Recent content by dsmith

Thank you for the answer. It has been driving me crazy and I keep wondering if I am doing something wrong. It sounds like I need to focus a bit more on happiness earlier than I am.

I am really struggling with happiness on civilization 5. I have read everywhere about how to increase happiness, but I just can't understand how early in the game (1-3 cities for all civilizations), I am always dead last in happiness and it isn't even close. I am usually battling negative...

More than likely your cdrom drive. Do you have a Dell laptop per chance? The copy protection scheme used on Civ4 does not work with TSST optical drives, which are in almost every new Dell laptop.

Check your video card temperatures. I couldn't play longer than about 20 minutes until I installed a custom fan for my video card. For what ever reason, CIV4 is quite a work out on a video card. Look at your card temp before entering the game and then start it play ten minutes and look at...

I think alot of these problems are related to the graphics card overheating. After putting on a different cooler on the video card, I have had no more problems. I have done a review with pictures that can be found here. My playing temperature was lowered by almost 15 degrees C. Yes, this...

On the main menu click on "Advanced" From that menu click on "Options" Click on the Graphics Tab up top. You can set your playing resolution here as well as turn off some of the graphics features if you wish.

I think alot of problems can be traced to the cooling of the video card. Ever since I replaced the stock fan with an Arctic-Cooling fan, I have had no problems. For those interested I wrote a write-up here with pictures and everything!

Just curious. I have done quite a bit of looking into heat problems in another thread and more specifically Video card heat. It seems for whatever reason that Civ4 is an extreme workout for a video card. I am just curious for those that are crashing, what temp readings do you have on your...

You may want to refer to this thread. Basically the safe disc 4 copy protection does not seem compatible with all drives, most particularly the ts-l532b, which it seems is shipping with most new Dells. Solution: ??? I haven't found one. If you go to the Dell community forums that is linked...

Okay, I got the Artic Cooler and it gave the promised results. For a refresher: Pre Artic-Cooler Idle temp: 62C Playing temp:84C With Artic-Cooler Idle temp: 54C Playing temp: 71C That is also running at the card clock speed (370Mhz) For a test, I overclocked the card using the Nvidia...

@Colburn: Yes that sounds identical to my card. Here is a link to a review of this fan. This guy installs it on a 7800. His idle temp was measured at 39 - my idle temp right now(posted above) is 62. My game temp was 84 his was 59. (different game but still) It appears that 90 is...

Colburn: Since fixing my side fan, I have not had a problem with this game. I am almost emberased to say, but I played for probably 6 hours straight yesterday without a crash. Since fixing the fan, I have not had a crash at all. I still think that this game is more of a work out on the...

I would have thought that I had a pretty cool case as well. It is large, seems to be of good design and comes standard with 5 fans and variable speed control. The 120mm being out on the side panel may have been a bigger deal than I thought. One last comment - the game for me plays very...

Okay here is my current status with this. I installed the guru3D drivers with the link that Colburn gave above. I am not sure if this did anything, but it did give me an easy way to underclock my card. I did have a side fan that had gone out that I replaced as well. So here is my...

Okay - so I turned the graphics down to 1024x768 based upon some of the comments here (from 1600x1200 - which is my flat panel native). I still get the same result, but it does run longer. I probably played for over an hour prior to my fuzzy screen. @Colburn: Thanks for the link, I will...