Soren: .... About the priority, the game is launched in high priority, but if you alt/tab to see how it goes, since the game is not the main application anymore it goes in low priority and get back in high priority as soon as you get it as the main application.
Well this got me to thinking, is the game really going into high priority? Because when I get my lock ups while loading a new game or while waiting for AI turn to end, the CPU light on my case is basically showing little to no activity. Even when loading, it isn't going full throttle, but instead only working intermittently.
Since I have two monitors, here are screenshots from three points in time. Note pictures are unaltered in anyway except I removed my name from User Name tab and cropped it some.
Minimized (only task manager is shown in this shot):
Maximized at main menu:
Maximized in a game
So it seems the game ISN'T running in high priority but instead only normal. I tried to set it to high and it would fall back to normal as soon as I remaximized the game. Could this be causing problems? Either way, it seems Civ4 dev folks think the game is suppose to be running in high priority, so maybe this issue might be addressed?