Working / Non-Working System Configs

Hey everyone,

After reading through the threads about the game being broken on release, I was struck that in at least one of these threads that it had degenerated into nothing but a flamewar. It is my thought that it would be beneficial to us here on the forums and possibly to the devs who are working to fix these issues if we could list our system specs and specific issues all in one thread. Please don't crap all over this thread with messages about how this is the worst/best game release in history. Just give your system specs and list specific problems you may be having.

Please follow this template:

CPU: (ex. Intel P4 3.2GHz, AMD Athlon64 4800+, etc)
Memory: (ex. 1Gb, 512Mb, etc)
Video Card: (ex. nVidia 6600 GT, Intel Extreme Graphics 2, etc)
Video Card driver number: (If you know how to find it)
Soundcard: ex. (Integrated, Audigy2, etc.)
Civ Version: (ex. US Pre-Order CD release, German DVD release, etc)
Other Important Software: (for instance, if you run SpyBot or Symantec Firewall)
Problems? (ex. No problems, No wonder music, can't get past splash screen, etc.)
Comments: (Tell us if you have tried anything to resolve the problems, and if it worked/didn't work. That kind of thing.)

I'll lead off by mentioning one of my three systems.

CPU: AthlonXP 2600+
Memory: 512Mb
Video Card: ATi Radeon 9500
VC Driver: Catalyst 5.10
Soundcard: Integrated
Civ Version: US Pre-Order CDs
Software: Symantec Security Client (Virus Scan and Firewall)
Problems:

Game installed and runs fine. Movement of units is slower than anticipated, but this may be by design. Not sure.

CPU: Athlon 64 2500
Memory: 2 GB
Video Card: Nvidia 6600 GT SLI
VC Driver: 81.85
Soundcard: Audigy 2 ZS
Civ Version: US Pre-Order CDs
Software:
Problems:
no problems game runs smooth all maxed graphics 1600x1200, havent done much with aa but its at 4x

CPU: Mobile Athlon64 3200+
Memory: 512Mb
Video Card: Integrated GeForce4 MX400
VC Driver: ForceWare 81.85
Soundcard: Integrated
Civ Version: US Pre-Order CDs
Software: Symantec Security Client (Virus Scan and Firewall)
Problems:

Game installs, but gives message about insufficient video card. Introductory movies play, but sound and video are VERY choppy. It seems as if the sound and video problem derive from the hard drive. Knowing that the HD on my laptop is only a 4200RPM drive, I watched and you can see the HD light flicker at each pause in the video and sound. It doesn't appear that the movies are being buffered correctly and are being read directly from the drive itself.

Game play is fine but much slower than my desktop system. Movements of units are sluggish, panning and zooming are difficult due to slow response times, wonder movies are catastophically bad due to the choppiness as noted for the startup movies.

CPU: Athlon64 3200+ (Clawhammer)
Memory: 1Gb
Video Card: nVidia 6800GT
VC Driver: ForceWare 81.85
Soundcard: Integrated
Civ Version: US Pre-Order CDs
Software: Symantec Security Client (Virus Scan and Firewall)
Problems:

No problems at all. Played over lunch and everything worked without a hitch.

CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+
Memory: 1Gb
Video Card: Radeon X800XL
Video Card driver number: Catalyst 5.08
Soundcard: Audigy
Civ Version: German DVD release
Other Important Software: TinyPersonalFirewall

CPU: Pentium-M 1,5 Ghz
Memory: 1Gb
Video Card: Radeon 9200
Video Card driver number: Omega 4.12
Soundcard: Integrated (Audiomax)
Civ Version: German DVD release
Other Important Software: TinyPersonalFirewall

No problems at all. On the laptop it runs a little choppy, but given the system specs, that's to be expected. Still well playable.

CPU: AMD 3000+
RAM: 1GB PC3200
VID: MSI Nvidia 6600GT
VID Driver: 81.85
Sound: Soundmax Onboard
Civ Version: US Pre Order
Other Software:
Windows XP Pro

Comments:
Runs slower than I expected... still tweaking in an attempted to find better performance.

