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Somebody has to be nuts to disable all their processes in order to run benchmark.

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I always thought civ 4 was not benchmarked as it was more memory intensive and less cpu/ graphic intensive. Adding a top of the range graphics card wasnt going to show huge improvement. Adding 1gb of ram would help if you use 512mb or below. Although it helps having a reasonable processor too. (I use p4 3.2ghz on my laptop). As most review sites use top of the range machines for testing i doubt it would show a great difference in benchmarking.

I would think theres also issue of fact game is turn based. Generally i find waiting for the AI turns takes a few seconds. Perhaps longer if lots of combat. Plus if pop up options on cities arise that may distort the timings anyway.

I should be upgrading to 1gb of ram come christmas so that should solve any slow down issues i have.

Before going further I would want to know what the benchmark is actually recording and measuring, there is no where that states clearly and definitively what stats/facts are being collated by the Benchmark programme.

A follow on question to the latter would then be - so what? I would want to know what purpose these stats are being used for. Generalised statements such as "improve this, improve that etc" dont give the purpose of the stats, they just give a surface reason to collect them. The world is full of useless stats, and before I run a hand coded unapproved programme on a PC stripped down to its basic services - including shutting down anti-v, I want to know whats actually being collated and what it will be used for.

I am sure its innocent and above board - it would be pretty dumb to manage the benchmarking from a Public Forum in this manner if it wasnt - but you are asking for a huge leap of faith when asking Users to run an unknown programme, from an unknown uncertified/approved source, and blindly report results on data, the nature of which they dont even know or understand, for an end purpose that is not fully disclosed.

I am sure all is well and above board - I stressed that earlier and do so once more most emphatically - however thats not the point.

Before I, and I suspect many others with similar willing co-operative minsets, committ £3000+ worth of equipment to such an unverified/unapproved task - it is not unreasonable to understand a little more about it.

Kind Regards
Zy

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Comraddict said:

Somebody has to be nuts to disable all their processes in order to run benchmark.

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your wrong there people with a slow comp or small amount of ram will see better game play when playing games. when ever I play a game (civ4 or other game) I always turn processes off that i don't need even though I have 2 gig ram and a P4 3.6 HT

What about using common resolutions, graphical settings and other options that affect gameplay? Running at 1920x1200 with all graphical settings set to high is much slower than 1024x768 with minimal eye candy.

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Gumbolt said:

I always thought civ 4 was not benchmarked as it was more memory intensive and less cpu/ graphic intensive. Adding a top of the range graphics card wasnt going to show huge improvement. Adding 1gb of ram would help if you use 512mb or below. Although it helps having a reasonable processor too. (I use p4 3.2ghz on my laptop). As most review sites use top of the range machines for testing i doubt it would show a great difference in benchmarking.

I would think theres also issue of fact game is turn based. Generally i find waiting for the AI turns takes a few seconds. Perhaps longer if lots of combat. Plus if pop up options on cities arise that may distort the timings anyway.

I should be upgrading to 1gb of ram come christmas so that should solve any slow down issues i have.

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I have 1GB ram currently, and though there is an improvement over 512 mb, there is still a lot to be desired (all with low detail graphics). I am not sure now if even 2GB would solve all the problems. Huge maps are almost unplayable after 1000 AD or so, even on Standard maps there is a noticable slowdown

radzik said:

I have 1GB ram currently, and though there is an improvement over 512 mb, there is still a lot to be desired (all with low detail graphics). I am not sure now if even 2GB would solve all the problems. Huge maps are almost unplayable after 1000 AD or so, even on Standard maps there is a noticable slowdown

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Somehow I believe you.
Some things are rotten deep in the core due to some glitchs in the 3d engine. Example: That tiny delay in response that comes with any type of unit movement.. Its very slight, but over 500 turns its very noticable. especially if your used to Civ3's lightning response.

