1GB RAM for Standard, 2GB RAM for Huge recommended memory!

[limpkit]

Hi everyone

I just haven't seen this clearly stated but from my experience installing CIV4 in 9 computers over the last week I have to say that on the 4 computers where the game could be started and played, only in one of them which had 1GB RAM the game was playable. In the other 3 the lag and sometimes full minutes with frozen screens with disk swapping at full throttle clearly meant that 512MB is not enough.

Actually when I start CIV on my desktop (1GB RAM) it occupies over 500MB RAM.

I have played 5 standard map games so far and would like to share some experiences regarding the performance of the game with you. Obviously YMMV...

- On a standard map game, whenever I got to modern age ~1700 the performance would start to degrade progressively. When I try it on another desktop with only 512MB RAM, the game is always a little choppy (still playable) but around 1000AD becomes increasingly unplayable.

- This is pure speculation, but I sense that the bad graphical performance is not related to the graphics card, but maybe to the usage of the python engine for game interfaces. Pyhton is *Not* fast, since it is interpreted, and it *IS* memory intensive it it gets to the point of doing garbage collection. I may have stepped into 2 or plus python garbage collections during games, and had to wait a full minutes for the screen to un-freeze. I have been a python programmer a few years back and I *do* recognize this behavior.
And maybe it would explain why the game is not much faster with a GeForce 6800 than it is with a Geforce 5500 as long as they both have 1GB RAM the graphics are about the same jerkiness level compared to other games (AoE3 for instance.

Maybe the game is playabe with 512MB but only in small, tiny or duel sized maps.
And if you have 256MB memory I dont think you should even bother to try, it's not worth your time...

I think there are some *BIG* improvements to be made to the python part of the game. It's clear to me that's where the big problems lie at the moment. You can program a game much faster using python, but at the risk of generating some very inefficient code. I think this is the case, but luckily python is a good language for making quick changes to software....

Anyway, I certainly would *not* expect a patch any time soon.

P.S. I have to take off my hat to Fireaxis developers for *one* thing though: The game A.I. in Civ 4 runs circles around the previous games. It is *really* well done because this is the first time I find the AI opponents not being too predictable. Best AI I have seen in a game with the exception of Black & White 2.
Overall I think the introduction of python was a good idea for moddability and reusability of the game BUT it *should no* have been rushed out the door without proper testing. There *are* way too many forgotten and unused python objects forgotten in memory during gameplay if you ask me, and the longer you play the worse it gets. In the end though, you'd better upgrade to 1GB RAM for standard map, and 2GB for Huge maps. I have not tested with 2GB, but it should be enough...

Come on fireaxis, let's fine tune those python structures ok? The whole thing screams inefficiency!!...

 

[madman1981]

So that's practically a 2gb requirement if you want it to run smooth... well in that case, it should say on the box.

 

[Old Dood]

So that's practically a 2gb requirement if you want it to run smooth... well in that case, it should say on the box.

Yes it should! It should say: Realistic Requirements!

I just ordered more ram for my Dell Dim 5100. I will have 4Gb of Ram by 11-14-05.

 

[limpkit]

Yes it should! It should say: Realistic Requirements!

I just ordered more ram for my Dell Dim 5100. I will have 4Gb of Ram by 11-14-05.

Well, that certainly is a way to solve the problem!

But I think Fireaxis developers are good at their jobs so I'd expect the memory requirements to go down over time as patches for Civ4 roll out.

As it is, the game's memory usage resembles more a prototype proof-of-concept than a beta quality produt. Basically focus seems to have been put on functionality regardless of efficiency.

I can only wonder what's the opinion of Sid over all this

Still, this is a revolutionary game in technological terms. They should be able to publish games like Colonization 2 with only a couple months of development using Civ 4 infrastructure.

Maybe Sid & Sorenson thought it out for the long-term, but had to rush it out ... pressured by the management suits probably .

 

[Old Dood]

The game works for me now....I just want 4Gb so I can multi-task more. I can not stand waiting for the swap file to shut up! Even at 2Gb of ram I can hear it from time to time.

 

[civspain]

i have 512 and xp game runs perfect,i think this thead is a tad bit exagerated

 

[Velvet-Glove]

I have just upgraded my RAM from 512MB to 1 GB and, I have to say, it did make a worthwhile improvement to the running of the game. It did run on 512MB but once the world opened up and a lot of stuff was going it did feel 'heavy' and unresponsive when scrolling around. I hardly ever get that now, though it does still pause for a moment when zooming out (beyond the point where you can see your units on the screen). Closing the game is a bit quicker too now... far less disk thrashing as it tidies up after itself.

I checked Windows Task Manager and discovered one of my games was using 443MB of RAM... no wonder my PC was struggling when I only had 512 in total!

