Announcement

**LordShiva** · May 12, 2006, 16:48

It's strange that this would start happening without anything having changed.

You can go into task manager to stop processes. Stop things like qttask, realsched, acrord32, ituneshelper, ipodservice, anything else that you can attribute to some program that you know you won't need while playing Civ. Leave whatever you don't recognise (especially winlogon, lsass, svchost, smss, csrss).

Also check your page file - set it manually to 2.5x your physical RAM.

**LakeTahoeGuy** · May 12, 2006, 17:01

Thank You for the reply, but a few questions.....

Is my physical RAM the same as my listed RAM of 1.0 GB or is it slightly off what's stated like processor speed is?

Currently my page file is at 1536 MB so your suggesting i change it to 2500 MB, right? and if so, should i defrag as suggested in an earlier post?

**LordShiva** · May 12, 2006, 17:07

Maybe set it to 2000mb (1gb is probably high enough that you don't need to go all the way up to 2.5x).

Defragging is always a good idea, but I'm not sure it'll help too much in this case.

**axisworks** · May 12, 2006, 17:15

Do you have the new version installed? 1.61 makes the game much more efficient memory-wise.

**zeace** · May 12, 2006, 20:06

I had a similar problem when I got the game:

There's a line about 1/4 of the way from the left edge of the world map where when a unit crosses the line, it does not appear to clear the black fog. But, if I center the map somewhere to the left of the line everything looks fine, and the unit has cleared the fog.

I don't know what caused it, but it was very annoying. On the axis-turned map, the line was horizontal and if the map was centered below the line, you couldn't see anything above it. The game was unplayable. Also the fantasy map was unplayable.

I ended up replacing my hard drive for unrelated reasons and reinstalled a lot of stuff including Civ4 and I changed my virtual memory settings. The problem seems to have gone away.

Alas I don't have any real explanation or idea what fixed it, but I wish you luck.

**LakeTahoeGuy** · May 12, 2006, 22:30

Thanks for the replies!

I did find a link at another Civ IV forum for a web site (i don't remember the name) that analized your PC for compatability for specific games and when i did mine specificly for Civ IV it said the problem was due to my Video Card. Of course my Video Card is a basic dell model (i believe it's actually one level up from the most basic they offer) rather than a nice one.

So I guess I should be thinking of upgrading my VC, but what do I need to consider when buying one as far as compatability with both my Dell PC as well as Civ IV?

**LakeTahoeGuy** · May 12, 2006, 22:37

I just tried the "Yahoo: Answers" at Yahoo and am a little disappointed at 2 of the replies I got to the question "How can i find computer video cards that are compatable with my Dell PC?".

The 2 answers were.......

"You poor sole you. This is why you never ever buy a budget PC. It doesn't have an AGP or PCI-E slot so you can't add a very modern graphics card. You can add a PCI graphics card though the absolute best you are going to do in that area is a Geforce FX5500 all in all a horrible card for gaming. If you're expecting to be able to play games like FEAR and Crysis, I'm afraid you're out of luck."

AND

"Probably PCI. Dell inrtegrates the video into the motherboard so you will have to disable it thru the BIOS Setup before installing your video card. Verify this by opening the computer and see if theres only WHITE connectors. This means ONLY PCI."

in regards to the second question, I'm not at home to look at the mother board right now so I don't know if that answer would apply to me

**Willem** · May 12, 2006, 22:45

Originally posted by LakeTahoeGuy
So I guess I should be thinking of upgrading my VC, but what do I need to consider when buying one as far as compatability with both my Dell PC as well as Civ IV?

As long as your Dell has an AGP or PCI-Express slot for a new video card, you don't have to worry about compatibilty on that end. And don't think about Civ 4 when thinking about a new vid card, go beyond that. The game has pretty low specs compared to many of the new ones coming out on the market. Think of at least a Nvidia 6600/6800 or a Radeon X800. Those are both more than you need for Civ 4, but just enough for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

**Snotty** · May 13, 2006, 17:36

My dell laptop has all sorts of fruity graphical glitchs like the ones described, and occasionaly drops me out of the game when a leader tries to contact me, giving me an out of video memory error.

I blame dell video cards, but mostly I just blame dell

**Zoid** · May 14, 2006, 03:33

Originally posted by Snotty
My dell laptop has all sorts of fruity graphical glitchs like the ones described, and occasionaly drops me out of the game when a leader tries to contact me, giving me an out of video memory error.

I blame dell video cards, but mostly I just blame dell

True. Dell is teh suxxors!!

LakeTahoeGuy, you might try to re-install the whole system and Civ IV. Start with a clean slate so to speak. This is a very cumbersome, but often successful, way to solve the problem

**Blaupanzer** · May 15, 2006, 16:28

Actually it may just be the current game has been corrupted. Has this happened on several starts?

**Addled Platypus** · May 15, 2006, 16:57

I try not to do laptops, generally underpowered in goodies and power supply

Dell XPS 600 desktop, not one issue

runs like a champ

**Nugog** · May 15, 2006, 17:30

I'm using a Dell desktop 5100 series, with 1G RAM, and no reall upgrades, and CIV runs fine!

**playshogi** · May 17, 2006, 14:49

Don't forget to check if your power supply can handle the video card you think about buying, otherwise you will have problems.

Announcement

Anyone else had this problem with memory??

Anyone else had this problem with memory??

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment