Choppy video problem

[Professor_x_9]

Hi, I'm having a video issue with my game. As soon as it starts up the intro movie is all choppy. Originally I assumed it was my video card sinse it dosen't support pixel and vertex shading but I have sinse purchased and installed a new card. It's an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 and as far as I can tell it exceeds the recommended system riquirements. I'm still getting the same problem though. I tried reinstalling the game, and I updated my graphics drivers but it's still not working right. Has anyone got any advice? -thanks

-edit- Odd, if I disable full screen mode the video runs much smoother. Any thoughts?

 

[Zanmato]

Goto the nvidia control panel through the Display control panel > Settings > Advanced > Fx5200 > Performance & Quality settings:
Set 'Image Setting' to 'High Performance', Antialiasing to 'Off' or 'App-controlled'.
In-game settings all graphic settings to Low, Antialiasing to 0.
Open the Civ4.ini file set 'Bink16bit' to 1, all other Bink settings to 0, Allowscreenshots to 1.
Try increasing the BIOS AGP aperture to 128mb or 256mb if the card uses the AGP port. You can find this usually under 'Advanced Chipset features'. Free up as much RAM as possible, close any apps running in the background while Civ4 is open.

See how it goes with those settings. I did have the FX5200 myself when I first got Civ4 but since upgraded because the FX struggled badly with the game. It should run alot better now however since patches have lowered the memory usage. Since you tried windowed mode I think that would lower the memory usage.

 

[Professor_x_9]

Thanks very much. One thing though: where is the Civ4.ini file? I looked in Program files -> Firaxis Games -> Civ4 and in some of the sub folders there but i'm a little confused. Thanks again.

 

[Zanmato]

You'll find it in 'My Documents > My Games > Sid Meier's Civilization 4 folder'. The game uses this directory to store saves, patches and mods.

 

[Professor_x_9]

Oh, ok. I was looking in the program files. I found a config file with the Bink stuff you menchioned so I changed it there. Does that do pretty much the same thing? After I changed the Bink stuff in the config file the video runs much smoother. It's still pretty choppy but way better then it was. Also, you said:

"Try increasing the BIOS AGP aperture to 128mb or 256mb if the card uses the AGP port. You can find this usually under 'Advanced Chipset features'."

Could you go into a little more detail about this? I wasn't able to find anything about an AGP aperture. And I don't see an option called "Advanced Chipset features." If I go to my video card settings in Controll Panel -> Appearance and Themes -> Display -> Settings tab then click Advanced I get a menu with the following tabs: General, Adapter, Monitor, Troubleshoot, Color Mangement, and GeForce FX 5200. The GeForce tab has another menu with lots of additional options but I still haven't found anything about AGP aperture. -thanks again

 

[Zanmato]

Sorry, I didn't explain this part too well. To increase the aperture you need to enter the BIOS setup when you boot the PC up. Usually you press the 'delete' key before it starts up Windows. So just boot it up and press delete and it should enter the BIOS. You should find the feature there.