A question on CPU and Memory usage

[RobO]

I have a PC with a quad processer and 4G RAM.

Civ4 only uses less than half the CPU capacity and I've never seen it go much above 2.5G RAM. Still, I get Memory Allocation Faults once in a while. So I guess they are simply programming errors, not caused by excessive memory usage.

And Civ4 is very slow. This is RoM 2.8 with most of Aforess modmods.

See the enclosed screenshot, taken just after Alt-Tabbing out of Civ4. The UI is Danish, but you shoudl be able to find the info you need.

Is there any way to make Civ4 use my system better (and presumably reduce waiting times)? Give the process higher priority, for example?

 

[TechXLtd]

My pc does the same thing, but after searching around for that question on the interweb I found this: (Original Thread)

It's possible that it's running below normal priority because it's minimized. The exact same thing happened with Guild Wars, where minimizing the game reduces its priority, wheras actually playing the game made it high priority again.

Thanks - this seems to be the case.

Howver, I just found running it in Windowed mode rather than Full Screen has eliminated most of the stutter in the movies - the Audio stutter is totally gone and the video stutter is very minimal now.

Aslo, now in Windows mode it goes all the way to Low Priority when minimized - so it tells me perhaps Windows mode is using less resources overall.

Windows mode can be selected in the civ4config file, this line:

; Specify whether to play in fullscreen mode 0/1/ask
FullScreen = ask

I switched it to ask so now it give me a prompt at start up which one I want to run - Full Screen or Windowed.

It doesn't seem to really have much impact on process usage either since Civ4 wasn't originally designed to utilize multiple cores. I think it uses them just fine though since by default, the processor affinity is designed to select all cores when running programs. You can attempt to run it in REALTIME Priority but I don't see much of a difference in doing so. The new 2.8 hotfix should help with ROM, but I haven't gotten around to using it yet.

 

[vincentz]

There are programs out there that can make an appliation (civ4) run on 1 processor, which should give you around 25% usage. Depending on operating system you might have to increase max amount of RAM/application as this is limited in XP/VISTA (dont know about win7)

 

[TechXLtd]

There are programs out there that can make an appliation (civ4) run on 1 processor, which should give you around 25% usage. Depending on operating system you might have to increase max amount of RAM/application as this is limited in XP/VISTA (dont know about win7)

By doing that, does it make the game run more efficiently or does it just cut out using the other cores? Even so, by running it on one core, aren't you loosing performance?

What kind of program would I be searching for BTW? I'm going to see if I like running Civ4 like that to see if it helps at all. I'm not having bery much luck though on the interweb...

 

[cheesemijit]

Civ4 was made in 2005 so it can ONLY use 1 core, it ignores more than one core. what i do is this:

Create a Shortcut for Civ4Beyond the Sword as normaln (Right click send to desktop)
Rename it to Rise of Mankind
Right click and select properties
Paste this into the target

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "runrealtime" /realtime "C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4 Complete\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Rise of Mankind

This is something i do but i dont know if this is a good or bad thing to do, ive had no problems so far and it does seem slightly faster.

You can also Open up task manager
Go on Processes
Right Click each program and disable core0 from the set affinities
Launch the shortcut for ROM
Minimize and go to task manager and set affinity for civ4 to only core0

now civ4 should have a whole processor to itself and utilize it fully, to be honest though with 4gb or RAM this will hardly effect gameplay but if you have 6gb or more then it is worth it, RAM is dirt cheap and easy to install.

 

[Maatissi]

Thank you all very much for your ideas and advices in this thread!

It has made my gaming experience tolerable... Though it seems that in the windowed mode the modular leaderheads seem to lag? I am not sure if this is the same problem which causes crashes at the beginning of a turn in full screen mode... It is somewhat tolerable if autosaves set for every 2 turns, and I am fairly sure that the problem is indeed in the leaderheads for low graphic memories.

Windowed mode seems more stable in this aspect. Instead of crashing it only seems to slow down considerably...

 

[Blackflag421]

The big question is, what OS are you running? 32-bit OS's can only recognize 3 gigs of RAM, so you won't be able to use more than that without upgrading (though from my experience, vista is crap and runs much slower than XP, even on new computers - tho I hear Windows 7 is much better). The BtS exe can use more than 2 gigs of RAM without modification.

