Performance tips

[GenocideBringer]

As a hardcore gamer person (with a mid-range Computer) there have been a lot of games that I have had to learn to tweak in order to run on my computer. The lesson I have learned is that most games CAN run on an inferior computer if you know how to tweak your system.

This thread is for listing tips on increasing Civ 4 performance on an inferior system. Maybe it can be a sticky?

1) Turn down graphics. Turn down the graphic options that will have the least effect on the eye candy first-since often the most useless graphical additions are the biggest memory hogs. Although, I have noticed, even on minimum graphics settings, it looks fine, but runs much smoother.

2) Get video card drivers. Go to your video card's maker's website and download new drivers. They can make your computer run quite a bit faster.

3) Close all background programs. These are not just the ones you see readily. THIS ONE is a biggy. There are 3 steps to doing this

a) Download Microsoft Antispyware and/or Spybot S&D and clear out spyware. Spyware is constantly sending and recieving information, so in addition to collecting information, it slows you down.

b) Go to Start -> Run -> msconfig. Go to the STARTUP tab. Uncheck EVERYTHING that you don't want running, which is probably most things. It's amazing all the background stuff that can be running. Do not edit the Services tab, as most of this stuff is imperative to running Windows

c) For windows XP: Press CTRL+alt+Delete. Click on PROCESSES. Click on User Name and scroll down to the stuff that is under your user name. For instance, if you log in to Windows XP under the name CivAddict, you would find all programs under the user name CivAddict. Everything other than Explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe are not imperative, so you can close them down. If you are viewing this post while doing this, also don't close down iexplorer.exe.



Hope this helps. Feel free to post your own tips.

 

[Panzer Ace]

This should help lots of people Hope they sticky it.
PS after doing a msconfig you must restart your PC for it to take affect.

 

[Ybother]

c) For windows XP: Press CTRL+alt+Delete. Click on PROCESSES. Click on User Name and scroll down to the stuff that is under your user name. For instance, if you log in to Windows XP under the name CivAddict, you would find all programs under the user name CivAddict. Everything other than Explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe are not imperative, so you can close them down. If you are viewing this post while doing this, also don't close down iexplorer.exe.



Hope this helps. Feel free to post your own tips.

haha this one is super funny.

also go into the ini file. disable movie. trillinear filtering n reduce the music.

 

[AER]

This is a repost of my answer from the specs thread. If you can afford to spend $40, and currently have 512 or less RAM, this is a great way to speed up your game:
---
Here is the solution for folks with low RAM:

Go to http://www.crucial.com, and click "Memory upgrades".

Walk through the questions to find out what kind of RAM you need for your system.

Next, search http://www.newegg.com to find the cheapest Kingston, Mushkin, Corsair, Micron, Samsung or Crucial RAM with those specs.

For example:
512 MB SDRAM for $80
512 MB DDR SDRAM (Most common) for $40
512 MB RDRAM (highly unlikely) for $210
512 MB DDR2 SDRAM for $45

Buy it.

Finally, Google for "how to install RAM" and get a nice, illustrated guide like this one from PCWorld.

As you can see, if you can install your own lightbulbs, you can buy and swap your own RAM, usually for under $50.

 

[Khaim]

Unless you have a laptop. Then you're out of luck.

 

[AER]

Another tip is to look in your graphics card settings (right-click on your desktop, click Properties, and then go to the System tab. Click Advanced, and look for a tab from your graphics manufacturer):



You want to turn everything all the way down. Usually there will be a Detail or Quality tab, and this one often makes the most difference. It compresses the textures, allowing you to get away with less graphics memory than the game wants. It does make a visible negative difference in-game, too, but it sure runs faster (if you are trying to run a card with low memory).

It usually doesn't hurt to tweak other settings in this window (or windows, depending on your card) to maximize performance.

