Your machine? How does Civ4 run?

[Rancidlunchmeat]

2.4 P IV, 512 megs of ram, 6800 NU and the game runs nice and smooth (except in movies.. which is a different problem), the entire time on Huge maps up until the point there's 11 known other Civs at the end of the game all with a bunch of units and everybody moving them all around.

Then, it really starts to bog down. Going for space races around 1950 AD really sucks, because it'll take 30 seconds or so in between turns sometimes and the only thing I'm doing at that point is clicking the continue button.

I usually quit about that time. Can't stand waiting 30 seconds to click continue and then have somebody stupid pop up and ask for open borders. NO! GO AWAY, I've already won, you just don't know it yet!

[Crossfire]

2.8 Ghz P4. 768 MB ram, Radion 9700 Pro. Game runs great until late game and then runs fine if I stop and reboot and let it reload from scratch. I usually play on Normal maps but Large or Huge definitely slow down sooner. The last patch really helped.

[Generaldoktor]

There used to be a lot of talk about this on the "why I hate this game" thread. I got P4 3.06 gig Dell, 512mb RDRAM and 128mb ATI Radeon 9700 video card. The game performance stunk when I got it , did not improve with the 1.09 patch, improved finally with the 1.52 patch, improved more with the GAME REINSTALLED (lost all old saves) and the 1.52 patch (no 1.09 patch on reinstall.) It still grinds down to near halt at late game with big map and eight or more civs. I don't want to turn animations off, but think I have to do it.

One guy told me I need 1000+ mb of RAM. Others have said there's special problems with ATI video cards. I have no practice at installing cards, but don't want to fu-k this expensive unit up for other purposes where it still works fine. The fan runs heavy during the game, a tech told me even before the game came out I should retrofit a larger fan because Dell didn't anticpate how hot P4's run. I'm addicted to the game, but worry constantly about this thing melting down, all over a da-n game.

[Generaldoktor]

Addendum to last post. After every game, I have to run a system performance tool to reset the video optimizations for Internet and other use and dump the cache. I still disconnect the Internet (to avoid virus creep up my ports) because I still, even post reinstall and patch, feel I can't run my firewall, spy sweeper, system performance tool, antivirus and a lot of other processes in order to make the game work better. It takes me close to a half hour just to get set up to play and twice that to make things right after a session. I hope there is more improvements in future patches or expansions coming. It's enjoyable to play, but it su-ks.

[Cerri]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
There used to be a lot of talk about this on the "why I hate this game" thread. I got P4 3.06 gig Dell, 512mb RDRAM and 128mb ATI Radeon 9700 video card. The game performance stunk when I got it , did not improve with the 1.09 patch, improved finally with the 1.52 patch, improved more with the GAME REINSTALLED (lost all old saves) and the 1.52 patch (no 1.09 patch on reinstall.) It still grinds down to near halt at late game with big map and eight or more civs. I don't want to turn animations off, but think I have to do it.

One guy told me I need 1000+ mb of RAM. Others have said there's special problems with ATI video cards. I have no practice at installing cards, but don't want to fu-k this expensive unit up for other purposes where it still works fine. The fan runs heavy during the game, a tech told me even before the game came out I should retrofit a larger fan because Dell didn't anticpate how hot P4's run. I'm addicted to the game, but worry constantly about this thing melting down, all over a da-n game.

You still have a decent processor there, and the video card is still considered not horribly old. Your bottleneck is indeed the amount, or should I say, lack of RAM. (I have an ATI 9800Pro vid card, and never had a single problem with it, personally. Although I guess it's possible it's causing additional issues, I would bet something big on the fact that's not your primary, main issue when you're running so low on RAM)

512MB is hardly anything these days, and it really isn't enough to run today's most recent games by any stretch.

On average, my recommendation would be to definitely move up to at *least* one gig of RAM for a much improved performance, and 2 gigs is about perfect if you have the room for it (you might need to get rid of the 512 stick altogether and buy 1GB sticks if you don't have 4 RAM slots total.

The bad news is, since RDRAM is pretty much completely obsolete it's very pricy compared to other types of RAM.

The few sticks I saw for sale at newegg.com (which is generally one of the lowest priced places around for computer hardware) were, to my mind, prohibitively expensive, and they didn't even sell a stick bigger than 512. (300 and change for a 512MB stick?!? )

Perhaps you can contact Dell itself and see what your options are? (The true shame is RAM is generally one of the best and cheapest upgrades you can give a gaming computer...but DDR SDRAM, which is the common standard, is cheap. Not so for RDRAM.)

Your best option would, in my opinion, be using a different type of RAM, but without a different motherboard, that's not possible, and I wouldn't even want to try installing a new motherboard on a Dell-built machine. (Is it even possible on a pre-built? I don't know how much proprietary stuff Dell uses, but my old Compaq damn near *everything* was proprietary...which is why it got relegated to a glorified web-surfer/mp3 player/Internet radio, and I built myself a machine I wouldn't have to worry about being able to upgrade myself ).

If your machine doesn't allow for 1+ GB of RAM, I'm personally not seeing you being able to improve your performance a whole lot, even with future patches, turning animations off, etc.

