512meg ram not enough?

[cdcuase]

Just wondering if any of you are experiencing massive slowdown during the late stages of the game. The early game is fine for me. But once each civ gets a certain amount of cities on a standard sized map, I notice my comp starts go ballistic on my HD (keeps accessing it every second whenever it is the AI's turn). This causes the game to pause intermitently for as long as a minute before I can even scroll around the map...

My rig is:
2.4ghz p4
nvidia 6600gt 128
512m ddr400
120gig HD (partitioned and defraged)

Like I said, early game is extremely smooth. No graphical glitches or anything. It's the later stages that make the game unplayable.

The slowdown occurs even after I reboot the computer and load up a saved game.

I'm thinking this is a memory issue. Is it possible that 512megs of ram isn't enough? According to the game specs it should be enough.

Someone on another thread mentioned a problem with a memory leak in the game. Has this been confirmed?

 

[BearMan]

I have 512 Mb, and play on a small map with 10-18 Civs. It works fine.
Haven't playied on Standard, Not Enough Civs to fill a map of that size yet

 

[SuicideMW]

I'm starting to get a feeling there is a memory leak in the game. I have 1.5GB of RAM and sometimes the game starts crashing and resetting my PC.

One thing I have done to overcome the slowdown is playing on a resolution that is one notch lower than the resolution you usually use for your desktop.

 

[NDCSPURS]

On my first go I tried max resolution and graphics on a huge map with all civs and took ages to start and it was very very slow. I've played the last few games on a standard size map with 7 civs and lowest settings and it was just as smooth as civ3 on a standard map. I haven't tried any other settings yet.

2800+ sempron
512MB (448)
radeon X200 64MB shared

 

[Willem]

Someone on another thread mentioned a problem with a memory leak in the game. Has this been confirmed?

If your problem was a memory leak then rebooting the system would clear up the lag for awhile. And 512 is listed as the minimum requirement, so having more will probably help alot. 512 is pretty much a minimum for most systems these days, you'll always see better performance with more.

 

[cdcuase]

The official civ4 game specs (on the box itself) is: Minimum ram = 256 megs, Recommended = 512 megs.

I previously had 256megs on my comp. I bought another stick to boost it to 512 when I heard about the recommended game specs. I'm kinda broke now (I spent more money upgrading my vid card, all to be able to play this game).

Acording to Windows Task Manager the game was consuming well over 200 megs of Pagefile memory (and growing!). That's the most I've ever seen for an application. Apparently, my ram sticks weren't enough and the program was forced to use my hd for the extra memory usage!

I can run Age of Empires 3 (a game that uses highly intensive graphics and places the same amount, if not more, moving units on a map) with no problem.

But then again, not a lot of people seem to be complaining about this ram usage problem, so it's possible there is something different about my setup. I'll have to do a bit more experimenting...

 

[buckeye96]

I have a 1.0 gig of RAM and the last time the game locked up it was using over 600 megs of pagefile memory.

 

[Mercade]

512 MB is enough. This is not a bug report.

 

[tristangreer]

It's not really fair when the RECOMMENDED specs don't cut it in a game. I'd understand more if the minimum requirements don't really play it well, but when the recommended requirements barely will, that's saying something.

 

[Bast]

It's not really fair when the RECOMMENDED specs don't cut it in a game. I'd understand more if the minimum requirements don't really play it well, but when the recommended requirements barely will, that's saying something.

That's the POINT! There is something wrong with this game. Why did they make the minimum requirements like that if it isn't going to work?

Technically, I do meet the minimum requirements, but I doubt it's going to run well on my machine.

 

[Marla_Singer]

If the game slows down with 1.5 gig of RAM, then maybe the problem isn't RAM but the video card or the 3d card ?

 

[Ruffin]

Memory leak (but apparently not for everyone, or there'd be a few million more posters on here). There are no minimum specs for some of us because it's eventually going to crack up no matter what we do. What form the disaster takes depends on your particular hardware. 1.25G Ram, I get massive lag after talking to foreign leaders. But it runs beautifully until then.

I think the problem is that their playtesters are hardcore gamers with high end systems. Those of us with borderline cards or the minimum ram aren't guinea pigged at all.

 

[Panzer Ace]

I have a nvidia Geforce 6800 OC and 512MB of RAM. I keep getting a message from Windows saying 'low virtual memory...' right after my game crashes. During the game, it just frezzes for 1 min or 2 and I can't do anything. At first I had the 'checkerboard' screen problem but I put the graphics on medium and it stopped it. I'm gona go and get more RAM because nowadays it seems 512 is crappy, when a year ago it was good .....

 

[tcwleblanc]

I think the problem is that their playtesters are hardcore gamers with high end systems. Those of us with borderline cards or the minimum ram aren't guinea pigged at all.

I'm going to have to agree with you there, as I'm running a amd x64 3700+ 3.5gigs of ram, an ATI x800 and a Creative soundblaster audigy2 soundcard, with the settings as maxed as they can go in the game and i haven't experianced any troubles. well other than there is no soundtrack during the gameplay, not sure if thats normal or not. anywho i just use the custum soundtrack option and that runs swell.

but i bet they had crazy rigs to test the game as well.

 

[tcwleblanc]

also are you all running xp service pack 2?

 

[Gojira54]

I have XP SP2, with 2 2.8 Ghz processors, a 128 MB Video, and 512 MB RAM. There is definitely a memory leak. Mid-game, right before it freezes up hopelessly forever, if I Ctrl-Alt-Del and open the Task Manager I will see it taking up 618 of my 512 RAM, which means it is now using the page file on the hard drive as well (explains all those accesses). All other tasks are also running on a tiny fraction of the RAM they normally use. These are classic signs of a memory leak.

 

[dpaajones]

Sounds like this game needs a few terrabytes of RAM...

 

[tristangreer]

What is bad is that they changed the minimum specs after the release of the game. Before the release most people were told that the minimum was 256MB RAM, regardless of the OS. This is confirmed by the manual, which gives the same figure. Now they are saying, after the release, that the minimum is 512MB RAM for XP users. I have 512MB RAM, and the game isn't playable toward the middle and endgame. People are blaming me for not having more RAM, but according to what I was told prior to the game's release, I had double the minimum requirement!

 

[Klyden]

There does appear to be a memory leak for me as well. I have over a gig of memory and have the hard drive start running like crazy mid game. Most of the auto save game files i have are in the 220k range. I caught one that it did not even bother to put the k on and listed it as 1,258 or something silly like that for size.

Patch time.

 

[tcwleblanc]

People are blaming me for not having more RAM, but according to what I was told prior to the game's release, I had double the minimum requirement!

people shouldnt be blaming it on you, it was their mistake to post the wrong specs for the game.