TnL get your facts straight (chart included)

I have the NVIDIA4 GeForce4 MX 440 as well. I have the dark terrain and tons of flickering on the main page. This post helped and confused me. Someone said they got Civ4 to work with this card?

I tried to update the drivers, but I couldn't figure it out. Can someone direct me to the right place?

dentonpc said:

I have the NVIDIA4 GeForce4 MX 440 as well. I have the dark terrain and tons of flickering on the main page. This post helped and confused me. Someone said they got Civ4 to work with this card?

I tried to update the drivers, but I couldn't figure it out. Can someone direct me to the right place?

Click to expand...

here is page
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_81.85.html
download 20.7MB file and run, and reboot.

schnizm said:

I had no problems playing doom3 in low details with XP1700+/GeForce3.
Civ4 cant seriously have higher hardware requirements...

I guess there will be a patch for graphic bugs like the black terrain and such.

Click to expand...

I have the same problem. It should be no sweat for my computer to run this game yet it lags even at the lowest settings.

I definitely think it is a compatitability issue with nvidias software and the game. I cruise through most games but on my main machine it gets very choppy at times but an older laptop does ok There is a memory leak as well, that eats up resources. Hopefully they will find a fix for this in the next month

My wife surprised me by pre-ordering the game. It was waiting for me at home on the day it came out. Needless to say I was disappointed when I got the black terrain. My display adapter obviously needs to be upgraded (its an NVIDIA TNT2 Pro), but I want to be certain that I get the right card. Will I be able to put any card that's listed that can run the game? Or are there only specific cards that would fit my machine based on the one that's in there now? Please tell me what to look for. We don't have a lot of $$ right now with Christmas quickly approaching, but I'd definately like to get the most bang for my buck (rather 128 Mb than 64 Mb if it's reasonably priced).

Also a question about memory. The game box says that 256 Mb (the amount I have) is the minimum requirement, however the Civ IV site says that 512 is with XP. The game seems to run fine other than the black terrain. Can I hold off on a memory upgrade for a while or are there other issues that might pop up once I get into the game?

Other possibly useful info: I bought the computer from someone who built it (mostly out of HP parts). It has a "very good" mother board (not at home right now & I don't remember the specific type), and a Pentium 4 - 2.0 GHz processor.

Geforce2 Ultra, with latest supported drivers (71.89) confirmed working. I need to use the lowest settings, but it works!

I get a slow down once and I while, but that maybe due to memory leaks, or who knows what. But it works!

got GeForce 5200 so it should work
thx for the info! Will let you know if everything works as soon as I get my hands on the game (still waiting for my pre-order to arrive)

McLMan said:

My wife surprised me by pre-ordering the game. It was waiting for me at home on the day it came out. Needless to say I was disappointed when I got the black terrain. My display adapter obviously needs to be upgraded (its an NVIDIA TNT2 Pro), but I want to be certain that I get the right card. Will I be able to put any card that's listed that can run the game? Or are there only specific cards that would fit my machine based on the one that's in there now? Please tell me what to look for. We don't have a lot of $$ right now with Christmas quickly approaching, but I'd definately like to get the most bang for my buck (rather 128 Mb than 64 Mb if it's reasonably priced).

Also a question about memory. The game box says that 256 Mb (the amount I have) is the minimum requirement, however the Civ IV site says that 512 is with XP. The game seems to run fine other than the black terrain. Can I hold off on a memory upgrade for a while or are there other issues that might pop up once I get into the game?

Other possibly useful info: I bought the computer from someone who built it (mostly out of HP parts). It has a "very good" mother board (not at home right now & I don't remember the specific type), and a Pentium 4 - 2.0 GHz processor.

Click to expand...

i went out and got the GeForce fx5200. it runs $99 with a $30 rebate (so, $70 total).

it DID solve the rendering (chesire cat) problem. but it still runs choppy and slow. but i don't know if that's a card issue at this point, perhaps memory leak.

2.8G processor, geForce 5500 card, 512 ram. It's a only tiny bit choppy at first, but after I run into a couple of foreign leaders it slows to a crawl. Memory leak somewhere.

Grumbler,

I have a Raedon 7500 on my Dell 600M laptop, and it works (only 32 mb). I use low settings, but I DO allow animation and zoom ups on the battles, and it still works. Late in the game, around 7500, it got a little slow, and sometimes the graphics are a little choppy, but all around still an amazing experience.

