Sorry in advance for the long post, I tried to compress it as much as possible but I had to include a lot of detail.
After years of playing this game without problems I am having some very strange graphical corruption in my game. It started when some info icons and the user interface would look all blocky, black or garbled like if you randomized the pixels. However it was so rare and affected so little that I could deal with it.
When my friend and I were playing our vanilla hotseat game on my computer the same thing started happening, getting worse the longer we played, so I know that it still happens even when no mods are loaded. It became unplayable last night, both modded and vanilla.
Next I tried deleting Civilization V entirely and reinstalling it. Everything seemed normal until it showed my chosen leader on the loading screen and a white error box popped up saying "Error loading font texture". I had never seen that error before but I see it every time now. It allowed me to continue to load the game after clicking "OK". When it got into the game all the boxes and icons and menus were missing or replaced by black or garbled boxes. When I exited back to the main menu the main menu was corrupted again. Only the things on the map were unaffected and still looked as they should, like units and terrain.
Next I tried running the game in DX 9 mode. This eliminates the problem entirely but introduces a new problem with flickery terrain and shadows appearing in the wrong places. Certainly a lot more playable but are there downsides to staying with DX 9 mode?
Next I tried reinstalling my graphics drivers which were already up to date so that made no difference. I monitored the video card's temperature while running the game in DX 11 mode and the temperature of the card seems to be determined more by environment. For example on this cool morning it doesn't get hotter than about 48 C when running Civ V on DX 11 mode. A couple of days ago when it was a particularly hot day the video card got up to about 57 C running Civilization on DX 11 which I am told is not very high.
I can play other graphically intensive games on highest settings without any graphical artefacts and at a comfortably playable framerate. Only Civilization V is affected by this graphical corruption, it's the only game on my library that has any issue that isn't already explained as a common bug.
I noticed the issue didn't begin until I turned the graphical settings all the way down. I had no need to do this, I just wanted to test and see if turns would cycle faster if the graphics settings were turned down - they didn't and I just forgot to set it back up to max settings. Turning the settings back up again doesn't make the problem any worse or better.
My only guess at this point... could it be RAM? I have only 1x 4GB lonely RAM chip which I realize is the minimum and very low for a modern PC especially one used for games. When running Civilization V the RAM usage gets to near maximum and windows gives me low memory warnings. Could playing this game repeatedly have gradually done some damage to the RAM because it's having to take all the strain all by its poor little self? Would that ever affect the graphics?
Again, though, you'd think it would affect other games where the minimum is 4GB or even sometimes 6GB, but I can still continue to play these games without problems.
Before anyone tells me to "get more RAM", I'm already on it. Just need more time to save for it as I don't have quite enough money to spare right now.
I have provided some screenshots of the problem.
My specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS
AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor
4GB Ram (1 slot out of 4)
AMD Radeon HD 6670 video card
Please let me know if you need anything else.
After years of playing this game without problems I am having some very strange graphical corruption in my game. It started when some info icons and the user interface would look all blocky, black or garbled like if you randomized the pixels. However it was so rare and affected so little that I could deal with it.
When my friend and I were playing our vanilla hotseat game on my computer the same thing started happening, getting worse the longer we played, so I know that it still happens even when no mods are loaded. It became unplayable last night, both modded and vanilla.
Next I tried deleting Civilization V entirely and reinstalling it. Everything seemed normal until it showed my chosen leader on the loading screen and a white error box popped up saying "Error loading font texture". I had never seen that error before but I see it every time now. It allowed me to continue to load the game after clicking "OK". When it got into the game all the boxes and icons and menus were missing or replaced by black or garbled boxes. When I exited back to the main menu the main menu was corrupted again. Only the things on the map were unaffected and still looked as they should, like units and terrain.
Next I tried running the game in DX 9 mode. This eliminates the problem entirely but introduces a new problem with flickery terrain and shadows appearing in the wrong places. Certainly a lot more playable but are there downsides to staying with DX 9 mode?
Next I tried reinstalling my graphics drivers which were already up to date so that made no difference. I monitored the video card's temperature while running the game in DX 11 mode and the temperature of the card seems to be determined more by environment. For example on this cool morning it doesn't get hotter than about 48 C when running Civ V on DX 11 mode. A couple of days ago when it was a particularly hot day the video card got up to about 57 C running Civilization on DX 11 which I am told is not very high.
I can play other graphically intensive games on highest settings without any graphical artefacts and at a comfortably playable framerate. Only Civilization V is affected by this graphical corruption, it's the only game on my library that has any issue that isn't already explained as a common bug.
I noticed the issue didn't begin until I turned the graphical settings all the way down. I had no need to do this, I just wanted to test and see if turns would cycle faster if the graphics settings were turned down - they didn't and I just forgot to set it back up to max settings. Turning the settings back up again doesn't make the problem any worse or better.
My only guess at this point... could it be RAM? I have only 1x 4GB lonely RAM chip which I realize is the minimum and very low for a modern PC especially one used for games. When running Civilization V the RAM usage gets to near maximum and windows gives me low memory warnings. Could playing this game repeatedly have gradually done some damage to the RAM because it's having to take all the strain all by its poor little self? Would that ever affect the graphics?
Again, though, you'd think it would affect other games where the minimum is 4GB or even sometimes 6GB, but I can still continue to play these games without problems.
Before anyone tells me to "get more RAM", I'm already on it. Just need more time to save for it as I don't have quite enough money to spare right now.
I have provided some screenshots of the problem.
My specs:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS
AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor
4GB Ram (1 slot out of 4)
AMD Radeon HD 6670 video card
Please let me know if you need anything else.