 

[RobO]

The big question is, what OS are you running? 32-bit OS's can only recognize 3 gigs of RAM, so you won't be able to use more than that without upgrading (though from my experience, vista is crap and runs much slower than XP, even on new computers - tho I hear Windows 7 is much better). The BtS exe can use more than 2 gigs of RAM without modification.

Sorry, I should have provided that. Vista 32 bit.
Only 3G? I was under the impression that a 32 bit OS could address up to 4G RAM.

 

[Blackflag421]

Nope, only 3 gigs. Detailed explanation here.

 

[RobO]

Thank you. That was interesting.

 

[zerog117]

after reading the posts above i came up with this as an possibly better way b/c it sets 2nd core to handle civ4
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "runrealtime" /realtime /affinity 2 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Rise of Mankind

 

[RobO]

after reading the posts above i came up with this as an possibly better way b/c it sets 2nd core to handle civ4
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "runrealtime" /realtime /affinity 2 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Rise of Mankind

Before I try this: Does it have any effect on normal computer usage, e.g. Alt+Tab?

 

[dexter_inside]

Before I try this: Does it have any effect on normal computer usage, e.g. Alt+Tab?

Why don't you play in windowed mode? It's much more comfortable.
I noticed that it looks better in a wider format, like 1920x1050 and it leaves you with space for the taskbar if you have only one display.

 

[RobO]

Why don't you play in windowed mode? It's much more comfortable.
I noticed that it looks better in a wider format, like 1920x1050 and it leaves you with space for the taskbar if you have only one display.

Because
1) My largest monitor runs 1680x1050 - I'm stuck with 1440x900 in Windows mode
2) Mouse scrolling doesn't work. I'm in the habit of using that a lot.

Does it run faster in Windows mode?

 

[dexter_inside]

Because
1) My largest monitor runs 1680x1050 - I'm stuck with 1440x900 in Windows mode
2) Mouse scrolling doesn't work. I'm in the habit of using that a lot.

Does it run faster in Windows mode?

There's no observable speed difference, the good part is that switching to another app is instant, unlike ALT+TAB from fullscreen.
In windowed mode there's also no difference between 1440x900 or 2560x1440.

I think you'd be better of setting it to 1680x900 from the ini file. Try not to resize the window afterwards (like maximize) because it's not done by the game, but rather by Windows (hence, no bicubic filtering and all edges will be jagged)

I don't have problems with scrolling... you have to be with the cursor in the game window to work

 

[Hedberger]

I got basically the same problems except that things go invisible as well. I tried setting both affinity and priority and windowed mode.

Edit: And i got 6 gigs of RAM

 

[RobO]

I found a 1600x1024 setting in windowed mode. It actually works quite well. Presumably not faster, but it is much easier to do something else while waiting for a turn to process.

Now, does anyone know how to start Civ on a secondary monitor? It picks the resolution choices from the primary monitor. Ordinarily I'd use the largest monitor as primary, but there is a problem with it (it doesn't always light up when I boot the PC).

 

[karigaut]

Has anyone tried this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-181547.html ?

Just wondering if it actually works, since it would be a huge help in keeping Rise of Mankind enjoyable

 

[E_Pluribus_Unum]

Has anyone tried this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-181547.html ?

Just wondering if it actually works, since it would be a huge help in keeping Rise of Mankind enjoyable

Hi!

I'm using it. It's not the Holy Grail, but help a little bit.

 

[os79]

So far:

• No storms
  
• Realtime for BtS
  
• Single unit graphic (look cooler anyway since the formation look ridiculous unrealistic anyway)
  
• Both boxes to show either friendly or enemy moves unchecked
  
• Quick combat for offense, normal combat for defense because I don't see enemy moves anyway
  
• 1280x720 resolution
  
• Low Graphics, but allow animation and effects, plan to allow movies later because it don't really have any impact in turn times
  
• Scoreboard back to BtS default, instead of BUG
  
• PLE restricted to units' buttons for changing what to show, for picking proper promotions when necessary, and horizontal groups of unit types only
  
• Civ4 alerts, only Growth is chosen
  
• and few other tweaks I don't remember

These tweaks are came by through experiments. In actuality, I have no idea what tweaks above helped with turn time but they do help me NOT have MAFs for a ilong time.