Anybody running okay with Radeon 9250 PCI version?

[solowoo]

My computer is a P4 2.6GHz, 512MB RAM with Radeon 9250 on PCI bus. Civ4 is running incredibly slow on it, making only a few FPS perhaps. I don't know whether the problem is mainly due to insufficient RAM or the graphics card. If it is the RAM I can buy 512MB more, but if it is the graphics card there is little I can do as the mother board does not support AGP.

Could anybody tell me whether the card is okay for the game? Or should I just forget about it and save for a new machine instead?

 

[Gorgo]

I have a Radeon 9200Pro with 128MB and it sounds very much as though mine is running faster than yours, but still by no means perfectly - I guess it depends on your expectations. I never really expected CIV IV to run like lightning on my old(ish) pc, and it is very choppy, but I honestly put this down to the memory problems that have been documented elsewhere in this forum.
My advice to you is to wait for the patch and see if it changes things. Mine's an AGP card (4x), so if you do have a problem it may be related to the PCI, but this seems unlikely.

For what it's worth I'm running - 1.5Ghz P4, 512mb RAM.

Wait for the fix, then re-assess is my advice. You might be attributing hardware problems to software issues.

 

[Loopy]

Which resolution and which graphics settings? Turn either or both down and your FPS will increase. If you want to run at the highest resolutions with all the eye candy, you'll need more powerful hardware.

 

[solowoo]

I have already tuned down every settings to their absolute minimum. I even opened a separate user account to make sure my other programmes do not run. Not much help, sadly.

Now I can only wait and see if the coming patch could solve my problem.

 

[skovran]

Could anybody tell me whether the card is okay for the game? Or should I just forget about it and save for a new machine instead?

After reading some of the posts on these boards, I specifically bought the Radeon 9250 PCI card for my AGP-less computer. It has worked fine, and I am playing on the highest graphics settings at 1280x1024. My computer has a 3.0 GHz Intel P4 CPU with hyperthreading and 2 GBs of RAM.

As an aside, I was stunned when I opened my nearly new and well-provisioned work computer and saw an empty space on my motherboard labelled "AGP". I guess when they call a machine a "workstation" they don't expect you to try to play games on it. Neither the onboard video card (Intel 865) nor the card I had in it (Radeon 7000) happened to support the Texture and Lighting (TnL). That was a cranky day, but watching the advisors bounce around as just teeth and eyes was kind of fun.

 

[Smidlee]

My computer is a P4 2.6GHz, 512MB RAM with Radeon 9250 on PCI bus. Civ4 is running incredibly slow on it, making only a few FPS perhaps. I don't know whether the problem is mainly due to insufficient RAM or the graphics card. If it is the RAM I can buy 512MB more, but if it is the graphics card there is little I can do as the mother board does not support AGP.

Could anybody tell me whether the card is okay for the game? Or should I just forget about it and save for a new machine instead?

One of my PC has this card ; intel 2.7gh,512 ram. I tried it with an empty huge map and it seems to do ok with some lag. I sure this will get worst with a fully load huge map but it's very much playable unlike my oldest pc. But for a low end pci card I would say it works well enough for civ 4.
Even with my newest pc there is some lag with a fully loaded huge map especially when I zoomed out even with a pci-express gf 7800 gt. ( graphic settings makes no difference) If you are serious about PC gaming then you want a motherboard with pci-express slot but just for this game I would just increase your ram to atleast 1gb. More ram will reduce any slowdowns cause by moving files around between your ram and hard drive. So if you see pauses (you will on huge map which can run up to 1.5gb) while the hardrive is running then more ram will help.

So it very questionable that your graphic card is the problem with Civ4. It seems Civ4 handles memory poorly. While more ram will reduce some of the lag don't expect it to remove it all but it's the cheapest improvement you can get.