After about 5-10 minutes of having civ loaded, the machine locks up with a strange checkerboard pattern:
I have to turn my machine off before it will boot again.
I decided to do some testing to see if I could track down the issue.
I turned the graphics from high (all)/4x over sample to medium (all)/0x over sample. Same lockup, same time frame.
I thought there might be a temperature issue, so I decided to hammer the GPU with futuremark and auqamark to see if I could cause the card to fail. I ran each programs for 4 hours straight without issues. The highest temperature I could get the card to was 79 C (from a start point of 45 C)
Next, I let the game idle (i.e., not playing it) and the lockup still occurred after 5 minutes, so I don't believe it's any kind of "auto save" bug for me (this was mentioned on another thread).
My next test involved hooking in a second monitor to the video card, and keeping all the temp displays (video, cpu, ram, etc) on this monitor while I loaded the game onto the first (original) monitor. As with the previous test, I didnt play the game, but left it idling at the end of a turn. It locked up in the normal time frame, dropping the checkerboard on both monitors. The video card temp at lockup was 74 C. The CPU, RAM, etc, were within their normal range.
My next test was to open the case and bring in a floor fan. I then ran the floor fan at high speed (from a safe distance), pointed at a 45 degree angle to the case. I then repeated the test above. Failure occurred in the same time frame, this time at 69 C.
Im not sure whats causing this problem, but Im reasonably sure its not an overheat issue with my machine. If anyone has a similar issue, post up lets see if we can help Firaxis get this one solved.
Some interesting side notes:
[1] The game eats between 48-52 percent of my available CPU, even when at the end of a turn. This is regardless of how much action is on the screen, i.e., over a city full of activity, or looking over an unexplored (completely black) part of the map.
[2] Some people are reporting a memory leak. I can confirm that the memory used by the game goes up each turn, but Im not sure if its a leak, or if the game is just pulling needed memory. At idle, the games memory usage on my machine did not change.
[3] As a final test, I ran the game, but moved the view area over an unexplored part of the world (everything on the view area of the screen was black). Same lockup time, same normal video/cpu/ram temps.
[4] Like other reports, I also get the weird mini map graphics (banded horizontal lines) at certain zoom levels.
[5] I can play every other modern game out there - BF2, Doom 3, WOW, EQ2, etc with the graphics turned up to max settings without issues.
[6] I installed the game onto an older computer with GeForce 4 card. To date, no issues on the older machine. Its just dog slow.
Machine Specs:
Asus A8V Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
BFA 6800 GT Video Card (using nvidia 81.85 driver)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Plat Pro (latest driver from creative)
480W Power Supply
Two Sticks of 512 PC-3200 DDR
Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9.0c (also let the CIV4 installer do its install of DX9.0c as well).
Scanned all logical volumes before starting any testing
Defragged all logical volumes before starting any testing
I have to turn my machine off before it will boot again.
I decided to do some testing to see if I could track down the issue.
I turned the graphics from high (all)/4x over sample to medium (all)/0x over sample. Same lockup, same time frame.
I thought there might be a temperature issue, so I decided to hammer the GPU with futuremark and auqamark to see if I could cause the card to fail. I ran each programs for 4 hours straight without issues. The highest temperature I could get the card to was 79 C (from a start point of 45 C)
Next, I let the game idle (i.e., not playing it) and the lockup still occurred after 5 minutes, so I don't believe it's any kind of "auto save" bug for me (this was mentioned on another thread).
My next test involved hooking in a second monitor to the video card, and keeping all the temp displays (video, cpu, ram, etc) on this monitor while I loaded the game onto the first (original) monitor. As with the previous test, I didnt play the game, but left it idling at the end of a turn. It locked up in the normal time frame, dropping the checkerboard on both monitors. The video card temp at lockup was 74 C. The CPU, RAM, etc, were within their normal range.
My next test was to open the case and bring in a floor fan. I then ran the floor fan at high speed (from a safe distance), pointed at a 45 degree angle to the case. I then repeated the test above. Failure occurred in the same time frame, this time at 69 C.
Im not sure whats causing this problem, but Im reasonably sure its not an overheat issue with my machine. If anyone has a similar issue, post up lets see if we can help Firaxis get this one solved.
Some interesting side notes:
[1] The game eats between 48-52 percent of my available CPU, even when at the end of a turn. This is regardless of how much action is on the screen, i.e., over a city full of activity, or looking over an unexplored (completely black) part of the map.
[2] Some people are reporting a memory leak. I can confirm that the memory used by the game goes up each turn, but Im not sure if its a leak, or if the game is just pulling needed memory. At idle, the games memory usage on my machine did not change.
[3] As a final test, I ran the game, but moved the view area over an unexplored part of the world (everything on the view area of the screen was black). Same lockup time, same normal video/cpu/ram temps.
[4] Like other reports, I also get the weird mini map graphics (banded horizontal lines) at certain zoom levels.
[5] I can play every other modern game out there - BF2, Doom 3, WOW, EQ2, etc with the graphics turned up to max settings without issues.
[6] I installed the game onto an older computer with GeForce 4 card. To date, no issues on the older machine. Its just dog slow.
Machine Specs:
Asus A8V Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
BFA 6800 GT Video Card (using nvidia 81.85 driver)
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Plat Pro (latest driver from creative)
480W Power Supply
Two Sticks of 512 PC-3200 DDR
Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9.0c (also let the CIV4 installer do its install of DX9.0c as well).
Scanned all logical volumes before starting any testing
Defragged all logical volumes before starting any testing
Im going to try my good'ol ti4200 later tonight and see if that helps. Im like you I can play BF2 for hours on end with not a single hiccup.
Results? Game not working properly. (At least there is no: the way it is meant to be played intro. 
)
