Your machine? How does Civ4 run?

[Willem]

Originally posted by 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...

Yes, I have all my graphics settings turned down as well, but I still have some trouble with Large maps. I think I found a compromise though. I've reduced the size of the Large map slightly, removing 1 grid unit both vertically and horizontally and I removed one civ. My system should be able to handle that, though I haven't put it to the test yet. Ironically, by doing this I've actually increased the tiles/civ ratio slightly. So I guess you could say I'm playing a Medium map now.

[Tokyo Sexwale]

P4 2.8, 1GB dual-ch RAM, NVidia5700 256MB video card

Huge maps are a problem for me so I don't play 'em. Even large maps take maybe 15 secs per turn past year 1800. Turned detail down a bit and that improved performance. I have no probs with movies.

Overheats my unit like a motherfxxxer but I do live in the tropics. Have taken the side panels off my case and put a large "room" fan right on it. Prolly not a good idea in the long run, but I've had to replace my power supply 5 times in the last 6 months. (Not that that's Civ4's fault exclusively.)

Just saw the recommended specs for Oblivion and am thinking an extra stick or two of RAM will be my next purchase.

[bobshiznit]

Athlon 64 4000+
2 Gigs Ram
2 e-Geforce 7800 GTX's in SLI
Never had a problem

[bahoo]

The game definately has a problem.

I have 1.5gig, 2.4mhz, and a good video card and I still bog down late game even on standard maps.

It's the times that I slow down that makes me wonder. End of turn doesn't take long at all, but 3 second lag when you change production or move specialists in city view mode? A friggin' Tandy 1000 should be able to calculate how many hammers I'm gonna make towards my tank, they've been using pretty much the exact same build equation since Civ1!!!!! There is obviously a severe problem or leak with the game, and they need to fix it.

P.S. (to the poor sap with RDRAM, I feel you're pain, just thinking about how much it cost me to get to 1.5gig still makes me shudder)

[Brizey]

Athalon 64 3700+ (Sandy) OC to 2.4 GHz
1 GB RAM
eVGA 256 MB 6800 video
on-board (ASUS A8N-SLI MB) sound

(I have two 120 mm case fans)

Runs flawlessly with a graphic settings maxed out. CPU temp is usualy about 45 C while playing.

[Orky]

Pentium III 1000MHz
512 MB PC-133 SD-RAM (the RAM before DDR-RAM)
GeForce FX5200 with 128 MB DDR-RAM
7200 RPM harddrive
Windows 98SE
Civ IV 1.52

I use Windows purely for games nowadays, so I'm not running anything else on this PC -- the lower left corner where you guys have twenty icons has one or two icons for me (Volume Control, nVidia).

The movies are choppy, which is a shame, because my system should have no trouble playing a little windowed video -- it's a software or encoding issue.

I'm not going to even try playing anything bigger than a Standard Terra map on my machine, it gets slower the farther the game progresses, and eventually, it'll take several seconds after clicking for the game to actually activate the unit I clicked on.

The Alt-Tab restoration and general loading times, well, let's just say I've got plenty of time to read the ring-bound manual! ;-)

[Orky]

Also, if you have RDRAM, and you want more RAM, you should definitely consider purchasing a cheap $50 ASRock motherboard -- make sure it fits your CPU* and has an AGP slot and not an PCI-e slot** -- and cheap DDR-RAM. You might just be cheaper off that way.

* if you want to upgrade your CPU, don't worry about this part
** If you want to ugprade your graphics card, consider a motherboard with a PCI-e slot instead of AGP, AGP is becoming obsolete

[Orky]

Anyway, shouldn't this thread be moved to General or a new Hardware Issues forum? It has nothing to do with strategy...

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by 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.

I thought I ordered SDRAM and may have it. I was reading specs the other day off the old packing sheet that came with the computer, which is yeah, three years old, but processors and their speed themselves haven't changed much in the interim and I thought I was still pretty current. Paid a lot in 2003 to get what was then "state of the art." I bought another machine from Dell in '99 and when I went to sell it, noticed the specs were slightly lower than what I thought I bought on the website, maybe they do that. On the other hand, maybe I have SDRAM. I might have to have a tech look at it, but honest, the thing works great for everything, even Internet multi-media on broadband, but this one, da-n game.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Fluke - you seem to have the same issues that I have late game with huge maps. Our setups are similar and I've never really played anything other than huge maps. I'd give a huge map a try if you wanted to, I don't think your delay problems will get noticably different from what you are already encountering.

Generaldoktor - What model of Dell do you have? You may have been able to upgrade certain components, but they wouldn't alter the motherboard. Which means you can't switch between SDRAM and RDRAM, you'll have whichever one was paired with the motherboard. My gut feeling is you upgraded to 512 SDRAM instead of just 256 SDRAM. Which means adding more ram is easy and inexpensive (but I'd still target that video card first). However, if that really isn't the case and you do actually have 512 megs of RDRAM, you aren't in a bad situation. RDRAM is more expensive for a reason, and 512 RDRAM should offer superior performance than 512 SDRAM (which I'm running without your notable problems). Which means that your memory is actually better than you thought and you should then REALLY just focus on that graphics card upgrade.