 

[JBearIt]

3) Close all background programs. These are not just the ones you see readily. THIS ONE is a biggy. There are 3 steps to doing this

a) Download Microsoft Antispyware and/or Spybot S&D and clear out spyware. Spyware is constantly sending and recieving information, so in addition to collecting information, it slows you down.

b) Go to Start -> Run -> msconfig. Go to the STARTUP tab. Uncheck EVERYTHING that you don't want running, which is probably most things. It's amazing all the background stuff that can be running. Do not edit the Services tab, as most of this stuff is imperative to running Windows

c) For windows XP: Press CTRL+alt+Delete. Click on PROCESSES. Click on User Name and scroll down to the stuff that is under your user name. For instance, if you log in to Windows XP under the name CivAddict, you would find all programs under the user name CivAddict. Everything other than Explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe are not imperative, so you can close them down. If you are viewing this post while doing this, also don't close down iexplorer.exe.



Hope this helps. Feel free to post your own tips.

This is good advice. Along those lines, there are two programs that show up in my start menu and background programs and was wondering if any of these had any importance or were spyware?

CCApp.exe - I often notice when I shut down my computer it makes reference to shutting this down too. With a name like CC, it sounds like its a program making a copy of everything I do - rather ominous. I do have a Dell that supposedly lets you "go back in time" if you need to restore your computer to what it was at a certain date so maybe that what this is for. I do know that when I tried to shut it down from the processes menu, I was denied.

DAMon.exe - name is close to demon which also sounds a little questionable.

Its also worth noting that I do have Norton Virus Protection/Firewall and Spysweeper so maybe these programs are legit.

 

[AER]

Unless you have a laptop. Then you're out of luck.

No, that's not true either. I was just too lazy to include them. They will show up in the system guide at Crucial, and as long as you have a free slot, you can still install it in a laptop. The only problem is that it is a bit harder.

90% of laptops work one of two ways:

1) There is a slot on the bottom that unscrews. Right under the slot is the memory socket, which you can put the RAM in.
2) There are 1-4 screws, sometimes labeled with a keyboard icon, sometimes not, on the bottom of the laptop. Take these out, and pop the keyboard off. Under the keyboard, there will be RAM sockets.

Always be sure to put any screws that you take out back in when you are done.

With a laptop, it is best to check before you buy, as you will often have only one slot, and you need to make sure that you get the largest possible DIMM so that you get the best total amount when you swap it out.

Also, on some cheaper laptops, the memory is hardwired. If that is the case, then you really are out of luck.

 

[GenocideBringer]

This is good advice. Along those lines, there are two programs that show up in my start menu and background programs and was wondering if any of these had any importance or were spyware?

CCApp.exe - I often notice when I shut down my computer it makes reference to shutting this down too. With a name like CC, it sounds like its a program making a copy of everything I do - rather ominous. I do have a Dell that supposedly lets you "go back in time" if you need to restore your computer to what it was at a certain date so maybe that what this is for. I do know that when I tried to shut it down from the processes menu, I was denied.

DAMon.exe - name is close to demon which also sounds a little questionable.

Its also worth noting that I do have Norton Virus Protection/Firewall and Spysweeper so maybe these programs are legit

.


CCApp is on my computer as well, but I have not seen it before. I believe it very well may be spyware. I KNOW it's not imperative (since my computer ran fine before it showed up), but Windows wont let me close it. It's a common tactic of spyware makers to make their files seem crucial to windows, to stop the user from shutting them off.

DAMon.exe-I am not sure what this is. Do a spyware scan with Microsoft Antispyware.



Also, Microsoft has one update it releases every month-a malicious software removal tool. It's a one time program that scans and gets rid of stuff like spyware. Download it.

 

[Cironir]

An option is also to use the Omega drivers instead of the Nvidia and Radeon ones. They usually perform better (and I think there is an option to install them in a performance mode) and have generally fewer issues.

Another frequent trouble source: Often, people have different generations of video drivers on their systems, which also causes conflicts and may waste system resources. Driver Cleaner is the right tool to remove all those lingering older versions (or leftovers of older versions) reliably.

Lastly, there's Aida32, which is a great tool to get various information about one's computer, like memory type used (under Motherboard -> SPD), available memory banks, etc. without having to open the case.

And, updating to XP SP2 is almost a must, too. It can be downloaded for free at Microsoft's site. IE 5 or 6 is required for the online update to work.

 

[JBearIt]

Well I just googled CCApp and based on viewing a couple of different websites the answer is:

The ccapp.exe process is a core component of Norton Antivirus. It runs in the background continuously checking your system for viruses and trojans, it also checks any inbound email for similar threats. If this process is stopped Norton antivirus will not be able to protect your computer.

ccapp.exe is an application that does NOT appear to be a security risk

 

[KevInSweden]

.


