need alittle help

[brandonjm8]

I have to check but I think my system is almost identical to yours. Maybe the only notable difference is I probably have a 1G on the graphic card. The problem I have is much worse though since the game crashes very often after 1200 AD (every 15 minutes or so).
A few days ago, I had that system in the shop to fix the BIOS so I played on a spare machine at home (with built-in graphics and only 2G of memory). It actually worked much better and I rarely had any crashes !! That backup system has Vista 32-bit Basic instead of Vista 64 so I suspect my problem has something to do with Vista 64.
Vista, by itself, can cause some serious lag sometimes and it has nothing to do with Civ. That's why a lot of people dislike it. If that's all the problem you have then I have worse problem with Vista just net surfing .

that 512mb dedicated memory i mentioned is for online gaming only and thats for connection speed whilst playing and i have broadband very fast connection, otherwise i have 4 gigs for RAM. my internet is very fast and the cpu processes very fast too, overall my computer is very fast. if it was vista it would do it more often and not just rarely, the game never has crashed for me only when my "huge" maps get maxed out only then will it "sometimes" happen, last two days have been smooth sailing, i was just curious if maybe with my high settings if i lowered one of them if it would stop lagging when it does and i could use it as an remedy when it does happen. and yes vista sucks, not sure i want to goto win7 yet, will wait to see if it actually is better. if the game crashes on you when you start to get big maybe its something with you comp specs, do you have 4 gigs of RAM as i? do you have a dual-core as i? what graphics card do you have, is it a nvidia? if it is, what model? another thing is open up your task manager and see what resources you have available prior to playing civ4, before i start playing i have at least 2.75 gigs of RAM open, civ4 has never crashed on me just lagged sometimes and when i save then exit then come back its back to fast, you may have a different problem.

[wodan11]

Something else, too. CIV has a known memory leak. Don't just save and reload every couple of hours of playing, but quit and restart to be safe. Not only will it clean up your fragged memory, it'll ensure you haven't got any packets of unreleased, unusable memory floating around.

[rah]

Actually that's what I meant too. Just didn't say it right.

[brandonjm8]

yep, thats what i do, save then exit the game to desktop then load back, works every time.

[Ming]

With my "old" machine, I have to take the extra step of not only exiting the game, but also rebooting my computer. While it's a pain in the ***, the game plays much quicker after that... until later, when I have to do it all over again

[rah]

But on that machine there was the additional issue of heat.
Heck you could warm a cup coffee if you placed it next to the vent.

[Ming]

Yeah... but even on my newer but still old desk top, after playing SP games in the later age with lots of units, it's best if I shut it down and reboot every few hours. It performs much better that way.

The old lap top, even with it running hot... I'm just thrilled we can use it for MP