Hell.. if you're worried about it, just open up the computer and take a look at it. See how it comes apart.

Or take a look at these:

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/install-video-card-agp.htm

http://www.mysuperpc.com/vcu/steps.shtml

It's just as easy as installing another dimm of ram. You just pop it in, and screw it down. I think you'll be very happy with your new performance.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat

Generaldoktor - What model of Dell do you have? You may have been able to upgrade certain components, but they wouldn't alter the motherboard. Which means you can't switch between SDRAM and RDRAM, you'll have whichever one was paired with the motherboard. My gut feeling is you upgraded to 512 SDRAM instead of just 256 SDRAM. Which means adding more ram is easy and inexpensive (but I'd still target that video card first). However, if that really isn't the case and you do actually have 512 megs of RDRAM, you aren't in a bad situation. RDRAM is more expensive for a reason, and 512 RDRAM should offer superior performance than 512 SDRAM (which I'm running without your notable problems). Which means that your memory is actually better than you thought and you should then REALLY just focus on that graphics card upgrade.

Hell.. if you're worried about it, just open up the computer and take a look at it. See how it comes apart.

Or take a look at these:

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/install-video-card-agp.htm

http://www.mysuperpc.com/vcu/steps.shtml

It's just as easy as installing another dimm of ram. You just pop it in, and screw it down. I think you'll be very happy with your new performance.

Dell Dimension 8250; obviously overadvertised as being top of the line and of course a "built" system.

Okay, I'll look at it, but I'm not really one of these people who enjoy getting into these things I've got a lot going on now and when I get some free time, I really just want to play Civ I saved a hard copy of this last message and I'll look at the links when I do it. I get the same slowdown at late game that you and several have been saying they get. Early game is okay, as is all other functions I use the existing setup for, but I like, when somebody markets me a product like Civ 4, to get the maximum potential out of it, including animations, big maps, marathon speed, FINISH THE GAME IN 2050, everything. But I very much appreciate all the help.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Ok.. Well, the 8250 does use RDRAM. If you got the upgrade to 512, you shouldn't have memory problems and the 3.06 PIV should also be fine.

The 9700 Pro was top of the line when your system was made, but fortunately/unfortunately the 9700 Pro was king of the hill for about 3 years.. and it's reign ended right about the time you made the purchase. And the graphics card industry made huge gains over the past three years.. speed and quality used to raise by 10% or so per year, put the last two years saw it double and then double again. I had the same problem with a FX5900. About 6 months after I got it, the next generation of graphics cards had double the performance. Not just a slight performance bump that was the norm.

However, I agree.. there's no reason you shouldn't be able to completely play Civ IV in all its glory with your system. It's definately a very bloated game. Its poorly written and that shows up in the performance problems.

I hope those links are helpful. I was nervous about my first vid card upgrade all those many years ago, and it was so amazingly simple I was surprised.

Any more questions, just ask!

[El Conquistador]

IMO the graphics are very disappointing to say the least, and the fact that it runs so sh*tty is almost unforgivalbe.

ALMOST because the gameplay rules. cIVevah!

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat
Ok.. Well, the 8250 does use RDRAM. If you got the upgrade to 512, you shouldn't have memory problems and the 3.06 PIV should also be fine.

The 9700 Pro was top of the line when your system was made, but fortunately/unfortunately the 9700 Pro was king of the hill for about 3 years.. and it's reign ended right about the time you made the purchase. And the graphics card industry made huge gains over the past three years.. speed and quality used to raise by 10% or so per year, put the last two years saw it double and then double again. I had the same problem with a FX5900. About 6 months after I got it, the next generation of graphics cards had double the performance. Not just a slight performance bump that was the norm.

However, I agree.. there's no reason you shouldn't be able to completely play Civ IV in all its glory with your system. It's definately a very bloated game. Its poorly written and that shows up in the performance problems.

I hope those links are helpful. I was nervous about my first vid card upgrade all those many years ago, and it was so amazingly simple I was surprised.

Any more questions, just ask!

Yeah, I may ask when I start tinkering , which won't be tomorrow. I agree with other commentators that the thing should have been made better, from a technical standpoint, to start. But somebody here said future patches/expansions are not likely to make it better for people stuck with my system, so I'll see what I can do with the video card.

The RDRAM/SDRAM thing might have been a mistake on their website, if you say all 8250's must have RDRAM. They offer you basic units, then they offer you ways to upgrade in certain areas. The website might have implied that I could upgrade from 256 RDRAM to 512 SDRAM, which wasn't actually possible, (what I got was 512 RDRAM.) Anyway, that was 2003 and I don't remember. It's too late to sue them for misrepresentation now anyway. Up until recently, I didn't know the difference between various types of RAM anyway.

I may have seen the 9700 when I purchased the 8250, but they were marketing that as a "pro" thing for people who wanted to make their own movies, produce their own music, etc. I didn't think I needed it and for three years I didn't.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Ahh.. Well if you only have a 9700 and not a 9700 Pro, that's just another notch against your GPU as most likely the biggest cause of your problems.