Best upgrade to minimize map texture grey tile fill

[mappamundi]

Playing on large or huge maps, regardless of graphics quality settings, on a fully revealed map I have an issue with map texture filling. When zooming to an area of map I see grey tiles that will eventually be filled in with texture. Maybe if I zooming around a small area of the map the textures will stay loaded but zoom somewhere else and come back then the textures must load again. It seems like there's a limit to the size of the texture cache Civ5 keeps. Would upgrading help with this? I have a GT240 1GB, but only 3GB of RAM. Would an extra GB of RAM make a difference to the graphics or is dependent only on GPU speed and memory? Interested to hear from anyone else who has seen this on larger maps.

 

[McLMan]

An extra GB of memory will help with overall performance but not so much with your slow graphics loading issue. I'm using right at 3GB when I have the game running so it would probably give you some cushion.

A video card upgrade would make the biggest difference in your graphics. Take a look at this chart and keep in mind that you won't see much difference unless you go at least 3 tiers higher than your current card.

 

[tokala]

Are you running the DX9 mode? Seems to to be a general issue.
It's still there in DX10/11 mode, but MUCH less prominently.

If you get a new card, make sure it's a DX11 card, Civ5 really likes those

 

[mappamundi]

I figured as much. I would probably go for a GTX 460 AND the extra memory for good measure. Though I've read reports of people still having the texture fill issues on large maps with much better cards and heaps of memory so was wondering how much hardware was the issue or (gasp) poor coding.

 

[mappamundi]

Are you running the DX9 mode? Seems to to be a general issue.
It's still there in DX10/11 mode, but MUCH less prominently.

If you get a new card, make sure it's a DX11 card, Civ5 really likes those

DX10/11. DX9 is even worse for the fill lag and horrible artifacts. If you have DX11 card have you tried it on a huge map?

 

[tokala]

Never bothered, as I can barely stand the turn times on a small map

If you post a save, I could try it out

 

[mappamundi]

Never bothered, as I can barely stand the turn times on a small map

If you post a save, I could try it out

Cheers. No need for a save game to see the effect though. I just use XiDragon's reveal map button mod and start a new game to test. Doesn't need to be any cities or units for the lag to happen.

I don't mind the turn times myself, I've got used to that playing ROM on Civ4. I do like my graphics to be visible though..

 

[tokala]

Oh my, now I have even less desire to play large maps

Get the same issue you decribed.
GTX260 896 MB (DX10), 4GB, Win7 64bit, Dual monitors, Civ running on the primary.

Strange enough, it seem to be worse when lowering the resolution. At 1024x768 I manage to get Civ "hanging" for few seconds while GPU load drops to zero (driver reset?). After a minute or so scrolling around Civ finally surrendered and crashed for good

 

[mappamundi]

Thanks for that tokala. Yeah I get even more degraded performance on lower settings as well, strangely. If I set everything to low quality instead of grey tiles I get some wierd tartan blanket underlay that ends up bleeding through the textures. I put that down to something not right with the current nvidia drivers though.
Your cards way above mine on McLMan's hierachy table though. I wonder if DX11 cards would really fix this, or it's hype.

BTW it all works fine for me on standard size maps, medium to high quality with no lagging issues.

 

[tokala]

Check this out

 

[mappamundi]

I did actually try fiddling with these numbers a couple of days ago. Didn't push them up as far as 4096 though. Tried that today but doesn't make much of an improvement with my graphics card as far as I can tell, either on dx10/11 or dx9. Also tried changing numberofcontinents and blockonload but didn't see any improvement there either.

 

[tokala]

It might be that fiddling with those numbers only has an effect on video cards with reasonably fast memory. People with a GTS250 and above so far have reported significant improvements.

The GTS250 has twice, the 260 almost four times the memory bandwidth of a GT240/1024MB.
On the other hand my GPU memory controller load is never over 20%, maybe not such a brilliant theory

 

[mappamundi]

added an extra gb of RAM today an all. Definitely think I will hold off upgrading my graphics card though until I see some performance reports from more people with high end cards.

 

[tokala]

If we DON'T get any reports that usually means it works just fine on those cards

 

[Joey Numbaz]

I have an i7 920, with 6 GB RAM (DDR3) and a GTX 460 with 2 GB Video RAM. I'd say that's a beefy system. All 7.4-7.5 on the Windows kick ass scale or whatever they call it. Except for the HD which is 5.9 (max you can get without RAID).

I'm having the problem. Trying the 4096 fix now, I'll let you know how it goes.

One thing - I didn't notice this the other night, when I started my first game and played to 1320 BC. But I'm noticing it tonight starting with the save file. Wonder if that somehow makes a difference?

 

[Joey Numbaz]

The 4096 thing worked. Didn't even take that long to load up initially. Still annoying though . . . you shouldn't have to do that with a high powered machine.

 

[mappamundi]

Have you tried it on a fully revealed huge map? (using the reveal map button from XiDragon)

 

[tokala]

It's better, it's not gone completely. It seems the terrain for roughly 1/10th of a whole huge map gets loaded into the VRAM at any one time, if you scroll beyond, that, the textures will be visibly reloaded.

 

[Joey Numbaz]

I haven't tried on a fully revealed huge map. For me it looks like it's only grass and plains that have the delayed load. Forests, jungle, etc. are fine.