Civ 3 Slowness - hardware related?

[aznbbj]

Hello all,

I've owned Civ3 for the past year or so and have had no problems until lately. I upgraded my system (CPU/mobo/RAM) a week ago and have noticed a definite "lag" when I play Civ3. After reading through the forums it's clear that other users have had this slowness problem, despite having otherwise powerful systems. Here's when it happens:

-clicking on a city and going into the city menu
-selecting units from the build menu
-just before i get an improvement for my palace
-just before i am contacted by a computer player (diplomacy)
-...just about any situation requiring me to click the "circle" (okay button)

The lag lasts anywhere from 5-10 seconds, and even occurs in brand new games with medium sized maps.

Now here's the quirky thing - on my old system, which was definitely slower overall, I never experienced this lag. Sure, I'd experience the lag that everybody gets as a game wears on(say, 1500AD), but I've been accustomed to that kind of slowness ever since Master of Orion (g). The lag I'm talking about occurs as early as the game setup screen, and is distinct to my new system. Here's a breakdown of the two rigs:

Old rig:
CPU: 1 GHz Athlon T-Bird
RAM: 384 Megs PC-133 SDRAM (generic)
Mobo: MSI K7T Turbo
OS: WinXP Home
Videocard: Visiontek Xtasy 6564 GeForce 3 Ti200

New rig:
CPU: Athlon XP 1800+
RAM: 256 Megs PC2700 DDRAM (mushkin)
Mobo: Soyo KT333 Dragon Lite
OS: Same
Videocard: Same

Note that the differences between the new system and the old system are the following:
-CPU
-RAM
-Motherboard
-Chipset drivers
-Win XP Service Pack 1 (upgraded it just a week ago with the new system)

Everything else can be considered consistent (hard drives, videocard, OS, soundcard, even DirectX 8.1, which was installed on the old system).

After noticing the lag, I tried defragging my HD, installing the latest patch (1.29), and installing the newest NVIDIA drivers, all to no avail.

The difference in performance is significant - I refuse to play Civ3 on my brand new system because the lag is simply so irritating. I'm basically afraid to click the okay button or switch into any of the game's countless secondary menus/screens. Note that the load time and animations are noticeably faster, as they should be.

Anyway I hope this is of some help to those trying to find a solution to these slowdown issues. I've delineated the differences between the two systems, and perhaps that will help narrow down what the cause of the slowdown problem is.

Thanks,
Sion

PS - I have not experienced the "slow scroll" problem reported by other NVIDIA card owners.

 

[thefrenchzulu]

Very stupid question?

Have you reinstalled everything?
OS, Civ3 etc when you upgraded?

 

[Sim_One]

You might (from less desperate options to more desperate options) :

1) Consider scanning for any viruses
2) Increase the maximum limit for virtual memory
3) Consider uninstalling Civ3, deleting the Civ3 folder, and reinstalling Civ3
4) Consider formatting your harddrive and reinstalling everything

and...most desperate option of all
5) Uninstall Civ3 and return it to the place from which you bought it and demand a refund.

 

[aznbbj]

I wiped Civ3 off my disk last night and then reinstalled it, and it did run better. However, that's because I was running at the lowest resolution. When I went back to my regular resolution (1280x1024) everything bogged down again.

I haven't reinstalled my OS (too much junk to set up lol ... I'll wait until Christmas when I have some free time!). My computer checks for viruses daily, and my virtual memory is set at 750 megs. I do have less ram this time around (256 megs DDR instead of 384 megs PC133), so maybe going up to 512 might help? I dunno.

It's playable though, and even though I'd love to be able to see more on the screen at once, I'll live with it cuz I love the game too much not to play.

 

[thefrenchzulu]

Originally posted by aznbbj

I haven't reinstalled my OS (too much junk to set up lol ... I'll wait until Christmas when I have some free time!). My computer checks for viruses daily, and my virtual memory is set at 750 megs. I do have less ram this time around (256 megs DDR instead of 384 megs PC133), so maybe going up to 512 might help? I dunno.

That is your problem. Though it will sometimes run, you cannot change motherboard etc without reinstalling your OS.

Your OS remembers your hardware config and still thinks you are running the old stuff, resultingin many small conflicts!!!