Benchmarking with CivIII

[E_T]

Ive seen a lot of posts about the excessive time time that the AI takes it's turn. I've experianced this problem too, when I can step outside a smoke a cig while I wait for my next turn. I wonder just how much less time I would have to wait If I had a better Computer/Memory/Vidcard?


Well, Ive desided to put together a Benchmark for CivIII. It's a save file that will be used to Benchmark your computer (and report the results) for all to see.

The Criteria for Running the Benchmark are:

All non-essential tasks/system tray items have to be turned off

Audio Preferences:
All Sounds--ON
Music--OFF
Sound Effects--ON

Game Preferences (all ON Except for):
Animate our Manual Moves--OFF
Animate our Automatic Moves--OFF
Animate Friend Moves--OFF
Animate Enemy Moves--OFF
Tutorial Mode--OFF
Always Start Building Previous Built Unit--OFF
Show Civilopedia Book Cursor--OFF
Capital Govenor is Default for New Cities--OFF
Color Blind Help--OFF

If you want to submit a game file for Benchmarking, Please make sure of the following:
That no Units/Improvements will be finished while running the Benchmark.
The AI does not contact you during their turn.

Please Include a discription with the submitted file.

The First Benchmark is a 256x256, Contenents, 70% Ocean, 4 Billion Years, Temparate Map. There are 16 Civ's, in the Late Middle Ages (3 Civ's haven't been 'found' yet, so I don't know if any have been eliminated).

The Information that I'd like to Get from you is:
The Processor Type/Speed/Bus Clock; Motherboard type (if OEM, just state it); Memory Size/type/settings; Vidio Card w/Memory Size, Driver Info; Sound Card Type w/Driver Info; Hard Drive Size/type with OS Virtual Swapfile Memory Settings; Current OS and anything else that might use up System Overhead (Like NIC's, Multimedia Cards, etc.). I'll fairly regularly post a compiled list of this information and the benches.

My Computer:
Dell PII 400Mhz w/OEM MB, Running at 66Mhz Bus; 256 Meg 100Mhz SRAM, Regular timings (can't tweek it ), Using the Latest Legacy Bios; Diamond Fire GL1000 Pro AGP 8 Meg Vid Card (OEM) w/ 4.10.01.2356 Driver; Turtle Beach Montego A3D 64 Voice PCI Sound Card w/ Driver; HD#1-Maxtor 12Gig EIDE on channel 1, HD#2-Western Digital 1.2Gig EIDE on Channel 2 with the OS set for 375 Meg Minimum Swapfile Size (768 for Max) on this drive; Win 98SE; ADSL NIC Card (not connected during benchmark run); 10/100 Full Duplex NIC (connected to the Local Net during Benchmark run).

The Benchmark Times that we want are: Savefile load time and AI Turn Time. If your patiant enough, you can do this three time and average the results.

My Times for this computer are:
Load -- 1 min, 29 sec
AI turn - 4 min, 34 sec


E_T

P.S. I just tried to upload the Zipped Save file and it's 519,040. Marko, could I send it to you or something, so we can start the benchmarking....

[Alexander's Horse]

I'm not having these problems - I have PIII running at about 600 with oodles of HD space and Ram, a 32 mb graphics card and some other speedy bits. Its not state of the art but its powerful enough to do civ turns with little sweat.

The main problem I have is reading the little messages that pop up during your turn.

[E_T]

My main objective was to present a benchmark save for measuring the speed (or lack thereof) of your system while playing the game. There are Quake, Unreal Tournement, Serious Sam, etc. Benchmarks out there, so my Idea was to create a CivIII Benchmark. Right now, my only problem is uploading the zip file onto the forum.

This will also, show what type of system really shines with CivIII.

E_T