Any help appreciated

[trythis]

Recently I had a ongoing issue with a old Geforce MX4000 card where several of my kids games (sims 2 with exp and Roller Coaster tycoon3 with exp) were freezing for a few seconds and then resuming. Civ 4 was also playing very slow as though it also seemed to pause and then continue. Screen also had a bad flicker.

I tried reloading windows to no avail and eventually broke down and purchased a geforce 6800 card. All others games are now playing fine and flicker has gone away but as I play Civ 4 ( also have warlord installed) my screen turns black and computer locks up. Yes I do have the 2.08 patch installed.

I have been playing with the .ini file but nothing is seeming to help at this point. I changed the following :

Memsaver from 0 to 1
DisablePAKmemorymapping from 0 to 1
setmaxframe rates from 0 to 30
dynamicanimpaging from 1 to 0
syncinput from 0 to 1

I also set the civ 4 video setting from high to med. Any thoughts on what may be causing this?

 

[trythis]

I have been working with take 2 support concerning this and they have had me do the folowing to no avail.

1. Delete and reinstall the video driver.
2. Uninstall and reinstall both civ 4 and warlords with patches a few times.
3. Try different monitor with driver and reinstall .ini file.


I have also placed in a more wattage power supply while disconnecting one of my cd drives. Also, I have had the side of the pc open all the while and also had 5" fan blowing on pc for possible heat issues. None of this has resolved my issue of my screen just going blank.

Does anyone have a Geforce 6800 XT and the game runs fine?

 

[Rayss523]

Go to the store and buy a can off air.

Remove your video card.

Walk outside.

Use the can of air on video card to remove the years of dust.

Put video card back in computer.

Play games.

 

[trythis]

Rayss523,

Maybe if you would have taken the time to actually read the post you would noticed I just purchased the card within the last few weeks. Also you may have noticed that I have several other higher video intense games running without a problem. Also you may have noticed that I stated that I have a 5 inch fan blowing on my pc with the side open to resolve any type of heat issues.

Does anyone have a geforce 6800 XT card running the game fine?

 

[snoopy369]

Side open = does not help heat issues... can make it worse. But if it's a quick crash (and not a after-an-hour crash) that's probably not the issue anyway.

That said, Civ is much worse heatwise than almost any other game, even 'big graphics' games... high number of sprites means a lot of work. It does overheat a lot of cards. I'd definitely install a temperature monitoring program (I forget nVidia's common one but it should be easy to find.) See what's causing the trouble. Also do the same for your CPU/motherboard (motherboard monitor, or similar)... see what they're running at.

I haven't heard of an unusual problem with 6800xt's...so I doubt it's that. Of course try a few different video drivers for it, not just the newest, there are frequently problems with the newest one so it's worth trying a couple. Also check that your AGP settings are correct, an upgrade from a Geforce 4 series to 6 series is a big jump and you may need to adjust the AGP for optimal performance.

 

[trythis]

Thanks snoopy369 for your reply. I did though finally get the game to work right and have a thought why.

I have to set my antialiasing and anisortropic settings on the nvidia control panel to 4x and also set the antialiasing sampling in the game to 4 then the game works fine with no lock ups or blank screens. If I leave either of he 2 control panel settings to let application manage these settings I have issues.

After research I found that my AGP slot will only support up to a 4X graphics card. Now I am not sure which, but I beleve civ 4, is not managing the settings properly. I say this as I have stated before that I have other games working fine with no lock ups or blank screens.

I would suggest that if you are upgrading your graphics card on a older motherboard you may want to verify what your AGP slot can handle and then adust your settings accordingly. I hope this helps someone else out there.