Terrible CPU load during play

[Titus Cromwell]

Hi all!

Everytime i play Civ3 im getting an awful cpuload..what disturbs me the most is the cpu fan that increases it's rpm. I think the fans increased rpm is because of the higher cpu load.

When i played the game on the same computer with WinME i didn't get any disturbing cpu fan noise!!

Is it WinXP that causes this ?

Relevant spec:

P3-866mhz (In an Fujistu/Siemens made system)
384mb Sd-ram
Hercules Prophet 3D 4000xt PCI 32mb Sd-ram (No AGP slots)

Please advise!!

Regards

[SpencerH]

Titus, I dont know this for sure, but I'll bet that WINXP has a lot of stuff going on in the background and this is eating-up some of your CPU cycles and increasing the 'load'. Every iteration of windows adds more 'background stuff' and has greater hardware requirements. As long as your cpu temp stays ok it shouldnt be a problem. Alternatively you could turn XP down to a bare minimum and turn off the programs in your system tray which should ease the strain.

[Lucilla]

This is not a XP problem, under W2K I have CPU usage of 90-100%, too. Resources are made free, as soon as another program needs CPU, but the task manager shows that Civ3 uses whatever is available.

[Solver]

Exactly... Civ 3 can also use up to 630 MB RAM... we've seen screenshots of it taking like 270 MB RAM in Task Manager. Should another program need the resources, those will be given, but Civ 3 grabs all that's available, be it a 333MHz/64 MB RAM or a 1.5 GHz/512 MB RAM machine.

[foo12]

And if I ssh into my G4 while Civ3 is running in the foreground, it's sucking about 150MBs of RAM and using about 50% of the processor.

We you Brad Oliver!

[Titus Cromwell]

Ok, if Win2k has the same problems as XP then there is no fix for this right ??? More ram maybe!

Regards

[Venger]

Two notes:

1) Yes, Civ3 like Civ2 is a CPU WHORE. No reason to consume 100% in idle...just ridiculous.

2) The reason your fan in kicking on higher is because your power supply is undersized (or could be better, undersized may be a little strong). Get a better power supply that can handle the higher voltage of CPU draws (power regulators on the motherboard may also come into play, but I've found the power supply upgrade does the trick).

Venger

[Titus Cromwell]

Too bad this little Fujitsu/Siemens case is soo small and i doubt that there is any better PS for this one.. well, i just have to use this computer until friday then i'm back to my P4 1.8a with an 430w PS !

[SpencerH]

While we're on the subject of power supplies

Should I install a 400W PS in my next machine or what?Judging from these comments it might be worth it.

[Titus Cromwell]

I recommend a stonger PS the most!!! You should hear the noise when the cpuload is high

[Inverse Icarus]

Civ3 is coded to piss people who pay attention off

seriously, Soren's AI needs all the memory / cpu it can have. oh how advanced!