 

[Old Dood]

I have just upgraded my RAM from 512MB to 1 GB and, I have to say, it did make a worthwhile improvement to the running of the game. It did run on 512MB but once the world opened up and a lot of stuff was going it did feel 'heavy' and unresponsive when scrolling around. I hardly ever get that now, though it does still pause for a moment when zooming out (beyond the point where you can see your units on the screen). Closing the game is a bit quicker too now... far less disk thrashing as it tidies up after itself.

I checked Windows Task Manager and discovered one of my games was using 443MB of RAM... no wonder my PC was struggling when I only had 512 in total!

AND....XP will take up almost 256Mbs of memory...don't forget that...

 

[TheBarnacle]

thanks, limp. if this is the case, it answers my question regarding whether or not a patch can even fix the problem. i'm guessing it can, but whether or not they WILL fix it...or soon...is speculative.

 

[LoneWolf5050]

I have 512 and find standard maps playable. There is a slowdown but nothing like what you describe. There is certainly a lot of disk access though. I think this is a case of YMMV, since obviously others have different troubles.

A large map game does noticably slow things down. The same was true of Civ3 when it came out too though, don't forget. And it didn't use Python, so I'm not sure that is the heart of the issue, though I am sure it contributes.

RAM is so cheap now though, an upgrade may be in the future...

--Julian

 

[Henry Ford]

This thread is way off, I run Windows Xp Pro. Celeron D 2.66, 512 ram, Radeon 9550 256ram, most recent updated driver. I run on huge no problem, minus beginning "scrambled" wonder video. Other then that which should be fixed on the first patch the game runs smooth. So it has something to do with each individual computer.

 

[lamaslany]

Runs fine on my PC - 512MB physical RAM with a 1035MB page file.

Remember if your page file is too big you can expect to get a lot of disk thrashing which will decrease performance...

AND....XP will take up almost 256Mbs of memory...don't forget that...

You need to optimise your system before playing games. I use a batch file to kill extraneous processes and stop un-needed services before starting up any game - with AV running it uses approximately 120MB, without it is approximately 85MB (I use McAfee which seems quite bloated! I was thinking of looking into NOD32...)

 

[Fieryphoenix]

I have 2 Gb, but one weekend I brought it over to my folk's to play. They have only 256 Mb, but I was able to play small and tiny maps just fine, and standard was only a little pokey.

 

[Ubiquitous]

This thread is way off, I run Windows Xp Pro. Celeron D 2.66, 512 ram, Radeon 9550 256ram, most recent updated driver. I run on huge no problem, minus beginning "scrambled" wonder video. Other then that which should be fixed on the first patch the game runs smooth. So it has something to do with each individual computer.

I wonder ... what year have you actually played to in your game? Come back and tell us what happens when you reveal the whole world map with a decent amount of other civilisations...

In a word, this thread is not 'way off' just because you don't experience the problems the OP has. Just because you don't have a problem doesn't mean that a problem doesn't exist.

 

[Old Dood]

I do turn off processes...I do not use a batch file though. I had to buy more ram for my son's Toshiba laptop to get that up to 1Gb so he might be able to play...so I said..sure why not...get 2Gb's more for me.

Plus I have a feeling games will end up needing at least 2Gb's to run decent in the not to distance future. Especially when the new Win OS comes out.

 

[limpkit]

Runs fine on my PC - 512MB physical RAM with a 1035MB page file.

Remember if your page file is too big you can expect to get a lot of disk thrashing which will decrease performance...



You need to optimise your system before playing games. I use a batch file to kill extraneous processes and stop un-needed services before starting up any game - with AV running it uses approximately 120MB, without it is approximately 85MB (I use McAfee which seems quite bloated! I was thinking of looking into NOD32...)

I have a small swapfile of just 512MB because in my opinion, if the OS start using swapfile, you need to upgrade your RAM, because it is cheaper than having to replace your harddrive (when it dies of too much swapping a while later ).

Anyway as I said before YMMV, but I *do* have to say that the most recent games I bought, namely Dungeon Siege 2, Black & White 2 and Age of Empires 3, all of them running at 1024x768 with 8x anti-aliasing absolutely *fly* on my machine. And they were all published in the last 3 months.

What the heck, I think it is pretty obvious that a game like Black & White 2 is not less demanding in any way than Civ4 should be... it is a *huge*, *complex* game, as graphically intensive as I have ever seen...

Anyway, here are my specs just for the record:

400W PSU
Asus A7V8X-X motherboard
Athlon XP 2800+ (overclocked to 2.350GHz)
1GB DDR400 RAM
128MB GeForce FX 5600XT (overclocked to 375MHz core/656MHz memory)
200GB WesternDigital IDE harddrive.

