Civ IV + Nvidia = CRash to desktop , Hard freezes, and the general smell of poo

[Bogie]

did the DirectX sound downgrade performance trick...

Could someone elaborate on this "trick". I'm not familiar with it and at this point I'm willing to try anything.

[Eagle Scream]

I had and still have problems with my new GeForce 6200 card. Huge worlds apparently cause it to go slow a ton so I just started a new game on standard. IT still is unstable a bit as has crashed once and I am only in year 1800 on the new game but so far it is alot better on 81.85 driver.

So far that 81.85 is the best driver with everything on LOW graphics at least from the 3 I have tried thus far, just do not play a large world and expect the performance not to be all that great though. I have 1 GB RAM, 3.0 GHZ Pentium 4 for the record. Only do non multiplayer games until they come out with a driver that is more stable though, or so I plan.

I wish 3dfx was still around as a company as I know they woulda made a driver that works

[Eagle Scream]

bah, the 6200 card now giving me errors and crashing in year 1900 and beyond again on a standard map. Ignore my notes earlier as the game or the card or both are buggy.

[Imminence]

Most problems are gone, since I use this lil' program:

http://www.windows-xp-optimizer.de/index.php?action=download

Download Windows_XP_Optimizer_2.2_Setup.exe there and use the tweaks (cautiously, though).

Playing on a huge map with 5 civs; it ran flawlessly until late 1900. Some crashes since, but nothing to worry.

One other thing; maybe I'm outing myself as a complete ignorant now, but I found something, which seems to be essencially important, at least for this game.
In "my computer/system/advanced/performance options" (the screen where you find also the option to change your swap file) are two other options: processor timing and memory usage.
I never touched this before; so the first option was set on "background services" and the other on "systemcache". I set both to "programs". Since then (and the above linked little optimizer) civ 4 runs without any problem on standard maps and rather ok on huge maps and all other stuff on my PC runs better than ever.

I did not check all (but most) threads, to find out, if this was mentioned before; if this should be the case, I apologize.
And....please....try to understand the point and don't be too upset about my eventually bad translations of windows terms

[Eagle Scream]

Originally posted by Imminence
...I did not check all (but most) threads, to find out, if this was mentioned before; if this should be the case, I apologize.
And....please....try to understand the point and don't be too upset about my eventually bad translations of windows terms

I for one always appreciate advice and don't rip anyone whether it is posted once or a million times so thanks

[digitalb0y]

having same issue

AMD Opteron64 242
Windows XP 32bit
Clean Install (Nothing no pc but civ4, video drivers,Windows Updates)

Tech support was not Helpat all just got the run around (was getting errors at Install at first, but fixed it myself)

[Eagle Scream]

81.94 better driver but still crashes on occasion. 81.94 crashes on Sim City 4 too. Thinking of returning the card and going ATI

[Imminence]

I don't believe, that all those mad things happen because of this card or that. Read other boards: There the nVidia-guys are happy and the ATI-community is whining. I suspect, there is some small incompatibility in both systems, otherwise I can't imagine, why almost all game manufacturers have such problems to produce bugfree games running with nVidia AND ATI out of the box.

[Stromprophet]

Jumping in.

I just installed a Geforce 4 Ti 4600 128 MB, AGP card and I am having seom serious issues.

The game was working fine with my Geforce 4, 64 MB. I could actually play on a huge map if I wanted.

Now, the problem is that it often can't even build a huge world.

Also it dies after 1 TURN. It starts, I hit enter, and then I get a fatal error. Windows says a device has had a serious error and recovered and must restart.

I am running 81.85 from Nvidia.

Anyhelp would be appreciated.

P.S. Anyone know where to go to start the defrag comand for windows? I can't remember.

[Durdyn]

I've got a problem when I choose larger maps.
In my previous games with normal maps I had some problems when entering menus or something.
Today I tried to begin a new game in a huge map.
I tried about 5-6 times and everytime when the game was ready to start (PLAY GAME button) the monitor went to sleep and I couldnt do anything but reset my PC.

Anyone experiencing this?
Do you think it could be a resolution problem maybe because of the larger map ?

[Eagle Scream]

returned my Nvidia card, grabbed a ATI 9550 radeon, had to do one tweak in order for the renderer to work (which took about 2 hours to figure). However since then no problems though have not yet retried my huge map (but did play the standard one which I was having problems with the Nvidia card on) but either way much more stable of a card than my previous Nvidia GEForce 6200 piece of crap.

[jjam69]

Another report...

Finally found the right thread...

AMD 9750 Phenom Quad Core
4.00 GB
64 bit Vista
GeForce 8500GT 512Mb

Runs Awesome for about :15 minutes then the box turns OFF, no "application hangs" or anything polite, the box just goes silent and the monitor goes blank... turn it back on and watch the machine boot up. Nothing in the event logs yet.

[SpencerH]

You would've been better off starting a new thread rather than resurrecting this old small thread.

Anywho........ I'm assuming you are not using some POS hacked/pirate version.

If you re-start the same game at 4000 bc what happens? Does it crash again at about 15 min? What about if you start other games with smaller/larger maps etc? If its a timing thing, ie the game crashes when one might expect more units to be moving around etc, then my guess is that it may be an overheating problem.

I had a similar set of symptoms while playing RoN for the first time. The typical suggestions I received as fixes (update drivers, broken video card, more ram, etc, etc) were unlikely culprits. After all, the game started then played fine for a period of time until it stopped. We also know that there are no glitched "events" in CIV that will cause a crash, so that seems unlikely.

There's a simple test. Play a game until it crashes then take off the side panel to allow for more cooling. Re-play the exact same game. If it plays further then the likely culprit is cooling. If it crashes at a later time point try adding more cooling with a house fan and try again.

[jjam69]

not a cooling issue

Not a cooling issue... there are two air inlets on my case side, one for the cpu and one for the GPU.

Just for kicks I uninstalled and reinstalled and it still repro's on ANY sized map.

Legit copis of everything...

[SpencerH]

Personally, I'd still try taking off the side just to eliminate the possibility.

If cooling isnt the problem you're still faced with what can repetitively cause a "BSOD" after 15 min of play. My guess is some other program/process is becoming active and that's what causes the crash.