Beyond The Sword Runs Very Slow

[despilks]

Hi people. Maybe somebody can help me.
I have just installed Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword expansion and game runs very slow for me.
Both the original game and first expansion, Warlords, run smoothly for me with graphics turned to maximum. But Beyond the sword runs at about only 10fps.
my computer has much higher specifications than listed under optimum in Beyond the Sword red me file. I Have AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, 1GB of DDR2 memory and ATI EAX3650 graphic card.

Can anybody help and suggest how to make game run faster?

 

[Steve2000]

BTS has stiffer requirements than Warlords and Vanilla Civ. You may just need to turn your settings down a bit for BTS.

 

[Boris Eberhart]

Hello Despilks,

Did you find a solution for your problem?

Since I did a fresh install of Vista I have the exact samen problem. Core2Duo 6600, 4GB, Vista64, 8800GTS. Fresh install of Vista ultimate, newest drivers, dx up-to-date. Lowering the settings to the bare minimum doesn't work either. BtS runs very very sluggish. It used to run perfect (highest settins) a few months back on the exact same hardware and OS. The other CIVS: colonization, original and warlords run flawless.

Tried running the game in Ubuntu 8.10 using wine. Doesn't run very well but better than BtS is running on Vista64 right now.

 

[RQRose]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's having this problem. I actually study or watch a movie in between turns. The average turn change time is 30 seconds to 2 minutes so I turned the "wait in between turns" feature off and now multiple turns pass (thankfully) between each 1-2 minutes so I've figured an end around.

If Vista recognized civ iii I'd would go back to it, I loved Zombie Apocalypse...

 

[Gath]

Hello Despilks,

Did you find a solution for your problem?

Since I did a fresh install of Vista I have the exact samen problem. Core2Duo 6600, 4GB, Vista64, 8800GTS. Fresh install of Vista ultimate, newest drivers, dx up-to-date. Lowering the settings to the bare minimum doesn't work either. BtS runs very very sluggish. It used to run perfect (highest settins) a few months back on the exact same hardware and OS. The other CIVS: colonization, original and warlords run flawless.

Tried running the game in Ubuntu 8.10 using wine. Doesn't run very well but better than BtS is running on Vista64 right now.

this has been happening to me too. my system runs crysis at max settings and yet when I reinstalled BoTS its suddenly going slow?

 

[ori]

in most cases its - a problem with graphics handling is there any specific instance where it goes especially slow?

 

[Gath]

in most cases its - a problem with graphics handling is there any specific instance where it goes especially slow?

It runs great up until it loads the game engine. Menu's have no apparent issues.

My system:

Intel I7 920 @ 2.67 GHZ
6.00 GB Ram
Vista Ultimate 64bit
Nvidia Geforce GTX 295

Running Civ4 Beyond the sword via Steam Client.

It's nothing to do with the game settings as far as I can tell, its still heartrendingly slow with all the game settings turned to lowest.

 

[ori]

could you post your dxdiag results file?

 

[Gath]

could you post your dxdiag results file?

I've attached it.

View attachment DxDiag.txt

edit1: I've also just tried playing civ4 vanilla, it runs just fine. i'm going to download warlords and see if it works

edit2: just updated my graphics card drivers to newest for vista. no change.

edit3: warlords also works just fine.

 

[omnimutant]

I've just recent come back to playing this after a New PC and New video card and what feels like about a year or so. On my old rig, which was a much slower system 2.2 Athlon XP/ 1 gig of ram/ ATI radeon 9600XT/ windows XP SP2, max graphic settings at 1280 X1024 BTS did not give me lag even with 16 Civs until things got pretty far into the game, like modern age etc.

My new rig (its new to me but yes still old no laughing!) Athlon 64 3000+ /1.5 gig of ram/ ATI Radeon HD 4650/ Windows XP SP3, lags right from the start. Turns take dramatically longer even with an 8 civ large map. I'm not sure what the deal is but it's driving me nuts. Upgrade and get slower game performance makes me sad. I even turned of AA, dropped settings to medium, you name it. Any Ideas? Yes I have latest drivers and all of that installed.

I'm starting to blame SP3 only because I waited so long to install it on this box and had no major issues with anything, until I did. I dunno I'm lost for ideas. Help Please!

 

[ori]

could you post your dxdiag results?
try the memsaver setting in the civilizationIV.ini.

 

[omnimutant]

try the memsaver setting in the civilizationIV.ini.

What do I need to do with it?

Thanks

 

[ori]

ok - the drivers really are uptodate (just checking )
in the civilizationIV.ini change the following:

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

to


; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 1

if that does not help change the following:

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 0

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 0

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 1

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 1

so that they look as shown

 

[omnimutant]

Cool I'll give it a shot and let you know how it turned out.

 

[omnimutant]

k Update:

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 1

Did not really make a difference at all


if that does not help change the following:

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 0

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 0

Those seemed to help a little

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 1

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 1

Wasn't having issues with movie lag at all Ironically.

Thanks for the help. Those help a bit but I'm wondering if I got some system Issues on my end thats causing issue with the game more so then just the game settings.

As usual I run XP real lean (best performance, classic mode, almost nothing in the tray, no quick launch etc). I'll keep probing around to see what else I can fix.

 

[ori]

your system should be up to it - and usually in such a case the graphics are the culprit - unfortunately all I can recommend is lower the graphics settings ingame maybe someone else has a better recommendation.