ASUS G73 - Surprisingly Poor Performance!?

Shaithis · Apr 5, 2011

OK, this has me baffled. I have a veritable beast of a gaming laptop here with the ASUS G73, yet I get significant lag and slowdowns in my current scenario (large map, turn 310 or so) every time I do just about anything, from zooming in / out to panning the map or selecting "move next unit," ending my turn, etc. What's really puzzling is that neither graphic settings (from the highest to the lowest) nor the Directx level (9 or 10/11) seem to have much of an effect on things.

What am I missing? Please help!

timtofly · Apr 5, 2011

It is possible, but there could be a slightly corrupted file, that is corrupting the way the games coding works. Unfortunatly it is a game riddled with bad code from launch. The way steam does patches, does not help either. If you are in the middle of a game and online and the patch hits...

Shurdus · Apr 5, 2011

Sorry to great your system runs into trouble like this, that can be so frustrating!

Have you tried updating your drivers? You should make sure that all drivers from mobo to vga-card are up to date. Also, have you checked the temps of your system? If temps get too high done high end systems may downclock themselves to prevent overheating.

Do you experience symptoms like these in other applications as well?

Sjru · Apr 5, 2011

Don't forget other causes: Viruses and/or unwanted applications that may be using most of your system CPU (ie an automatic antivirus scan).
Check your task manager to see if there is any app that is chewing most of the CPU.

Shaithis · Apr 5, 2011

I've done the obvious. Drivers are up to date. All other games work great, including Starcraft II 8 player maps on ultra / extreme settings. There's no throttling going on that I can tell.

I've been having these issues consistently ever since I hit the midgame, where much of the map is explored. Things have gotten a lot worse now that I researched satellites and have 20+ towns. Could it be something with the quad-core processor not operating efficiently?

Sjru · Apr 5, 2011

Shaithis said:
I've done the obvious. Drivers are up to date. All other games work great, including Starcraft II 8 player maps on ultra / extreme settings. There's no throttling going on that I can tell.

I've been having these issues consistently ever since I hit the midgame, where much of the map is explored. Things have gotten a lot worse now that I researched satellites and have 20+ towns. Could it be something with the quad-core processor not operating efficiently?

Maybe CiV isn't using all your cores, perhaps is just using 1 core, check your config.ini, "MaxSimultaneousThreads" should be a value of 4 for you.

Also check if there is another app using most of your CPU (A virus?). BTW: you cannot compare SC2 with CiV since SC2 was in development over 9 years and was tweaked/optimized like hell. CiV was rushed and does a poor job in memory management.

Shaithis · Apr 5, 2011

Hmm, that wasn't it; mine is set to 8 (makes sense since I have an i7).

I don't have a virus for sure. The laptop works perfectly for everything else.

Has anyone had similar issues? I have seen a few people posting that they are using a G73 for this game. Mine is the Radeon model by the way.

Sjru · Apr 5, 2011

I've also heard that CiV used to have trouble with many cores. I'm not certain but you may try to narrow the cores allowed to 2, just in case.

Also try checking your task manager, check if there is any app that might using your cpu at the moment, preventing the game from using most of the resources.

On the other hand, while it doesn't really make sense the lag you have with that specs, it might be the game itself: You see, I also sometimes run into lag problems, but they're because the game swap in and out memory slots from RAM and the HDD. However it is badly implemented as it sometimes crashes (for me and Otthers). If you want to confirm that, check if the HDD/CPU usage is high when you do those thing in-game, it may prove that.

You may also try disabling hot-loading of objects (config.ini) if that's the case.

Shurdus · Apr 6, 2011

Shaithis said:
Hmm, that wasn't it; mine is set to 8 (makes sense since I have an i7).

I don't have a virus for sure. The laptop works perfectly for everything else.

Has anyone had similar issues? I have seen a few people posting that they are using a G73 for this game. Mine is the Radeon model by the way.

What have you done to exclude a virus as a possible cause of the problems? Shaithis raises valid points, yet you seem to dismiss them because ' the laptop worlds perfectly for everything else'.

Troubleshooting works by the merit of eliminating possible issues. If you lightly dismiss the solutions offered, you may skip one of the possible solutions over something as silly as ' the laptop works fine for everything else'.

If you have not checked extensively, then do it. Post the results of some test, then we can look into the issue further. I am sure not many users will be inclined to help if you dismiss possible solutions without checking.

Just trying to be helpful, I understand that it may found harsh. That was not my intention, I am trying to help. I'm sure you understand that.

Shaithis · Apr 6, 2011

Shurdus said:
What have you done to exclude a virus as a possible cause of the problems? Shaithis raises valid points, yet you seem to dismiss them because ' the laptop worlds perfectly for everything else'.

Troubleshooting works by the merit of eliminating possible issues. If you lightly dismiss the solutions offered, you may skip one of the possible solutions over something as silly as ' the laptop works fine for everything else'.

If you have not checked extensively, then do it. Post the results of some test, then we can look into the issue further. I am sure not many users will be inclined to help if you dismiss possible solutions without checking.

Just trying to be helpful, I understand that it may found harsh. That was not my intention, I am trying to help. I'm sure you understand that.

Respectfully, I am confident that I do not have a virus, hence my dismissal of that particular possibility. I am very familiar with this particular field, and make use of Windows Security Essentials and Malwarebytes on a regular basis. I've also only had this laptop for about 2 weeks, and have not spent a great deal of this time on the internet. Furthermore, even if I did have a virus that had the potency of disrupting an i7 processor to such an extent, its effect would be apparent across the board (unless it selectively chose to operate only during my Civ V experience).

