Announcement

**robaughjr** · December 14, 2005, 11:36

Might want to try the memory fix. Its easy to remove if you don't see results. I've heard that using older drivers on nvidia cards helps. Also check on the power requirements for your new videocard. Might need a new power supply. More ram certainly won't hurt but 1 gig should be plenty for any size map. I only have 768mb and play huge maps with no crashes (I do have the Harkonnen patch installed). It sounds like a problem with your new videocard. Repost if you solve this. I have been thinking of upgrading my vc but am hesitant because it almost seems like lower end cards have less issues. Dont want to waste $100 and not be able to play the game.

**tiny toad** · December 14, 2005, 16:02

Thanks Robaugjr I`lll do that.
Im going to try the memory fix now and see what happens. Ive just had another crash, this time it was the system re-booting itself.
Im going to play a game without a crash if it kills me !!!!

**danielat2** · December 17, 2005, 13:28

Have you tried the memory fix? I have the same problem - monitor goes suddenly stanby and I have to reset my PC. I have a new one with Pentium 3GHz, 1GB of RAM, MSI NX NVIDIA (128MB) graphic card. Any advice how to fix it?

**Peptis** · December 18, 2005, 01:24

I have the exact same problem.

I have tried the memory fix and have tried running the game in both fullscreen and windowed modes. I have tried just about everything else mentioned on this forum as well. The only thing that I have not done is patched my BIOS, but I am about to try that now.

I have a Radeon 9800, P4 2.8GHz, and have updated all of my drivers on a fresh install of Windows XP with SP2.

I am very frustrated with the whole thing and am about to give up on the game (at least until they patch it and, hopefully, fix it).

**Ribannah** · December 22, 2005, 20:21

I have the same problem with my monitor, since the patch. Didn't happen before.
Fortunately, it does not happen all that often, and the monitor resets itself, so I don't have to restart the pc.

**Lucian_Penyan** · December 24, 2005, 15:38

I also have this problem.
For me it seems to only happen when I'm involved in diplomacy. The moniter just suddenly no longer appears to be getting any input from the computer. I don't know if this is a problem with my video card, but from the responces here it seems to be affecting several types of video cards.
I use an ATI Radeon 9600 and I have 1g of ram.

**tiny toad** · December 27, 2005, 05:29

Hi
Applied the new patch, and for me things have got worse, i still get reboots but they are more frequent.
Have edited the ini file to see if that helps and taken graphics down to low, played for about a hour last night before i got another reboot. I`m not sure BUT i`m starting to think this might not be a graphics card issue, but a motherboard/CPU issue. i found a setting in my bios for my vga graphics to set to fail safe mode, this adjusted my graphicss to VGA2 (when it was on 4) and my apeture to 128 when it was on 64bit, still got a crash afterwards though

**Raion** · December 27, 2005, 16:06

All of you have a adequate power supply for your video card.

They take a certain wattage, and if you have the wrong one, it will overheat and shut down your computer.

Some video cards are 300 watts and newer ones are more.

If you do not have a power supply that can handle the load that is needed -- it is a wonder you did not burn up your entire computer -- motherboard and all!

Overclocking a video card without adequate cooling may do that also.

**tiny toad** · December 28, 2005, 06:31

Hi Raon
Thanks for the info, I`m still *probing* however how do i find out if this is the case? I`ve just installed the MSI live update. but this does not show my voltage requirements. any help would be much appreciated

**Wildcat** · December 28, 2005, 10:17

A quick and dirty trick is hold your hand over your exhaust port if it's very warm you have either a inadequate power supply or not enough fans. Another way is place a CD in your drive listen as it spins, if your running fans reduce in noise output your system needs more power.

All this is mute because CIV4 is not that graphic intensive. If you can play any of the newer First person shooters without similar problems you do not have a problem with power supply to your graphic card you have a badly coded game, which the numerous problems other people are having should already have told you. The game also did this for me in patch 1.09 version, but not so far with this build although I still get CTD's.

So feel free to ignore Raions dire warning, the sky is not falling.

**Raion** · December 29, 2005, 03:11

I don't have a problem with the game, but my old monitor has a bad switch. If I can get the monitor to stay on, then it will work, otherwise it won't even come on, and it goes off and on, and yellow like in sleep mode, but that is the monitor. Once it is on, it will stay on.

I don't know how you tell what wattage your power supply puts out, unless looking at the manual for your computer. Mine is older computer and the power supply puts out 250 watts. I have a 250 watts video card, and can not buy a 300 watt video card. I could if I bought a power supply that will supply that, and buy the correct one to fit into my older computer.

Civ IV is 3-D graphics, so yes, in the late game it can take more graphic card processing power, but probably yes, not as much as FPS.

But overclocking is something that players do without knowing what they are doing.

www.guru3d.com

http://www.guru3d.com/

Guru3D.com - Your go-to source for tech news, reviews, and in-depth analysis of graphics cards, processors, motherboards, gaming hardware, and software from companies like AMD (Radeon) Intel (Core) and NVIDIA (GeForce). Stay updated with the latest trends and innovations in the world of technology .

is a very good place to find out a lot of stuff.

I think the ATI card you mention is a 300 watt card. Of course usually they do not take all that wattage, but if you have many things hooked up to your computer, and the power supply gets close to full load -- it may be a problem.

Also the code may be bad, but since I have no problem with the game I can not comment on if there is another patch needed other than that monster patch 1.52 version I just downloaded very , very slowly (2 - 1/2 hr. worth of download time)!

Very few video cards are 250 watts, and only now the lower end of the video graphics card, but if you have a cheap computer like I do, then it may be possible that overloading of the power supply will shut down the video card, instead of wrecking the entire computer.
Also my processor has a temperature sensor on it, and that is set in the BIOS of the computer.

Also I just cleaned out all the dust and dirt in my comptuer, since the fan sucks it all in, after awhile, and cleaning out the dust and dirt in the computer will make the computer run cooler.

So, like he said, and whatever it may be -- good luck!

**tiny toad** · December 29, 2005, 07:05

Hi Raion/Wildcat
Thanks for the response, so far i have cleaned out the PC and done all other house keeping, and I`ve not had issues with other games, Well the only other 3d intensive game installed is Half Life2 and that plays great. I did install MSI updater yesterday and it informed me that my BIOS/sound card was updated, However it did say i needed to update my CPU to AGP Chipset drivers??? so I`ve done this now and am about to fire up a game of civ4 and see what happens, let you know the result laters

**tiny toad** · December 30, 2005, 08:46

oh well...got another crash but this time the monitor didnt go into standby mode, it froze but showed a multi-coloured splash of pixels on the screen !! still needed to reboot, but have got further than before, so i`m on the write track.

**petetspm** · January 1, 2006, 19:28

I have spent 2 days fighting with the same problem on a Radeon 9800 Pro. What I have done is turned movies off, play at the lowest resolution, turn sound to mono (don't know why). Now I just get CTD every so often from the Civilopedia but it fixes the VDU issues

Its a pain in the arse.

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Monitor goes on standby( have to reboot)

Monitor goes on standby( have to reboot)

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