Advice needed: Buying a CivIV Computer

[jbp26]

Originally posted by wodan11
Anyway, I've given my two cents. Given that I literally burned out a GeForce 7000 series (don't remember which) due to my CIV playing and all the rendering. When I had to go get a new one, I did a lot of research, and I ended up with the 9600. I did probably buy a little bit more of a card than was strictly necessary, but to me it was worth it to make sure I didn't have problems again.

i have to agree here. upgrading my memory card made the biggest difference in game performance. and the game really leaks memory like whoa, so beware.

dont buy vista.

[Will9]

Originally posted by Colm

As for quad; all games made in 2007 and earlier can't use the quad advantages. Only the very latest games can. I would go for a 8200 or better. Don't get yourself a cheap 4400 or worse. Here in Holland, the shops are advertising these slow systems a lot. Not sure how it is elsewhere.

BTS can use quad advantages.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by wodan11
... 4Mb RAM ...

Glad to see, i am not the only one who is just overrun by technological advance... If someone had told my like 15 years ago: ´In 15 years we gonna carry 8 gigs on a little chip in our pockets around with us - and it would only cost us like 20 bucks...´, i probably would have called that person nuts...

[TriMiro]

OK apart from all the MB vs GB (I was doing the same thing ), I am trying to get the memory leak straight.

When I play civ for some time, the graphics start to get very slow. Why in the world does it take 2 seconds to zoom out of a city when ten minutes ago it was happening instantaneously. Why is the graphics on a strategy from 2005 is slower than a FPS from 2007. There is a memory leak, but I believe it is isolated to video ram only. I have not seen my game go on swap (ever) on my 2GB XP machine. So it seems to me no system RAM is leaking, only video memory. Can anyone confirm/deny this.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Will


BTS can use quad advantages.

No it can't. Civ 4 and all it's expansions are only optimized to run on a single core. The only advantage to having more than one is that Windows and other processes can use the another. And these don't require enough power to justify having anything more than a Dual-Core. Quad-Core is only an advantage right now for video and 3D rendering. Plus there's very few programs that are even written with that technology in mind. Certainly not games. Most game developers haven't even caught up to dual-core yet.

[Baldyr]

Thanks a bunch for the feedback folks! I've spoken to my dealer now and gotten a offer for a Computer with the following specifications:

• INTEL Core2Duo E8200 6MB
• 4GB PC-6400, DDR2 (DDR-800)
• Albatron GF9600GT 512 MB

He talked me into buying 2x2GB of RAM since it would work more efficiently than 1+2GB. He didn't however recommend me upgrading XP to 64 bit because it would just make more sense to upgrade to Vista. Would it memory management improve a lot if I were to upgrade to XP Pro – and would it make any real difference in regard to ?

As long you good people don't have any objections (with the Albatron Graphic Card in particular?) I'm gonna put in the order shortly. Right now it seems like I will be playing a lot of the RFC Scenario initially, and I do expect the game to play smoothly. If not, count on me telling you all about it!

There has been a lot of talk about the memory leak issue, and hence it seems like I will be rebooting my PC a couple of times each time I play the game (or whenever I notice it getting a bit sluggish). Is there any good way to reset memory without actually exiting Windows?

Is there an easy way to stop all non-essential processes working in the background while playing? (I don't need to run any other applications at the same time, or even to be connected to the Net or LAN.) Anti-Virus and my Internet Connection needs to be disabled manually, but is there any way to restart Windows without these features automatically reset? (I'm thinking about saving my game and restarting the PC in order to restart the game and carry on playing right away.)

Any resources available on the Web about optimizing XP performance in general and performance in particular would also be appreciated. I intend to do some serious gaming this summer, you see...

Thanks again for all the fish. I mean, all the help.

[wodan11]

To fix the memory, I believe if you "log out" that will suffice. I don't know if that's what you mean by "leaving windows". Technically logging out and back in is not leaving Windows.

That graphics card should be fine.

The way you stop a "non essential process" is quit it or don't run it in the first place. I would not force quit them, that can lead to unstable memory which is what you're trying to avoid.

One thing you CAN do is have a user account just for game playing. On that user account you will only run "essential processes" in your startup.

http://www.blackviper.com/

http://www.processlibrary.com/

Be careful with some of the suggestions from Black Viper.

good luck

[Solver]

Albatron is just a different distributor, shouldn't give you problems. XP won't make good use of the entire 4GB or RAM, but Vista is highly personal. It will use more memory if you go down the Vista route and, well, you have to choose for yourself if you like it, I personally have found Vista to be quite annoying.

Civ4 doesn't have significant memory leaks anymore. It probably does leak some memory, but frankly, if it ever starts being a problem on your machine, then something else is screwed up. No way it will leak that much memory, regular or video. Disabling background processes is largely a waste of time, too. Sure, you'll get some extra free memory, but that only matters if you're running low. From what I recall about RFC, it won't go above 1GB memory usage often. 4 is plenty enough at any rate.