I think what 2kgames or firaxis should have done is put up an extensive list of supported video cards and more importantly the unsupported ones. Most game websites have at least a list of supported chipsets.... and yeah.... most 3D games and DirectX 9.0 based games only support ATI and NVidia from the get-go.

I think the bottom line is that if your card supports SOME sort of T&L - either hardware or software - there is a way of getting it to work.

If your hardware does not support T&L in any form.... you are fu**ed.

For those with laptops and the "dark world" issue. The ATI Mobility Fire GL 7800 chipset *DOES* support T&L and *DOES* have 64MB of DDR RAM in the IBM A31P (others too?)....

But don't get too excited.... CIV4 doesn't (currently) work with this chipset. Hopefully we just need to be patient for a patch to be released.

http://www.ati.com/products/Mobilityfgl7800/features.html

TheBarnacle said:

i went out and got the GeForce fx5200. it runs $99 with a $30 rebate (so, $70 total).

it DID solve the rendering (chesire cat) problem. but it still runs choppy and slow. but i don't know if that's a card issue at this point, perhaps memory leak.

Click to expand...

It's the card. 5200s are infamous for their poor performance.

another NICE info for intel products...civ iv wont run anway...i wonder it some games make T&L software supported, why civ iv needs HW support for T&L?
atleast, its not a graphics intensive game!

Intel® graphics products do not have hardware support for T&L. In most games, transform and lighting calculations can be performed on the processor with acceptable performance. A small number of games that specifically check for hardware T&L support may fail to run.

I have a IGP 345M Radeon, isn't that equivelent to an 8500? will the game run with this?

I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and the game works flawlessly on my computer. Didn't even realize that graphics cards had problems on this game until I read this thread. This is not surprising though, it seems obvious that the publishers tried to rush this game in.
I would really recomend this graphics card by the way. I got it three years ago when I built the computer, so it must be pretty cheap by now (If they still make it). I have played tons of games in the mean time, and every single game has played perfect. Of course Im still limited by its processing power, but I have never had incompatibilities with games. In other words, Im lucky as hell that I got this graphics card.

I'd just like to add a few more video-chipsets that I didn't see covered in the table.

3D Labs Permedia 3 - ?!? (has hardware T&L, but could someone try?)

Matrox G450/G550 - NO (no hardware T&L)
Matrox Perhelia - YES (could someone try the 'triple-head' 3-monitor mode?)

PowerVR Kyro series - NO (no hardware T&L)
S3 Savage3D/4/2000 - NO (no hardware T&L)
S3 SavageIX/Mobile - ?!? (could someone check this out?)
XGI Chrome series (Unichrome, Deltachrome, etc.) - YES (hardware T&L and Pixel-Shader 1.x)

SiS 3xx series (300, 305, 315) - NO (no hardware T&L)
SiS Xabre series - YES (hardware T&L and Pixel-Shader 1.x)
XGI Volari series - YES (...)

Trident "Blade3D series" (Blade3D, BladeXP, Cyberblade) - NO (no hardware T&L)

(some integrated graphics...)
NVidia Nforce2 IGP and later - YES (Geforce2/MX class, hardware T&L)
ATI Radeon IGP - YES (at least Radeon 9000 class, ..., pixel-shader 1.4)
Via K8M800/KM800 - ?!? (should be equivalent to S3 Unichrome)

--- even older cards ---
If you have one of the following cards, you need not bother trying to play the game! I mention these separately, because none of the following cards were ever equipped with 64MB (or more) video RAM. [The above cards are available with 64MB or more video RAM.]

Intel i740 - NO (no hardware T&L)
NVidia NV1 - NO (non-compliant 3D-pipeline, 'quartic surfaces instead of triangles')
NVidia Riva128 or TNT1/2, Vanta, LT - NO (no hardware T&L)
S3 Virge/Trio3D series - NO NO NO NO NO NO (sorry, couldn't resist!)
SiS 6326 series - NO (non-compliant 3D-pipeline)
Matrox G200/G400/G450 - NO (no hardware T&L)
Matrox Millenium, Mystique - NO (non-compliant 3D-pipeline)
Rendition Verite1000/2x00 - NO (no hardware T&L)

...for those still having black terrain issues (especially with laptops)

Check out my earlier thread for Omega drivers (worked for me)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135250

Good luck

Hoplite

The game worked on my PC straight off wheeee