1.52 causes "out of video memory" error

[tiger00]

Just a note, I just had this problem on a huge map with my computer.

2 GHz Pentium M
1 GB Ram
Mobility Radeon 9700 (128 MB)
Win XP Pro SP2

Before anyone goes off about it being a laptop, I have played Doom3, AoE3, FarCry and FEAR on this thing without any problems.

As for overheating, I use a laptop cooler when i play intensive games for any substantial length of time, and the internal fans rarely click on.

This has got to be a problem with the game. If people with 128MB and apparently 256MB!!! cards are having this problem... then either:
1) its a problem with the games allocation of video memory
2) its not really a problem with the video memory and the error message isn't accurate

In either case if the game is telling people with x8xx series to turn down the graphic settings...?! cmon now firaxis

[marvinkosh]

I ran into this problem last night. Twice I was thrown back to desktop with an out of video memory error and had to load up an earlier autosave. This is on a Large Custom Continents map, Marathon speed, with video settings at defaults.

I'm running a Radeon 9600 (256MB) and not counting the desktop crashes from before 1.52, Civ IV has been working just fine until now. However, I haven't actually got this far into a game (Tanks and Marines, invasion of the world, you know) since 1.52 arrived and I started to play marathon games.

Two things worth noting. I've updated my drivers to Catalyst 6.1 from 5.10 or so, I had to because I was having crashing problems with a different game. I also have eschewed the supplied ATI control panel in favour of ATI Tray Tools - I haven't used any 'tweaks' so far, just set the profiles for Direct3D and OpenGL to Auto-balanced.

[blisk]

Two things worth noting. I've updated my drivers to Catalyst 6.1 from 5.10 or so

...

Don't worry about that... i'd probably use the ati-tray over the supplied control panel but its not the drivers on that control panel causing the problem. I had this same problem with 5.10 and then i upgraded to 6.1 or 6.2 or something like that and the problem continued. Others have reported the same issue with the 5.X versions as well as the 6.X. Although it does seem like alot of people reporting the problem do have ati cards........... donno whats up with that.... probably just a fluke...

edit: but maybe not.. out of this whole thread only one Nvidia card owner reported a problem.. everyone in the future post your specs. so we can narrow it down.

[Qev]

Hmmm, I just got the error myself, running a custom huge map (v1.52), late in the game, and dumped to desktop.

Your system has run out of video memory. Please try reducing your video settings.
File: \main\civilization4.bak\SDKs\Gamebryo2_0\CoreLibs\ NiDX9Renderer\NiDX9VBManager.cpp, Line:1018

Which then was followed by a MS Visual C++ runtime error. I've also been noticing graphical corruption in the game, quite frequently. Nasty.

I've also had occurances where, after playing the game a while, exiting, then trying to relaunch it, having it fail to start with errors (though I forget the text of it).

Athlon XP 2800+ at 2GHz
1 GB DDR RAM
MSI nVidia GeForce FX 5900XT 256MB
Windows XP Pro SP2

[IvyMike]

I have this issue too, as others have described - i trade world maps, which takes a bit for it to load, then when im looking around the new map crash to desktop with the video memory error followed by the msvc++ error also. my comp is as follows...

WinXP Pro
2.8 Pentium D
1024 Ram
256 MB X800XT
SB X-Fi

1280x1024 - all settings are maxed cause the game runs well otherwise (i realize max settings could pose a problem, i just leave them as is though since it runs beautifully otherwise)

[marvinkosh]

Well, here's a thing. I've toggled Fast Writes off in SMARTGART options, and haven't had a recurrence (same game, played until victory) of the problem. I'm fairly sure at that I had turned this feature off before but it must have been re-set.

Of course, I'm not assuming for a moment that anything I did has anything to do with CTDs going away