It might help some, but it's never going to play well on a machine with only 512MB of RAM, imo, because that's not the type of machine the game was designed to look pretty on.

"Minimum machine requirements" are frequently a load of complete crap. Sure, it might be *possible* to get it running on an older machine with very little memory, but there's no assurance it will run *well*, or even be realistically playable as anything other than a slideshow. Games coming out today have high RAM requirements for anything better than sub-par (at best) performance, and that's not going to change.

[unamablebuiler]

AMD 2700, 512 Meg RAM, 128 meg Raedon 9600. I Typically play huge maps and its fine at 1024x768with medium detail. Ther are some things like units occasionally not animating during combat but thats nothing i would be more worried bout missing textures.

Movies are framey at first (load times i suspect) and then run at normal speed used to have some corruption starting moivies

One thing i've found is that the hard disk tends to churn constantly ... it must need 1 gig or more of memory.

It pushes the vidcard hard heatsink temp is 63 C for and ambient air temp of 30 C and the CPU is probaly at 67 need more Fans bigger heat sink. however doom 3 has similar stats also.
Generaldoktor:
Ifyou want your protection back just reebot. it should come back automaticaly then

[Cerri]

Originally posted by unamablebuiler
AMD 2700, 512 Meg RAM, 128 meg Raedon 9600. I Typically play huge maps and its fine at 1024x768with medium detail. Ther are some things like units occasionally not animating during combat but thats nothing i would be more worried bout missing textures.

Movies are framey at first (load times i suspect) and then run at normal speed used to have some corruption starting moivies

One thing i've found is that the hard disk tends to churn constantly ... it must need 1 gig or more of memory.

It pushes the vidcard hard heatsink temp is 63 C for and ambient air temp of 30 C and the CPU is probaly at 67 need more Fans bigger heat sink. however doom 3 has similar stats also.
Generaldoktor:
Ifyou want your protection back just reebot. it should come back automaticaly then

Same thing I said to Generaldoktor applies to your situation. 1GB of RAM minimum to run any of today's games with anything close to decent performance without having to turn absolutely everything off.

[axisworks]

Yeah, that's been my experience as well. After a while it just takes way too long to get through a turn because of the lag time. I'm just not having any fun anymore at that point so I would just start a new game. It only happens on the larger maps, though, and with 6+ AIs.

Civ 4? I thought we were talking civ1

[unamablebuiler]

noted thats my next upgrade RAM
thank god i can squeeze 3 gig in

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Looking over most of the stats of the machines, I'd say the first bottleneck is likely the GPU. Change the video card, period. Remember that amount of ram on the video card isn't always the most important factor.

Second, ofcourse is system RAM.

Generaldoktor: If you don't feel comfortable upgrading your AGP video card, you won't be comfortable upgrading your ram even if you could find it and afford it.

Are you positive you are using rambus ram? I didn't know Dell even made a 3.06 intel machine with RDRAM. It's far more likely you've got DDR SDRAM and then you don't have to worry about the price issues.

Popping in a new AGP vid card is no big deal, I'd checkout newegg for an upgrade to that 9700 and that will solve most of your problems. Like I said earlier, I'm running only 512 with a 6800NU (128) and I don't get any problems until late game on huge maps with lots of Civs.

[Sexus R Cerinus]

My specs are stated below plus I play with CIV out of the box, no patches.

Usually do not play above standard maps so do not see any real performance issues, even late game.
But 'big' maps do cause lag/performance after a period of time.

[Yowzer]

Hmmm. Running it on a 4-yr old AMD 1700+, 1GB RAM and it works fine for a large map. Not to mention an ancient GeForce 3!!! I find much improvement after patching to 1.52 and updating to the latest GPU drivers. However, as the game runs on, the in-game movies run jerkier... Before, it used to immediately crash & boot me out of the game....

[Willem]

Originally posted by Yowzer
Hmmm. Running it on a 4-yr old AMD 1700+, 1GB RAM and it works fine for a large map.

Must be nice. I have the exact same specs but with a Radeon 9550 and playing Large maps is dicey. Sometimes I make it all the way through, sometimes it will start to crash in the Industrial era. What OS are you using, maybe that would explain the difference. I'm using XP, with all background apps turned off.

[xxFlukexx]

P4 2.2 Ghz (ouch I know)
1 Gig RAM
GeForce 6800
WinXP

Runs great, all options set on high and at 1024x768 res. Haven't tried on the biggest maps, but on a large map late game a turn can take a good 10-25 seconds to process. Standard runs fast though. 1.52 made the wonder movies all jerky and some other minor graphical glitches.

[Yowzer]

Willem

My OS is WinXP Pro SP2. Played a game once on large map into the industrial era. It seemed generally ok. But I didn't go further along the game... it could have gotten worse if i played on. And of course, i lowered the graphical settings mostly...

To sidetrack, have a fren playing the game on a P4 dual core with 2gb mem & a 256Mb Video card at full settings and he complains it lags like a snail during the later stages... But tats still v1.0

Now I wonder if I have been too optimistic! haven't had much time to play at the moment... but will find out soon.