Could someone just let me know if this is a "known" problem?

[Wide_Arc]

Hi all,

I came back to Civ series at the wrong time it seems - here's my tale of woe and technical details. I'd really, really appreciate if someone can at least give me an idea of what the likely issue is, and whether I should even persevere - I sunk about 8 hours into it this weekend and... well, I want my 8 hours back!

My issue is that when I load Civ, I get two things that are wrong.

(1) Behind the menu, the globe is spinning but it's got these rectangular and triangular transparent shapes all over it.

(2) Once game starts, I get little black squares and triangles on every single game tile. Also, in about 9/10 launches, the screen fills up with massive angular lines and shapes which completely obliterate viewability, except if you scroll waaaay out into globe view.

As such, the game's utterly useless.

I have this setup:

MSI mobo
P4 1.9 Gig
512Meg RAM
Tagan 420W PSU
Inno3D GeForce 6600GT

I bought the last two primarily to support Civ 4... silly me.

Some interesting points (to my non-tech mind):

The new GeForce is apparently fine - it's running Doom3 very happily.
The graphics mangling as per (2) above also happens when I play Stronghold 2, unless I turn the graphics level to absolute minimum.

Before I installed the new card, I had a much older GeForce MX100/200 or something. That card could actually run Civ IV on lowest graphics settings, without this problem happening. But it was slow as can be.

So looking at the three games:

Civ IV: Fine but slow on old card. Horrific on new card.
Stronghold II: OK on old card at low graphics only. OK on new card at low graphics only.
Doom3: Unplayably slow on old card. Fine on new card.

I have been through many drivers in the last few days, finally settling back on the latest NVidia ones, as none of them made even minute difference to this issue.

I will try to post a screeny so you guys can see what I'm talking about, but is this familiar to anyone from the description - and is there any known fix for this issue?

[Garwoofoo]

It sounds to me (particularly if you're seeing this in other games) that you're seeing the effects of a graphics card or whole system overheating. Civ 4 pushes systems very hard, certainly harder than something like Doom 3 (which relies pretty much only on graphics), and the CPU and graphics card working at full tilt can throw out a lot of heat. My system is noiser when playing Civ 4 (because of all the fans that kick off) than when doing anything else at all with the PC.

Check your ventilation. Do you have a sufficient number of fans running etc? Don't overclock your graphics card, if you are doing so already. Underclock it if needs be, just as a test. And try running your PC with the side off or something just to see if it is a heat issue.

Also, when you upgraded from your old GeForce to your new GeForce, you did uninstall and reinstall the graphics drivers - right? If not, try that as a first point of call, just in case.

[Wide_Arc]

Def. no overclocking here - too complex for me!

Possibly overheating, though I've certainly had the issue with case side off - particularly yesterday it was off all the time as I was also peering at the mobo trying to work out what brand it was. During that time I tried a bunch of drivers. My setup is not exciting - two fans on the Tagan PSU, one on the mobo, and one on the grapics card.

Yes, def. uninstalled prev. drivers and rebooted, and then installed new ones and rebooted, no luck.

Also - this doesn't intuitively make sense to me, given there's a problem even in the menu screen; not just when the game is running - here's what I'm talking about:

[IMG]
http://www.chrisandsuz.homechoice.co...ap%20globe.jpg[/IMG]

[Wide_Arc]

What's odd is the same shape recurring in the next menu, and on the tiles.

http://www.chrisandsuz.homechoice.co.uk/crap%20globe2.jpg

http://www.chrisandsuz.homechoice.co.uk/in-game%20crap.jpg

This is in a game where it's "playable"... without all the mangling, just the crappy black stuff everywhere.

One thing that also bothers me a LOT is in that final screeny, the graphics card makes a kind of fluttering noise as you scroll in and out - its normal noise when you've got into globe view and the little warrior vanishes, but scroll in and it makes this fluttering noise as the warrior appears. Don't know what on earth causes that, but hadn't noticed it before and don't like it much!

[choddo]

Just as a side comment, what was your old PSU? The 6600GT isn't that greedy, surprised you needed a 420W jobbie for that.

You'll find other screenshots in this forum with similar artefacts. I don't think there's a definitive solution yet

You did the right thing dumping that GF MX though

[aslindy]

I have this same image problem, but not to the point where I can't play the game. I only get the types of weirdness you show in your images, it never gets any worse. I don't have any CTD or other major problems, so I am currently just playing with this flakiness and trying to ignore it. No idea how to fix it yet, nothing I've tried has worked. I posted a thread about flakey graphics a few days ago, but no one has had any suggestions.
Interestingly enough, I have a GeForce 6600 card also.
Thanks for posting - I was beginning to think I was the only one with this problem!
aslindy

[dmad50]

I'm having the same kind of trouble with the graphics on a GeForce 4600 card and switching drivers up has yet to help. It's pretty much unplayable as it tends to freeze up a bit also. I'm running a P4 2.4 ghz with 1 gig of ram.

[Wide_Arc]

Well, at least I'm not alone then.

My (layman) conclusion from my messing around is that the GeForce cards aren't 100% reliable (though sounds like none are), but also, Civ IV is a horrifically coded sack of sh*t.

I've been there before with other games, but frankly, didn't expect this from such a world-leading series.

Sid was in HMV in London on Thurs signing copies - I was so tempted to go heckle him, but I guess he has little to do with this disgrace in truth.

Sigh. Back to playing games that work.

Nb. Choddo - I had a 250W, lol. I'm one of those people that prefers to not spend anything but then make sure any upgrade has some scalability, so I figured the more power the better! Plus the Tagans seemed to have good reviews - rather spend a bit more and get something reliable, even though PSUs are pretty basic.

[Wide_Arc]

And now for the weird bit

When Stronghold 2 stuffs up - the same shapes appear... beyond me.

http://www.chrisandsuz.homechoice.co.uk/stronghold2%20sucks%20the%20same.jpg

[Raion]

Don't know if you have an AGP card or a PCI card. Whether it is taking main memory is another issue if it is an AGP, and also I heard that the Aperture in the BIOS of the machine should be 64 if it is an AGP.
Also running XP is a memory hog, so more memory probably would help, but then the game should run, but perhaps slower.

After that, whether PCI or AGP, everytime drivers are installed --- Image Quality will be on Quality -- and not High Performance. The others on the Performance menu should be OFF!
That means that Antialiasing is OFF or Application Controlled --- also Anisotrophic Filtering and Vertical Sync, all off -- or that means Application Controlled.

Otherwise, it may be XP taking too much memory, but then the game would probably just run better.