The video card has a driver dated 10-22-06. I'm playing vanilla 1.61 right now but will be upgrading to Warlords anyday now.

The computer has 1 GB ram, is a 2.8GH Pentium 4, and the virtual memory is at 1 GB per the recommendations in the Technical Support section on this website.

Now I tried to find a thread on my particular card and was unsuccessful, and I also went to the FixIt list on the top of the technical support section and frankly was overwhelmed by the language. But I did manage to get all the "best" drivers.

So I think I have the most updated drivers, have the necessary Ram and Processor speed....but the game still gets choppy enough that I have to go to LOW DETAIL when I'm in Standard sized maps, and Huge is unplayable. The wonder movies are really choppy past about 1000BC.

Are there any settings adjustments or simple adjustments in a program like RivaTuner (which seems pretty damn complex to me:crazyeye: ) that may help the performance?

Thanks in advance for any help, and for the record this website is fantastic!!!:goodjob:

GF MX 4000 is one of the older cards that will play this. I don't remember if that's one of the cards that can benefit from an older driver or not, but if you have an 10/22/06 driver you probably should update it to the newest one. 10/06 isn't old enough to benefit from the 'old' driver [a few tweaks for 4xxx and 4xx series cards were present in the 2005- drivers].

But to be honest a 4000 is pretty bottom barrel. I'd get the LowRes movies when you can, that'll help the movie issue (or turn them off).

Thanks for the reply.

I figured the video card was cheap for a reason.

Your processor is also 5 years old like your video card

I am using p4 2.8GHz too and found is acceptable.

Regards,
Arto.

I'm using an nVidia GeForce4 MX 440, which I think is slightly better than than MX4000 (might be slightly worse) - anyways, I've had some of the same problems. I think my problem is more with a lack of physical memory. 10/06 sounds like about the same time there were new drivers for the MX440, but newer ones won't make any great improvements. One suggestion and one question:

1. Turn off movies. I believe there is an option for this in the regular Options menu in Vanilla 1.61. If your movies are as choppy as mine were, it's not even fun watching them, so you might as well turn them off and save yourself the agony.

2. You said you had 1 GB of virtual memory. Once you get enough virtual memory to get beyond the "Out of virtual memory errors" (I also got those for awhile), physical memory is far more important in determining speed. How much physical memory do you have? If I recall, 2 GB is recommended by most players, and anything less than 1 GB is horrible for standard+ maps.

2. You said you had 1 GB of virtual memory. Once you get enough virtual memory to get beyond the "Out of virtual memory errors" (I also got those for awhile), physical memory is far more important in determining speed. How much physical memory do you have? If I recall, 2 GB is recommended by most players, and anything less than 1 GB is horrible for standard+ maps.

I've got 1GB of physical ram.

Regarding the virtual memory, I've actually really improved the gameplay tweaking this. Since seeing the first response I've pretty much accepted that it simply will not be perfect with my video card. However, I've played around with the virtual memory a little bit and found that the LESS I had the BETTER it played. When I adjusted the virtual memory "minimum allowed" to the minimum it would allow (I think 2MB) and the maximum to 1000 it worked the best. The starting movies play as smooth as they ever have, and on a standard map I can play until close to modern times at High detail before I have to switch to medium to stop the choppiness. Also I've been able to flawlessly watch all the wonder movies for the first time :goodjob:

Again, I really have a limited understanding of virtual memory, but this worked the best for me. When I tried 1000MB for both the min and max it was REALLY choppy, and when I went higher it just got worse.

I'm assuming different things will work for different computers.