CPU: Pentium M 770 (2.13GHz, 533MHz FSB, 2MB L2)
Mem: 1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM
GPU: nVidia GeForce Go6800 256MB
Driver: 7.8.1.0
HDD: 60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA
OS: Win XP Home SP2
Civ: US Pre-order CDs

No Problems... Running on high settings

Not working

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1900+
Memory: 2x 512MB (1GB total)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 (128 MB)
Video Card driver number: 81.85
Soundcard: Audigy2
Civ Version: US Pre-Order CD release
Other Important Software: nothing else running
Problems? system hangs, reboots, graphics go haywire sometimes when bringing up advisors, when looking at world map, when turning on/off map grid, etc
can't even get the game started if I choose a world larger than standard
Comments: tried all kinds of different drivers, old and new. Changed all video settings, disabled sound, etc....nothing works, although disabling movies stopped that from causing system crashes

CPU: AMD Athlon 1.24Ghz
Memory: 2X 256MB
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9600 Atlantis
Video Card Driver: ( dont know at work will edit in later)
Sound Card: SB Audigy
Civ ver: US Pre-Order
Window XP sp2

Runs really well considering the age of my rig (built it when XP first came out), no choppiness or crashes.

PS. If you want a really stable computer get a MB with a 6 phase power input. Many, Many crashes are due to small power flucuations corrupting data on the RAM.

Woops... Sorry. Mis-post

eMachines M6805 laptop
ATI® Mobility RADEON™ 9600 with 64 MB Video RAM @ 1280x800
DNA-ATi 4.4.5.10 drivers
Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 3000+ (1.8Ghz) Processor
2GB RAM (upgraded)
60GB 7200RPM Hitachi Travelstar (upgraded)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX USB
Windows XP Professional SP2

Runs just fine but becomes sluggish is AA is on.

3 to 4 y/o dell inspiron 8100
1ghz
256 mb ram
geforce 2 go 32mb video card
dhzeropoint drivers
( sound turned off)

runs( a little slow, but not impossible to play on)

CPU: AMD Athlon64 3200+
Memory: 1024Mb PC3200 2-2-2-5
Video Card: nVidia 6800 GT
Video Card driver number: 81.85
Soundcard: VIA AC'97
Civ Version: Euro DVD release
Other Important Software: n/a
Problems? Graphic corruption in globe view/minimap, tooltips occasionally disappear
Comments: both problems can be fixed temporarily by cycling the FSAA on or off. Incidentally speeds are great, i run at 1600x1200 with 2xFSAA most of the time. Beautiful game, the graphic corruption isn't a big deal (globe view is kinda useless anyway as far as I can tell)

Working: Homebuilt system
CPU Intel Pentium 4 840D 3Ghz Dual core
Memory: 1Gb
Video: Intel® GMA 950 onboard graphics subsystem
Video Drivers: Latest download from Intel.
Windows XP SP2, DirectX from Civ4 CD

Not Working: IBM Thinkpad T42
CPU: Intel Pentium M 1.7Ghz
Memory: 1GB
Video: ATI Radeon Mobility 7500, 32MB
Video Driver: latest from IBM website
This system suffers from the cheshire cat/ black landscape problem

Civ4 looks and plays great!

Windows XP Pro SP2 with .NET 2.0 Framework
AMD Athlon 2800+
ASUS A7V600 m/b with VIA HyperionPro 5.04 drivers
2 x 512MB PC2700 DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9800Pro/128 with CCC 5.10 drivers
TB Santa Cruz audio with 4193 drivers
Seagate 200GB EIDE HDD, Maxtor 40GB EIDE HDD
TDK CD-RW

I was very worried Civ IV would not work on my system after hearing all the horror stories. Well, it worked after all!

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1900+
Memory: 512Mb PC133
Video Card: Ati Radeon 8500LE 128MB (AGP 4x)
Video Driver: 6.14.10.6517
Soundcard: C-Media CMI8738 6-channel sound with 2002 drivers
Operating System: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
Civ Version: US Regular Release
Other Important Software: Fix-It Utilities
Problems? Very minor graphics anomoly (certain objects whiting out during certain parts of the game.

Comments: This is the process I used to load Civ IV:

(1) Shut down ALL Task Bar programs.
(2) Clicked Install from autorun Civ CD and installed Direct X
(3) Quit Setup
(4) Restarted computer
(5) Shut down ALL task bar programs.
(6) Loaded Civ IV
(7) Restarted Computer.

Game loaded and ran great!

Special Note: I did NOT use ATI's Catalyst driver update as suggested by Take2/Firaxis

run command dxdiag