And no, I had no problem at all installing Civ4 in this computer, except it insisted my original DVD was not in the drive, when it actually *was*. I had to download and use some kind of safedisc protection crack, to be able to play my original game

Regarding your second point, I have an apache/php/pgsql server running on my desktop, and obviously I stopped these services after noticing the memory requirements of civ4, but am able to play the other 3 games I mentioned with those services running, in perfect conditions. And I think that Black & White 2 requirements are higher than Civ4's (not sure though, just seems to that they should).
But I don't think the average computer user should have to even know what a service is, let alone how to stop them But this is another matter, it was not the point of my post

Regarding your third point, please do yourself a favor and use NOD32. You can't possibly imagine how *good* it is, absolutely the best anti-virus I have ever used (except when I'm using Linux ). I have it running on 4 computers at home (server, desktop and 2 laptops - these have Mob.Radeons 7500 and black terrain problems ) and I cannot stress enough how good it is. You just forget it's there you know?... Since there was no trial, I downloaded it over eMule, and was so impressed that I had to buy it. Sorry if this is brutally off-topic!

 

[limpkit]

...
Plus I have a feeling games will end up needing at least 2Gb's to run decent in the not to distance future. Especially when the new Win OS comes out.

You are very much right in my opinion. I have been testing Windows Vista (beta2) and with 1GB RAM I have only 300MB free memory after entering the desktop. But it looks sooooo cool

As a side note, the more I play Civ4 the more amazed I am at the depth and feel of the game. A rushed job, but a very good job indeed

 

[limpkit]

I wonder ... what year have you actually played to in your game? Come back and tell us what happens when you reveal the whole world map with a decent amount of other civilisations...

In a word, this thread is not 'way off' just because you don't experience the problems the OP has. Just because you don't have a problem doesn't mean that a problem doesn't exist.

Yes, maybe I should have specified this, but i *can* play a huge map perfectly well - at the beginning of the game. I guess it's the progressive build-up of other civs, with all their cities and units that drains memory in a not-so-efficient manner. Other than that, a Celeron 2.66MHz, 512MB and a Radeon 9550 are all well below my own setup, and since computer science is an exact science, there is absolutely no way a computer with such specification could run Civ4 better than mine does.

I'll always remember something a teacher told us in my first class of C programming back at the first year of C.Science: "A well functioning computer is *always* right. It is your job to learn it's language and teach it to do what you want. If it doesn't understand, it's your fault. Period."

 

[Sorceresss]

[1] computer science is an exact science

[2] A well functioning computer is *always* right.

Two very simplistic & naive, dogmatic statements--from the critical point of view of the most elementary epistemology.

May I suggest, for starters :

Timothy R. Colburn (2000). Philosophy and Computer Science. London : M.E. Sharpe.

 

[limpkit]

Two very simplistic & naive, dogmatic statements--from the critical point of view of the most elementary epistemology.

May I suggest, for starters :

Timothy R. Colburn (2000). Philosophy and Computer Science. London : M.E. Sharpe.

Good evening Sorceresss, it is an honor to have you responding to me, since I am new on this forum.

I shall look into it, after all we learn until we die, right? Besides I have finished my M.Sc. in Computer Science back in 1998, so in the meantime something revolutionary could have come up, but I seriously doubt it...

Computer science is merely a branch of Applied Mathematics, and Mathematics have a tendency for not changing, even after millenia of scientific evolution. They evolve, new fields are discovered/invented, but anything that has been mathematically proven just cannot be unproven (except if the original proof was wrong - it happened before, but was quickly corrected because mathematicians always try to find each other at fault ).

It may suprise you, but the sentences you considered naïve have actually been proven mathematically. There is a caveat though. The term computer that my teacher mentioned, is an abstract model of computer known as Turing Machine. The Turing Machine is a mathematical abstraction invented by a mathematician years before the first electronic computer was invented, and to put it simply, a computer can do everything and nothing more than a Touring Machine can.
Since the Touring machine is a mathematical object, with properties and rules, whatever you can prove using it, applies to any physical electronic computer with binary logic.

Sorry if I bug you with all this blabbering, but I really love my field of work

So, even if they sound naïve and wrong, those assertions are an absolute mathematical truth.

Another very different problem is that as computer applications become ever more complex and the interactions between them too many to be processed by the human brain, the computer's behavior becomes too dense for our understanding, hence the sensation we get that it's behavior is not linear. But it's the differences in (ALL) the programs running in two computers that make their behaviors different.

The whole subject of computer science is fascinating really, because of it's mathematical foundation.

Thanks for the tip on the book, I am really interested in the title, because I always thought that mathematics are the science from where all other sciences build upon, and that relates very closely to philosophy (the science of sciences). Too bad philosophy is *not* exact, but that's exactly the charm of correlating the two.

As a matter of fact, during my first year of Calculus I had several courses making me have goosebumps. It was so pure, logical and beautiful, it provided such closure that all I could think was that I was being given a peek inside God's mind... How philosophical is that? Almost touches the religious....

P.S. Sorry about my english, I'm not a native english speaker