WARNING: Confirmed. Detonator drivers break Civ3

[peckham]

My system:

Athlon XP 1800+
512MB RAM
Geforce3
Windows XP Pro
Detonator drivers (tested from 21.83 to 22.50)

Detonator 21.83 and up BREAKS Civ3, causing--among other things--the game to perform like sludge. Let me explain.

Those of you with Nvidia cards assuming the game is SUPPOSED to run like a dog need to be aware that the slow scrolling and jerky mouse positioning are due to something horribly incompatible with the latest Detonator drivers.

I forcibly downgraded my Windows XP machine to the defacto Microsoft Geforce3 drivers that ship with Windows XP and the problem disappeared (and the game runs like lightning). Just to verify, I reinstalled the 21.83 drivers and bingo, the problem returned.

If you're running Windows XP, you're fine, as you can access the default Microsoft OOTB drivers until Nvidia and Firaxis get things together on this one. Else, you're out of luck, unless you have older Detonator drivers that aren't doing whatever v21.83 and up are.

[Steve Clark]

12.41 runs fine on ME. There is nothing wrong with going with older Detonator drivers. I was running with 6.12 until a month ago.

[saracen31]

No problem with 21.83 here.

Athlon T-Bird 1.4
512 MB DDR RAM
GeForce 3
Windows XP home

[Lee Johnson]

If I remember the version stamp correctly from a few days ago, the default XP Nvidia drivers are 12.40 or 12.41. I'm running 21.83, and Civ III scrolling is slower than snail snot on my system.

I guess I'll throttle the drivers back tonight, after the little ones have finished raiding my home for candy.

[Lee Johnson]

Forgot to mention my system specs...

Athlon T-bird 900, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2 GTS, WinXP Professional.

[Travathian]

Athlon TBird 1.4
512 DDR
Epox 8KHA
TNT2 32mb Ultra
KDS 17" monitor
Win 98SE
Running 1024x768 16bit, optimal refresh rate

No clue which version of detonator, but I got it bout 3 weeks ago.

Haven't installed it yet under Win2000, but will update when I do.

[elrond1999]

I downgraded my drivers from 21.83 -> 12.41. Now the scrolling is 3 times faster

But I hope they fix this in patch, along with some other speedfixes. (Turntime in larger maps)

[imgod2u]

The default driver that come with XP are the 12.41 reference drivers. Now, while these drivers are great, the 22.50's and 21.83 offers significant performance increases in almost every other application and game. So far, I've noticed that it's only the scrolling that seems to be affected. So oh well, I'll just have to live with it. Oh, BTW, does anyone know if it's possible to change the resolution of the game? My LCD only looks good at 1280x1024 and I hate having it scale down.

[Dire Wolf]

imgod2:

Simple...

1. Add the line "KeepRes=1" to your Civilization.ini file.
2. Run the game

[Dominous]

I am having the same problem with my geforce 3! I installed an earlier version and it seemed better but not perfect.

If you need earlier versions of dentonator you can use this link until firaxis fix's this problem (PLEASE).

http://www.guru3d.com/files/detonator/

[imgod2u]

I'm guessing it's most likely because Civ3 is so windows-friendly. I don't know if it's even DX. That would explain how the Detonator 4/XP drivers are slow since they were designed to accelerate WinXP GUI by hardware.