Almost unplayable on an ati 9800 pro

[Slategrey252]

Thats right, Almost unplayable.

Firstly system specs.

Intel P4 3.2mhz cpu with hyper threading
ATI radeon 9800 pro 128 meg
512 meg RAM
160 gig free hard drive space
Windows XP service pack 2
All the latest drivers loaded, ie directx 9.0c and ATI 5.11 driver (11.11.05)

1. The game takes nearly 5 minutes to load, sometimes when you click on the game icon it doesnt load at all.

2. In game when you click on the little icon to show the grid, it takes a looooong time to actually show the grid.

3. Every now and then the game stutters. Thas the only word i can think of to describe the short (3 or 4 second) pauses

4. Just when things settle down and you think it´s safe to play the game. the screen goes black, then blue and then the computer reboots.

Any suggestions?. Ive seen the support page on the official site, and the ATI problem it describes is the only one I dont seem to have.

 

[AsnoT]

umm, don't blame it on the card.

EDIT: i'm beginning to suspect winXP a bit - anyone else running civ4 on win2k without problems?

 

[Frege]

I would say it's your RAM.

I'm running Civ4 on a:
P4 3.0Ghz with HT
1024MB PC3200
ATI Radeon 9800Pro 128Mb

And I have no problems with loading times or rendering on 1280x1024 at high settings.

 

[KniteFlux]

Have you tried doing some basic non-game related tasks?

* Defrag your harddrive
* Test your Memory modules and Harddrive
* Set any over clocking to factory
* Remove any new hardware and see if the game works without it

Are you having problems with only Civ4, or are other gpu/cpu intensive programs having problems too?

I am running a 1.8 gig P4, 512 mges ram, an old GeForce 3 64 meg, with all latest drivers and I am experiencing about a minute or so load time, and I have brief (second or two pauses) when turning on features such as grid tiles. Your performance does indeed suggest a problem.

I agree with AsnoT, your blue screen suggests that you might be having a OS or hardware problem. Most of my friends that end up getting blue screens followed by reboots when playing games usually have heat or power supply related problems. There are obviosuly many possible problems, but if you are able to swap a power supply out of another computer and test it with yours or if you recently upgraded your videocard, try putting the old one back in. Also, when in doubt, uninstall the game and try reinstalling it. Thats fixed a number of problems for me a friends over the years.

 

[mamimo]

My specs are 9700 pro, Athlon 2200+ & 1024mb RAM.
I haven't got any the problems above, However when playing an advanced stage game, it's runs very slow. When trying to move on the map it sometimes freezes...
I play small & standard maps (not huge), every time I play standard in happens & sometime in small maps.

 

[base_]

I run into exactly the same problems: after playing for a while suddenly freezes and/or bsod reboot. Replaced motherboard, still same, testing memory right now.
System: P4 2,4GHz 1024Mb 9800Pro

 

[KniteFlux]

Having problems with the game rebooting in the later stages of a game are most likely due to the memory leak (though I have not experienced my computer rebooting due to this leak). No matter what specs your computer is, if you play a huge world, you'll run into similar problems. Having lower specs on your computer just means that you'l have to paly smaller and smaller maps to avoid these problems. Because of the memory leak, I am only able to play on small maps because the leak causes my 64 meg videocard to crash constantly in standard or larger maps in the later tech eras.

If you are having problems with slow down and reboots in the early stagaes of the game, you might be having other problems. Maybe its specific glitch with the game and your videocard, there seems to be many of them out there. But, I would take a good look at your computer if you have mid-range specs like these posted and seeing problems "completely" randomly, including in the first few turns of a new game.

Hopefully after the patch is released, almost all of these problems will go away. Everyone cross your fingers

 

[Sovietof17]

Specs

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO
3GHZ HT PENTIUM 4
ASUS P4P DELUXE MB
1 GIG memory in dual channel config

Cant post my savegame cuz its 527kb and max is 500, but it crashes my comp every time when I load it and press enter

 

[AsnoT]

which operating system, everybody?

 

[scooterguy]

I have the same system with no bugs. I only ran into issues last night when I made a trade that revealed the whole world. The game became unplayable.

 

[jajohns8]

I am convinced this is software related. There are too many vartiations of hardware configurations that are still having crashes, etc. There are just too many systems with excess memory (2 GB+) and advanced graphics cards, etc. that are having trouble, so it really seems to be the code of the game....I am waiting for the patch.....

 

[chessming]

i have same problems, the program clashes during trading or other actions...
i can not believe it is because my configuration!

my computer is ATI 9800PRO 128mb,
CPU intel P IV 3.0
and 1 GB memory
WinXP SP2

it does not clash every turn, but every 3-or 4 turns...
and sometimes the game just went to black or not response!
....
how come __??
when will there be an update ??

thanx

 

[BearMan]

Even thoe your card isn't great, it is good enough.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/vga_card_guide-14.html

I've been running civ4 on a
AMD 1.8 Ghz Athlon XP, 512 Mb, Geforce FX5200 128 Mb !
And even thoe it had a slow framerate, it always worked
But it runs flawless on my
AMD 2.0 Ghz Athlon 64, 1 Gb, Geforce 6600GT 128 Mb.

 

[countcracula]

I have all the same problems on my ati 9700, running a P4 2.4 with a gig of ram, even when I turn down all the graphics to the lowest settings. CTRL-T takes ages, receiving map info crashes or takes ages, and I get a resolution change and a blue screen hang when I load my savegames. Needless to say, this is just another one of countless video card problems I've had since I bought the card, so I can't say I'm surprised. I'll never buy ATI again.

 

[Harkonnen]

You may read 'memory leak?' thread nearby. I have almost exactly same system, and currently writing my own patch. The game consumes 250Mb of vertex data which is not normal at all. It goes blue screen and other stuff when it runs out of adderss space.

Increase swap file to 2Gb (better fixed size), and try 4.10 or 5.11 drivers. In such situations I had slow performance but at least no crashes. My aim is to reduce its memory consumption, but this is still in progress.

 

[warpstorm]

The game consumes 250Mb of vertex data which is not normal at all.

Actually, that sounds about right.

Think about this, every tile has 256 vertices just for the base tile. Let's say you play on 100x100 map - that is 2,560,000 vertices. A vertex in Gamebryo is typically 3 floats, this means 12 bytes per vertex. So far, we are up to 30,720,000 bytes just for the base map. Now add about 100 vertices per tree (remember that a forest tile has about 20-30 trees), ~50 per basic building, mines have a couple of hundred each, oh yeah, roads have 4 vertices per bend. I'd guesstimate each unit as 500+ vertices. Leaderheads are into the thousands each (I think these aren't being freed when they are done talking at you - which could be an issue).

250MB doesn't sound unreasonable.

 

[AsnoT]

would any of the folks who have REAL problems, and are trying to run the game under winXP, consider installing win2k and try there?

most people don't post their OS with their system specs, but from the ones that do i get the impression the CTD isssue is concentrated on winXP machines.

might be worth a try.

 

[Harkonnen]

I am under WinXP SP2 and it NEVER crashed (well, except my own bugs with my own patching efforts). I tried Win95..2k compatibility modes - it wasn't any better, though it might be not enough for clean Win2K case.

 

[hawkz25]

Well here are my specs and experiences

ati 9800 pro cat 5.11
3200+ XP
768 Ram
XP sp2
Nforce2 400 motherboard with latest drivers

Was playing a duel sized map. Got very very slow even on minimum details.

I edited the config file and turned on windowed mode and what a difference! I played for about 6 hours straight on a small map with no crashes and minimal slow down. I wonder if theres something buggy about playing full screen for me...

anyways, 2c.