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For sanity's sake ... do people really suspect Kevin to be up to something mischievous? Here we have the best designed fan-made benchmark I've ever seen, and all we can do is misreading his post, suspecting devious motives, and questioning procedures that are actually the *basis* for a good benchmark? Come on, this community can do better than this ...

Here's my results, by the way.

Benchmark Time: 138 seconds
OS Info: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional 5.00.2195 (Service Pack 4)
Motherbord Brand&Model: Asus A8N5X
Motherbord Chipset (optional): nForce4 Ultra
CPU Model: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
CPU Speed (in Hz): 2.21 GHz
Memory Type&Speed: PC2700 DDR
Memory Amount: 1 GB
Memory Timings (optional): 2.5-4-4-7-2T
Video Card Model: Asus 7600 GT (about identical to the nVidia reference model, nothing Asus specific about it)

Some more things that caught my attention:

- If you have installed any mod (even if it shouldn't interfere at all with the benchmark, e.g. a UI mod), then the savegame will crash upon loading. The easiest way to get around this is to temporarily rename the CustomAssets folder.

- The key that calls the console is different for different countries. In Germany it's "ö" (the o umlaut).

- Don't play before measuring, and don't reload the map. Right after the measuring, I reloaded the same map (without closing the program in between) and measured it again. This time it took 20 seconds longer.

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Kevin Ar18 said:

*Regarding the key you had to press for the console, is it still the first key on the top row right under the escape key?

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No, it's the key right of the "L". I have no idea why it's mapped to the tilde key. I don't think there's a system to it. Perhaps there's a list somewhere in these forums.

Kevin Ar18 said:

*Regarding reloading the map... are you referring to something like going to load a new map and picking the exact same map again to open it?
If so, I guess I need to stress the part about closing and reopening Civ IV.

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Yes. I did the benchmark, recorded the time, then reloaded the benchmark save, startetd it again, and this time it took 20 seconds longer. Loading the map the second time took significantly longer as well. I think the game isn't cleaning its memory thoroughly enough, so doing the benchmark directly after starting Civ will have different results than doing the benchmark after Civ has already run a game, and filled the memory with things it doesn't trash afterwards.

Update: I re-ran the benchmark, just to make sure that the difference I noticed above isn't just some natural variation within the game engine (which would make benchmarking much more difficult). Fortunately it isn't. When I start Civ and then run the benchmark, I always measure 138 seconds. When I then reload the benchmark game (without restarting Civ) and run the benchmark again, it takes longer (12 seconds longer this time). So the benchmark should be run on a freshly started Civ program, but will be reliable if done that way.

While I appreciate the thought of what the OP is trying to accomplish, I think the approach is way to technical for this forum -- both in terms of what is necessary to run the benchmark, as well as what value any results/summaries will be at the end.

The type of benchmarking being suggested is similar to what I'd do for a web app that I was designing, to help figure out what I needed to change in the design. But few people on this forum are in a position to change any of the design of this game.

What I could see being helpful, is a very simple benchmark test, whereby the results could help a forum reader answer the question -- "I want my game to run faster. Should I drop the cash on more RAM, or a new video card?"

I'd suggest a test procedure as simple as:
1) download a supplied benchmark test save
2) reboot your computer
3) wait 5 minutes
4) start unmodded CivIV and load the save game
5) start tracking time when you hit "next turn" for the first time
6) click "next turn" as soon as possible after each turn ends (test save should require NO user interaction other than that)
7) after the 2nd (or 3rd or 4th or whatever has been suggested) turn ends, stop tracking the time

Then have the time posted with the system specs you suggested.

The whole thing about running a special console command in the game, and shutting down all the background processes is just to over the top. And after all, as an end user (not as the coder who has to fix the problem), I really don't care how the game performs if I shutdown my AV and all my other background processes -- because having to do that everytime I play the game is just too much work. I want to know (or at least get some general idea) how the game is going to perform WITH all my background processes (or a similar sample of processes) running.

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