I like this page: http://www.tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx A few good tips there for boosting XP performance, worth checking out even on a powerful machine, not necessarily because it would give a big performance advantage, but because you may disable some extra stuff you never need.

[Baldyr]

Wodan: Thanks man!

Solver: Thanks you too!

I don't even consider Vista as an alternative at this juncture since XP seems to be a better choice for . The vendor dude did claim however that XP Pro was a 64 bit Operating System and therefore could use all the 4GB of Memory. It would cost me a buck to get that instead of XP Home Edition though, so I'm wondering if it really is worth it? (He didn't think it was, but I kinda feel like I wanna get something out of doubling the memory on this PC.)

The real question is: Would the additional Memory on a 64 bit system make any difference regarding ?

[snoopy369]

XP Pro is better than XP Home, but Civ won't notice. I'd choose Pro (err, did choose Pro?), but most people won't notice.

Now, XP Pro 64 is a bit different... I wouldn't get that, as there were driver problems, and I doubt they're all resolved. Solver might know that better, though (Solver, don't you have x64 XP?)

[TriMiro]

There are XP Home, XP Pro 32 bit, XP Pro 64 bit. I have only used XP Pro 32 bit, so I cannot say if it will make any difference for Civ. 64 bit would give you about 500MB more, that would hardly make any significant difference compared to the 4GB. I have heard that XP 64 bit had some driver and compatibility issues, or maybe they have fixed that.

An application is said to "leak" memory if it requests memory form windows, uses it, but when it finishes using that memory, does not return it back. Windows is thus lead to believe that the app is still using that memory and windows has less memory to give to other app. Thus eventually windows would hit the swap and become very slow. However, windows keeps track of who is using what memory, so if the application is to terminate, all memory should be returned properly. On theory if an application leaks memory, it is enough to exit the app and then start it again to temporarily fix the problem. (for a permanent fix, one should fix the app).

As to the memory leak issue, I don't know if it truly is the video memory (does any one know of a way to keep track of video RAM). I know that if I play for about 10 - 20 minutes, the game starts to get very slow, taking it sometimes up to a second to cycle to the next unit and maybe 2 seconds to zoom into a city screen. Everything goes back to normal if I save and then reload the game (for another 10 - 20 min). GF7300 256MB RAM, I can play shooters better than civ, it is frustrating.

[Blaupanzer]

TriMiro, are you playing BTS? v3.17? Your issue sounds like the Vanilla version, which leaked memory badly, although with 2 GB of RAM on my laptop I could go more than twenty minutes at a time, even then. I can play BTS v3.17 for up to 4 hours at one sitting with only a slight degradation in performance. Some of that would be due to the increasing size of the file being addressed, e.g., more and more complex cities, more terrain improvements, more units, map exposure, etc. I track RAM utilization for another application and don't turn off the tracking when playing this game, and I see no signs of leakage if I check after a CIV session, just a growing file being tracked. I have no idea how one would track Video RAM, so I don't know about that.

[TriMiro]

I have updated everything I could think of. I only play BtS the latest patch (3.17) and RFC (latest patch). I watched the memory used by the game, it started lagging when there was over 5000MB of free ram left, so it is not a RAM leaking problem. I even tried the game under both Windows and Linux, with the latest drivers for both. Still I get the problem, in about 20 minutes, the graphics would start to slow down (not the time between turns, but the unit cycling and city zoom). I even tried minimizing all graphics options (absolute minimum on everything) and it still does not help.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Baldyr
...The vendor dude did claim however that XP Pro was a 64 bit Operating System and therefore could use all the 4GB of Memory...

If Your vendor said it just like that, it makes me mad. I run XP Pro and it is not a 64bit-OP - there is, however a 64bit version of XP out there. I once tried it, and believe me, it sucks. That was 2 years (or so) ago, tho, and it might be, that driver problems have been resolved (which i doubt since it´s not very common). And at least back then, most apps would run on 32-bit anyways, which meant, that the 64-bit OP had to emulate 32-bit, which just puts more strain on the CPU. So, forget about XP64, i´d say (but i am no expert really).

Actually, from what has been said here, and since you wanna cut down cost as much as possible, i´d recommend just to get 1x2 GB, make good notes of the details of the chips (type, clocking and manufacturer) and if you should experience later on that 2GB is not enough for You, get a second one of the exact same kind and upgrade (it´s easy to do).

[Colm]

I agree. 4 Gb is over the top for Civ4. I have 1 Gb, play only on huge maps and the game runs very smooth.
With 2 (or 3) Gb, you don't need to go the 64 bit route which is too unstable.