Trust me, I have a good understanding of the troubleshooting process. It is equally important to be able to prioritize possible issues by probability, which is very low in this case.

Shurdus · Apr 6, 2011

Shaithis said:
Respectfully, I am confident that I do not have a virus, hence my dismissal of that particular possibility. I am very familiar with this particular field, and make use of Windows Security Essentials and Malwarebytes on a regular basis. I've also only had this laptop for about 2 weeks, and have not spent a great deal of this time on the internet. Furthermore, even if I did have a virus that had the potency of disrupting an i7 processor to such an extent, its effect would be apparent across the board (unless it selectively chose to operate only during my Civ V experience).

Trust me, I have a good understanding of the troubleshooting process. It is equally important to be able to prioritize possible issues by probability, which is very low in this case.

Fair enough, as long as you checked amd are not just dismissing possibilities by shrugging and saying 'nah that's not it, what else you got?'

Shurdus · Apr 6, 2011

Well actually the processor would be the very last thing I'd suspect, unless it does indeed get too hot.

Did you indeed check the task manager to see how much cpu you were using during a game? Can you post a screeny of the results?

Other than that, maybe posting a dxdiag might be of some help. Can you wrap it in spoiler tags?

Shaithis · Apr 7, 2011

DxDiag below. I don't have time to take and upload a screenshot, but I just played around with it and it's clear that just a few of my cores only get up to 60% capacity while everything slows down. As far as I know, the only other option is the GPU, but it's basically just as beast as the CPU. Hope we can figure this out, this is very frustrating.

Spoiler :

Sjru · Apr 7, 2011

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~1.6GHz

You have a 8 core machine, however, each core is about 1.60 ghz. What if the game is just using 1 core? It would explain the lag.

You may have to check if the game uses all (or almost all) cores. Have you tried running on windows mode? I dunno if it would matter but it may help checking if the game uses most cores.

Anze · Apr 8, 2011

same laptop, same issues... if i zoom out a lot, everything is laggy..., usually graphics freezes between turns. Some times i even get resource artifacts that are moving with camera, but thats probably game bug, not hardware

tokala · Apr 8, 2011

Shaithis said:
As far as I know, the only other option is the GPU, but it's basically just as beast as the CPU. Hope we can figure this out, this is very frustrating.

One of the recent radeon driver updates was supposed to have improved performance in Civ5.

timtofly · Apr 8, 2011

Anze said:
same laptop, same issues... if i zoom out a lot, everything is laggy..., usually graphics freezes between turns. Some times i even get resource artifacts that are moving with camera, but thats probably game bug, not hardware

I would try to verify the local files under steam. Not just one time, but it may take many times. It may just be me, but each patch especially if it happens during a current game, seems to corrupt files. I have had almost every graphic glitch and freeze that has been brought up here, and doing that has solved all of the problems, until the next patch does me in again. I am still working on the acheivements, so I stay online, but I am sure that every once in a while people here may voluntarily or involuntarily log onto steam, at which point they have no choice in receiving a download or patch which may or may not corrupt certain files. It just seems like a trendy pattern to me though.

I am currently playing the game with a core duo at 1.6 GHz, and the game does get laggy at times, but I can live with that. I figure that a processor at the core speed of 3.0 or more would definetly make the game go faster especially during late game turns. I have finished a game though on a large map with over 100 cities and 100's of my own units and as long as there are no graphic glitches caused by corrupt files, it does work.

Shaithis · Apr 8, 2011

Sjru said:
You have a 8 core machine, however, each core is about 1.60 ghz. What if the game is just using 1 core? It would explain the lag.

You may have to check if the game uses all (or almost all) cores. Have you tried running on windows mode? I dunno if it would matter but it may help checking if the game uses most cores.

It's definitely using at least 4 cores, with minor spikes in 2 more cores. Only the first core ever gets over 50% usage excluding some infrequent spiking.

Updated to Catalyst 11.3; no improvement.

Sjru · Apr 8, 2011

Perhaps your Anti-virus is set to maximum protection or something like that and is actively scanning the memory (and the game) for viruses? It could explain the ~~symptons~~ lag.

Another simple explanation is that just the game is swapping in and out the graphics, (while not using all the video memory available). Perhaps if you search on the graphicsettings.ini for "MaxResidentScenes = " and change it to something bigger (If it's =1) and looking at the config.ini and disable the hotloader (DisableHotLoader = 1)?
Also you can check on the config.ini if the cvar "MaxSimultaneousThreads" is at 4 or more.

And if it's not software it might be hardware... is your laptop bottlenecking?

Shaithis · Apr 9, 2011

Sjru said:
Perhaps your Anti-virus is set to maximum protection or something like that and is actively scanning the memory (and the game) for viruses? It could explain the ~~symptons~~ lag.

Another simple explanation is that just the game is swapping in and out the graphics, (while not using all the video memory available). Perhaps if you search on the graphicsettings.ini for "MaxResidentScenes = " and change it to something bigger (If it's =1) and looking at the config.ini and disable the hotloader (DisableHotLoader = 1)?
Also you can check on the config.ini if the cvar "MaxSimultaneousThreads" is at 4 or more.

And if it's not software it might be hardware... is your laptop bottlenecking?

No, tried that, yes, no (well, Windows Experience Index - all scores > 7 besides data transfer). Even tried lowering resolution and playing fullscreen. What the heck is going on???

ASUS G73 - Surprisingly Poor Performance!?

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