CCApp is on my computer as well, but I have not seen it before. I believe it very well may be spyware.

If you are running Norton Antivirus it's the email scanning component.

DAMon.exe-I am not sure what this is. Do a spyware scan with Microsoft Antispyware.

I take it the person has a Dell computer, if so nothing to worry about. Doesn't need to be running though.

 

[Phoenix]

Doesn't matter figured it out.

 

[AER]

Oops you edited your post before I clicked "reply."

Is there a delete option somewhere on this board?

 

[PjotrS]

I was able to play civ4 with a geforce2mx440 with 32mb of video memory and 1gb ram(still a bit slowdown here and there). I already finished 2 games. For civ4 to work i did some unusual 'tweaks'
First I unpacked the artpack and started to resize big textures. I have come across textures of 1024x1024. Cards with low video memory simply can't load too much of them at the same time and that is what is causing most of the slowdown and big memory usage. To be able to resize the textures you need a program that can load dds files, there is a photoshop plugin somewhere but i use the directx texture tool that comes with the directx sdk and can be downloaded free from Microft's site. After only resizing the textures in the \Assets\Art\terrain\textures directory can have good results. Other files i resized where the buttons, they are pretty high resolution too and you don't see much difference when you resize them a little. \Assets\Art\terrain\sky has the clouds texture what loads when you zoom out to see the whole globe, this is causing a big delay when you zoom out. When resizing make backups and also keep the height and width at powers of 2 (32,64,128,512 and so on) and also don't resize to mutch else you won't see the difference between things.
I haven't found a way in the game that makes it resize the textures automatically, i hope someone finds it if it exists

Another thing i noticed is that each tile is a 16x16 hightmap. This means each tile is 16x16x2 = 512 polygons and 100 tiles is 51200 polygon. I haven't found a way to reduce this. If someone know how this could improve performance a lot on low end cards.

 

[GenocideBringer]

This could definately hlep some people who can't run the game.

 

[Willem]

Another one that a lot of people tend to neglect: Defragment your hard drive, especially if you have a system with minimum RAM. Virtual Memory will work much better if it's clean, and most games have some sort of cache placed somewhere that would also benefit from a clean drive. Many people tend to not bother with this even though you should be doing it every 6 months to a year. It's a basic maintenance requirement that all systems need from time to time.

 

[Pounder]

haha this one is super funny.

also go into the ini file. disable movie. trillinear filtering n reduce the music.

trillinear filtering , what does it do

 

[GenocideBringer]

Bump...


People are still having performance issues.

 

[Undisclosed]

I was able to play civ4 with a geforce2mx440 with 32mb of video memory and 1gb ram(still a bit slowdown here and there). I already finished 2 games. For civ4 to work i did some unusual 'tweaks'
First I unpacked the artpack and started to resize big textures. I have come across textures of 1024x1024. Cards with low video memory simply can't load too much of them at the same time and that is what is causing most of the slowdown and big memory usage. To be able to resize the textures you need a program that can load dds files, there is a photoshop plugin somewhere but i use the directx texture tool that comes with the directx sdk and can be downloaded free from Microft's site. After only resizing the textures in the \Assets\Art\terrain\textures directory can have good results. Other files i resized where the buttons, they are pretty high resolution too and you don't see much difference when you resize them a little. \Assets\Art\terrain\sky has the clouds texture what loads when you zoom out to see the whole globe, this is causing a big delay when you zoom out. When resizing make backups and also keep the height and width at powers of 2 (32,64,128,512 and so on) and also don't resize to mutch else you won't see the difference between things.
I haven't found a way in the game that makes it resize the textures automatically, i hope someone finds it if it exists

Another thing i noticed is that each tile is a 16x16 hightmap. This means each tile is 16x16x2 = 512 polygons and 100 tiles is 51200 polygon. I haven't found a way to reduce this. If someone know how this could improve performance a lot on low end cards.

Yo, can you give me your resized files so I can use? My e-mail is nguyen.sanh@gmail.com

Please send them so I can use them! My game is very slow and I would like to make it faster.