I'm not sure what specific problem you're having Try cutting the animations out, or even see if it'll run better in windowed mode perhaps?

Also, does it run better on smaller maps?

No, it always runs the same - crappy. And I removed ALL the extras, like animations, etc, etc... same result.

But I should have said that not ALL 5xxx cards are affected, it just seems that the majority of people having this problem are also running these cards.

BTW, what are your specs Snoopy?

[evizaer]

I have a GeForce4 FX Go5700 and the ini fix coupled with "quick move" allowed me to play the game reasonably well on standard sized maps--eEven at resolutions greater than minimum with medium graphics settings.

I tried a large map and was lagged back to hell again, though, so the game still isn't as playable as it should be.

[Garwoofoo]

I'm using a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and the game runs pretty well even with 4x AA. This is using the latest official drivers from the Nvidia site.

The only problem that I have that I can't resolve is major skipping on the wonder movies, but that seems to be affecting a lot of people.

[Raion]

Yes, running a FX5200 and had similiar problems when trying to play an Epic game. Just ran through the Tutorial last night, but the opening of the game did skip just a little. There are no updated drivers for my Live! card and Pirates! was not even close to running so laggy as Civ IV does, although I think I started the game on a large Terra map!

Was running 53.01 drivers during Pirates! and no problems, but running 78.01 drivers and it is a long story, but I would have to download the old drivers again, losing everything on my harddisk partition while stopping Partition Magic through Task Manager. Ran out of time, and it cross-linked every file on the Partition, so I am still in the process of re-installing every game (not all that many) that was on that partition. That includes Pirates! which although may have been a little slow, still for me, fast enough~!

I think I will re-install Pirates (and I have to download the patch for that again because I had patches on that partition I get to download them all again for the game I had installed on that partition), but then the logical partition is all re-formated and all- defragged and all of that, but I doubt if I will have any problems with Pirates! even without the patch, since I did not have any problems before with the game.

Anything else, and it just seems that some menu items in the game like changing resolutions during playing Civ IV does not work, but may only work at the beginning when starting the game on the Main Menu screen and the Advanced Button Options!

Running 4x antialiasing though and have not turned off animations or anything, but only thing reported weak for the game of Civ IV was the Geforce FX5200 graphic card, in which case, the store was sold out of a newer faster type card, so I will have to wait to buy a slightly better 6200 card or something. Just Civ IV is laggy, laggy, and laggy, and I wish something would stop the scrolling of the main screen map, since it goes everywhere but where I want it to sometimes, moving all around.

That may have something to do with the arrows that did not load in the ThemeParseLog.txt perhaps, but then I really do not know about that file as explained in another thread but here it is anyway again:

[Oct 29, 2005 - 15:25:54] Messages while processing 'Resource/Themes/Civ4.thm'

Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4910, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4918, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4926, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4983, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4991, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'
Error : File - ('Civ4Theme_Custom.thm', Ln:4999, Col:47) Could not load bitmap 'Civ4/HUD/city_titlearrows.tga'

I have no idea if I need those, unless those are tied to the scrolling of the main screen map, and if needed those would help, I guess. I just do not know, everything else seem to go fine during the install, but then, I really do not know, but the game plays, and I do have the Recommended System except for having a little weak graphics card and that is all!

[JimmyCracksCorn]

It would be nice if Firaxis would at least let us know if this is a problem that can potentially be resolved so that people can get their money back if need be.

[Tyrole]

Thanks for posting this again Jimmy. I say again because I posted the same thing 2 days ago, but it was ignored...


Anyway, the exact problem also seems to affect ATI cards in the low 9000 model range, as well as the ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV. Geforce 5200s, however, seem to be the most consistently effected.

It is safe to say we have tried an incredible variety of troubleshooting techniques, as documented in the above linked thread. Any new ideas are, of course, welcome.

[darsmith]

Just to add I am having the same problem. I am using an GeForce FX 5200. I am way beyond the system reqs. It works fine for the most part and then start deteriorating. I start losing text and icons and leader videos until its unplayable. Also the map often has black patches where the shading for mountains should be. Its very ugly. I play much more taxing games than this so I assume its a bug. I emailed support and havent heard back yet.

All in all pretty dissapointing.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

It is safe to say we have tried an incredible variety of troubleshooting techniques, as documented in the above linked thread. Any new ideas are, of course, welcome.

Amen. I've tried EVERYTHING. Everything from updating/ regressing my drivers, playing with every setting within the game, playing with every setting in dxdiag, playing with every setting in my BIOS regarding the AGP. I've even played around with the sound settings and tried running the game with no background programs (not even explorer.exe), all to no avail whatsoever.

Even just a little mention of this from Firaxis would make a world of difference in how I'm feeling right now.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Something to try:

This was just posted on the Civfanatics thread about this issue:

Hi.
I use a Geforce 5600 FX Go and had similar problems as described above, but did'nt try anything from the forums yet. Since i often had problems with newer Games, using Shader 2.0+ I searched for a tool to force the game, running with another (hopefully faster) shaderversion. I found a tool called "nVHardPage".

Selecting the "compatibility" shader within nVhardPage from "DirectX->Shader Settings" and starting the Game, gave me an Error by Civ, that my System wouldnt meet the requirements and the game would be reconfigured. Besides a much improved performance, I only experienced graphic glitches. I dont know what the game changed exactly, but I got rid of the glitches only by deleting the folder under MyGames\Civilization IV (I suppose the .ini file would have been enough to delete, but well I was frustrated . The game just wouldn't recognize if I re-enabled the Shader 1.4+ by itself, or I did miss something . Maybe an analysis of the changes made by the game during reconfiguration process could help pinpointing an easier solution.

What worked:
I gave it another try and selected Shader 1.4 under "DirectX->Shader Settings" (don't forget to apply your new settings!), crossed my fingers and started the game again. Even on the huge Earth map, it didnt lag anymore as before and was playable, without any glitches, even with all details set to high.

(If this doesnt help on the first run, try deleting the "CivilizationIV.ini", or make a copy of the folder "Sid Meier's Civilization 4" within "My Documents\...\My Games\", delete the original - savegames may be moved afterwards - and start the game again )

I didnt test the worldbuilder, or wonder movies, its getting late over here.

A copy of the mentioned tool may be found here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=362

I hope this helps at least some of you. Give it a try and post your experiences.

Have Fun.

P.S.: For reference...my System Specs: Pentium IV 3,06 Ghz with 512 MB Ram, Geforce 5600 Go (128MB), Driver Version 77.77 (Laptop2Go)

I'm going to test it out now, I'll report if there's a difference.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Ok, I tried it out.

It did improve the lag (not by a lot though), but it made all the graphics look like crap. So this definately isn't a solution, although it may be suitable for some of you.