ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 Unplayable?

[thebunny]

I bought Civ4 for my wife for her birthday (well, at least partially...) and it arrived today. After installing, I ran into the black landscape issue which I fixed by turning off AGP Speed in the SMARTGART settings for the Omega drivers. The game now runs, but is pretty much unplayable due to choppiness and laginess while moving the camera around and while accessing the interface. I've tried all the usual suspects - installed latest drivers, disabled AV, checked for spyware, shut down all unnecessary programs, defraged, etc. But no help. Her laptop specs are:

P4 1.8 Ghz
512 MB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (32 MB), using the latest Omega drivers
XP Home Edition SP2

I realize that these are at the low end of the requirements for Civ4, but I would still expect the game to run somewhat well at the lowest graphical settings. Are there any suggestions for improving the performance for Radeon 7500 users? I'm going to try it on my high-end laptop tomorrow to see if the performance is any better.

 

[piranhaZ]

I bought Civ4 for my wife for her birthday (well, at least partially...) and it arrived today. After installing, I ran into the black landscape issue which I fixed by turning off AGP Speed in the SMARTGART settings for the Omega drivers. The game now runs, but is pretty much unplayable due to choppiness and laginess while moving the camera around and while accessing the interface. I've tried all the usual suspects - installed latest drivers, disabled AV, checked for spyware, shut down all unnecessary programs, defraged, etc. But no help. Her laptop specs are:

P4 1.8 Ghz
512 MB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (32 MB), using the latest Omega drivers
XP Home Edition SP2

I realize that these are at the low end of the requirements for Civ4, but I would still expect the game to run somewhat well at the lowest graphical settings. Are there any suggestions for improving the performance for Radeon 7500 users? I'm going to try it on my high-end laptop tomorrow to see if the performance is any better.

Sorry, you're out of luck for that comp. The 7500 was yanked out as the minimal card at the last moment.

 

[thebunny]

Thanks for the info. Can you point me to where this change is documented? Also, is anyone with a Radeon 7500 able to play the game (once you get past the terrain issue)?

 

[Olive]

I have not. Black terrain. Black mood.

 

[HMSVictory]

Sorry about the Double Post

I too have the infamous black terain and Chesire cat problem. I believe that it is the failure of my video card. I just thought I'd let folks know my setup and hopefully this will prevent another $50 being wasted.

Dell Latitude C640 (Laptop)
1.6ghz Pentium 4
512MB of RAM
Radeon Mobility 7500C w/32mb of RAM and T&L capability and NO shader support.

I am unsure about the current state of my drivers. I will download the updated ones this evening and see if this helps. I have yet to try the reveal map option or done the reveal in the XML file. But like others who have posted in the various threads, I can see the full map normally when I use the map editor. I am now in the market for bare bones desktop barring any incredible stories of folks getting it to work properly on my type of machine. Good luck everybody.

I'll post when I know anything more.

This link to ATI gives the full specs of the card (and the rest of the 7500 serires)

http://www.ati.com/products/comparisons/mobilitycomparison.html

 

[thebunny]

Here is how I fixed the black terrain issue (assuming you have the Omega drivers installed)...

Go into advanced properties for your display
Go to the SMARTGART tab
Set the AGP Speed to Off
Reboot

After doing this, terrain shows up fine in the game. However, it is painfully slow, as in 1-2 seconds just to scroll the camera once. I'm going to post this question over on Apolyton as well in hopes that we can get an official response eventually.

 

[Olive]

try this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134020
worked for me

 

[thebunny]

try this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134020
worked for me

That does appear to resolve the black terrain issue, but the game is still virtually unplayable due to extreme lagginess of the camera and interface.

 

[oldStatesman]

Thanks for the info. Can you point me to where this change is documented? Also, is anyone with a Radeon 7500 able to play the game (once you get past the terrain issue)?

The 7500 AGP with 64 MB memory would run the game - but you had to use World Builder to remove the fog of war. (Leaderheads were still Cheshiore Cats with this 'fix'). The graphics were still funky though. But the game played - at least for a few turns - as I did not play it for long this way.

I too have not seen where the 7500 was removed officially at the last minute either - Firaxis' site has it posted as the minimum card - and srtest.com still reports it as being okay - (besides being printed on the side of the box)caveat being 64 MB video RAM.

But it will not run the game correctly as it stands regardless.

 

[Peppla]

I too have the mobility 7500. I was able to fix the chesire cat and terrain issues once i set the AGP to 0, but the game still runs soooooooo slowly. Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can speed it up? I defragged my hard drive last night, but is there anything else I can do to improve the performance?

 

[Gr3yW0lf]

Did you fixed the whole terrain bug, or just your terrain isn't black anymore? Because I can solve, that the terrain become to a bright, maybe yellow *something*, but it's not the original terrain of the map. If you zoom out, you can see the original terrain at a distant point of view.

 

[thebunny]

I too have the mobility 7500. I was able to fix the chesire cat and terrain issues once i set the AGP to 0, but the game still runs soooooooo slowly. Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can speed it up? I defragged my hard drive last night, but is there anything else I can do to improve the performance?

I believe that setting the AGP Speed to Off is what is causing the extreme slowness (though I'm not sure why). I set it back up to 4x and then made the changes suggested in the Temp Solution To Blackness Problem thread. Now the terrain shows up and the game runs smooth even at the highest detail levels. The only problem is that all the terrain is dark, so it's hard to play for very long. But until they release a patch to fix the T&L problems, it might be the best alternative.