Having to give up Civ because of this...

[MoonWolf]

It could be anything. Some issues that often can cause this kind of behaviour are memory, harddrive and/ or powersupply. Download memtest to test your RAM. Check the website for you harddrive's manufacturer for a diagnostic tool. If you can't find any, drive Drive Fitness Tool from Hitachi (former IBM tool), www.hgst.com.

Also try to reinstall the computer. Some extra work, but as you've bought the PC for CIV, I think you'll do it PS I have also bought computer parts only for Civ Undertand your frustration mate....

[jkp1187]

Originally posted by jules213
Hi all.

Ok, i'm having this problem, although with me it doesn't matter if i'm playing or setting up a game or letting it sit idle on the menu screen, after 5 minutes or so it freezes. first the graphics then shortly after the sound goes a bit late night camden high street.

i've tried all the suggestions here: DirectX 9.0c, tried updating my drivers for graphics and sound, cleaned out the inside of my comp, lowered graphics settings to low whever i can, uninstalled and reinstalled Civ IV and BTS...

...nada.

I'm using a GEForce 6600 (with 256mb) . AMD Althlon 64 processor 3200. 2 GB of ram. I don't buy or play any other games (and the sodding irony here is that i had to build this computer to play Civ IV in the first place because my tired old Dell couldn't hack it and wouldn't take a graphics card that could lol).

Can anyone please let me know what I should do? And is that buying a new graphics card? And if so, what is the cheapest card I can buy that will work well.

So far playing the Civ IV series has cost me £35 for the original £20 for Warlords £20 for BTS and £450 for a new computer. £525 to play one game lmao.

Many thanks.

Oh, and if anyone can help quickly that would be appreciated. The constant 5 minute teasers i get have whet my appetite

This is interesting. I am actually using an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8Ghz processor with 2.5GB RAM and a GeForce 6200/128MB video card. I do occasionally experience a freeze of the sort described (requires a hard re-boot to get out of it, almost always accompanied by a sort of jarring chord from the speakers,) it doesn't seem to be happening with the frequency that you guys are describing.

I tossed around the idea of upgrading the video card as well -- can someone suggest a good one to go up to?

[MoonWolf]

Originally posted by jkp1187
This is interesting. I am actually using an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8Ghz processor with 2.5GB RAM and a GeForce 6200/128MB video card. I do occasionally experience a freeze of the sort described (requires a hard re-boot to get out of it, almost always accompanied by a sort of jarring chord from the speakers,) it doesn't seem to be happening with the frequency that you guys are describing.

I tossed around the idea of upgrading the video card as well -- can someone suggest a good one to go up to?

Assuming you have AGP (looks so from the rest of your HW), I quote my post #25 in this thread :

Originally posted by MoonWolf
Depending on the rest of you system, you should look for X800 from ATI or 6600GT/ 6800 from Nvidia. They shouldn't cost much now and will give you a great perfomance increase comparing to what you have now. I think X1600 from ATI came in AGP version also and from the Geforce 7-series, you have 7800GS, but they will cost some more I think. If Civ is your main game, go for a 6600GT from Nvidia and save money for a new computer later on (or go for the 7800GS if you want to keep you PC "alive" for still some time)

Hmm, I've been answering quite a few hardware related questions, maybe I should make a FAQ or something

[admobadmo]

I've been getting this problem, too, and I've seen people post on other forums with this problem.

For comparison, I've got an AGP ATI x1950pro video card, for which I just got the latest Catalyst drivers installed earlier today. I upgraded to 2.5 gig of RAM this last weekend. I cleaned the dust out when I put in the new RAM.

The sequence of events as I have noticed them is that the game will stop responding, i.e. the map won't scroll and clicking on things does nothing. Then it goes black, although the music will keep playing for a little while. Then the monitor goes to power-save mode like the video card just plain stopped sending a signal, or got turned off. I still seem to be able to hit ctrl-alt-del to shut down the computer, but that's it. Nothing brings back the video except a complete reboot.

It seems to run Company of Heroes and Oblivion, for example, just fine, each of which I would think are much more graphically demanding than CIV IV with the BtS expansion.

[jules213]

Originally posted by MoonWolf


Assuming you have AGP (looks so from the rest of your HW), I quote my post #25 in this thread :



Hmm, I've been answering quite a few hardware related questions, maybe I should make a FAQ or something

i have the GE6600 already... is the GT version a better version?

Also, i have a 450W power supply, is this a problem (just recently replaced my last 450w supply so loathed to do so again just in case, but if it is a dead cert i'll do it.

This issue does seem quite widespread, and it would be nice if someone could nail the issue

[admobadmo]

A-ha!

I downloaded and installed Solvers "unofficial patch" last night and tried it out for about an hour, and had no problems. He references a possible infinite loop that he fixes, which I suspect may indeed have been the problem (not from any of my own smarts, you understand, but just because his fix seems to work).

So if any of you still with this problem haven't tried this yet, I suggest you give it a go.

And also, Thank You to Solver!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by fegguk

If everything goes right I may get a new graphics card during this week, maybe already tomorrow. So that I can see if the problems disappear with it (I assume a Radeon X1600 Pro or X1650 Pro with 256 MB should be sufficient to work with the game

I have been considering an upgrade for a while so would be interested to see what happens with your system. Not sure if my funds will stretch to a new but more ram and a new grafix acard maybe PC

Had to order it from eBay as it seems like AGP graphic cards are a dying out species in normal shops. Had ordered a Radeon X1650 with 512 MB DDR2 RAM.

Today it arrived and what I can say, after playxing it for maybe an hour is, that Civ IV BtS now works fluid and without crashes on my PC (with medium graphic levels and multiple unit graphics)

[jules213]

So, i bought a GEForce 7600 PCI-E and now all is well. Guess it was my card

[fegguk]

For the sake of completeness.

I installed a Radoen X1650 PRO and the game runs OK now. Problem solved by throwing money at it.

[snoopy369]

Better video cards

[Proteus_MST]

Yep, I also handn´t a single crash with Civ BtS since I installed my new X1650 Pro a few weeks ago.

[mnoracle]

I'm having a weird issue with BTS, after some gaming time when trying to play bik files (like wonders or diplomacy) it crashes in gamebryo module because "directx can't alocate memory".

Before BTS everything was fine.
GeForce 6800 - 128M

[Civilized 67]

I have a GeForce 6800, which is only marginally better than a 6600 GT and I can run everything at the highest settings and resolutions with no problem. In fact, I can run games that are more "graphics intensive" than Civ IV, like Battlefield 2, on all the highest settings as well without any problem.

HOWEVER, last night after installing the new patch (and Solver's patch on top of it) my computer froze up twice while the graphics got all "glitchy". I strongly suspect the problem has something to do with the latest patch rather than with your graphics card...

[Dubhghlas]

Funny, I run the game with the update on a Dell that uses the integrated Intel graphics chip, with an un-updated driver because you can't use the Intel drivers for the Dell version and Dell won't update the driver ( ), and it runs just fine. Movies and everything are working as they should.