Civ IV overheating my laptop

I just came back to BTS after a couple of years. I never had problems before after playing hundreds of hours, but now the game heats up my laptop and sometimes my laptop suddenly shuts down.

I use the default graphics settings, but it doesn't help.

Any ideas? Attached is my system information.

Set all graphics settings to Minimum.

Also, edit My\ Documents/My\ Games/Beyond\ the\ Sword/CivilizationIV.ini
and find the setting:


The default is 0. Not sure if its necessary, i found that on some systems the gfx driver actually limits to 60 by default, but it can't hurt. You can even set it lower, say 30, to save more power. However the drawback is that you'll get noticable stutter while moving on the map.

Another thing you can try and which will help a little with the power needed to draw the gfx is to lower the games resolution. I.e. switch to windowed mode and select something ridiculously low like 1024x768. Sucks to play at that, but i'd do it regardless just as a means to diagnose if the high power draw your system can't cope with comes from the gfx circuits.

Edit: Also, if your laptop mfgtr doesn't suck and has it made to be easily opened and servicable, you should have a look if you can clean out any dust which might have clogged up the cooling system.

Edit2: Apperently could also be a driver issue. Have a look at this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=545573 I had no idea gfx card makers would still mess up the driver code affecting a 10 year old game.

In addition, while it may not seem Civ IV is not too graphics intensive, it definitely benefit from either a AMD or NVIDIA GPU. Integrated graphics like the Intel HD4000 would still struggle and therefore force the CPU to work harder and thereby generate the heat you are experiencing.

If you are ever considering a new laptop and intend to play games on it, get with with either dedicated GPU (AMD or NVIDIA). Just look for these names in the specs.

Have you ever cleared the fans in the lifetime of that laptop?

They're probably all full with dust, and you just didn't notice because that doesn't matter much when working. When playing, the requirements are much higher though.

As you can see here, it's not really comparable to the more common (but quite expensive) graphics cards: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+4000

If you have run the game fine before on the same laptop, however, maybe it's full with dust now, which will exacerbate overheating issues, or maybe it's a driver issue, or Windows clogging up its system as it tends to do over time.

e:
You can also try to upgrade the driver, as it looks like the one you have is pretty old. It may help. Or it may not.
Think this should be the relevant one: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24826/Intel-HD-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-8-1-64-bit