Civ 4 BtS - Game slows after 10-15 turns

[danwiseman]

Hi, I have been playing Civ 4 without any problems for many months but about 2-3 months ago my Civ 4 started to slow down. As far as I know I had not made any changes to my system apart from standard windows updates. Now when I play after 10-15 turns (it varies) of play the screen starts scrolling really slowly and every action is also very slow. It makes the game pretty well unplayable. If I close down and immediately restart it is still slow when it bring up the opening screens...if I wait a while the game starts fine and I can play another 10-15 turns....

I check some other threads of Users that had similar issues. I updated my DirectX to the latest version and I tried using windowed mode....neither of these fixed my issue.

I have the following setup:
Latitude D830 Laptop - Windows XP SP 3
2.2 GHz , 2GB RAM, 512MB Graphics card
Running BtS Version 319

I am out of ideas on what to do next....
Any thoughts would be most appreciated....

 

[ori]

welcome to CFC

try a newer driver for your graphics card:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winxp_195.62_whql.html

 

[Halenoir]

Hi,

I have the same Latitude D830 and experience exactly the same problem. My nvidia drivers claim to be up to date. I am about to re-install the whole system, but will watch out for other clues on this thread
before doing so.

 

[ori]

Welcome to CFC

what is your graphics card?
unfortunately Dell does not support their graphics card through new driver releases

 

[danwiseman]

I installed the new video driver and it seems to have worked to make the game playable. It still seems to slow down a little after those 10-15 turns but it is still fast enough where I can play without major speed issues. Many Thanks!!

Any ideas on how to stop the slow down completely...what is the reason for the sudden performance loss (My driver was only a few months out of date)....

 

[Halenoir]

I was less lucky, I got the latest nvidia driver, but the problem essentially persists, serious slow down after 10-15 turns (sometimes just 2 or 3!), game becomes unplayable.
I have a NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M graphic card and driver version
6.14.11.9562 installed. Maybe danwiseman has a different graphic card in his Latitude D830?

 

[ori]

does reducing the graphics settings work at all?
is there anything else running in the background?

 

[danwiseman]

I have an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M in my laptop. Before upgrading the driver I tried minimum graphics settings, running no other applications and this did not help the issue. The strange thing is that it was working great for 3 or 4 months and then suddenly started slowing maybe 2 months ago.

 

[Halenoir]

My particular performance problem with civ4 probably originates from a poor
heat sink implementation for the GPU chip in the laptop. It appears to be un-related
neither to the operating system, drivers or any other software component, nor to civ itself
(other than it's more graphics demanding than other applications).

I tracked the problem down to the temperature using the rather useful SpeedFan
gadget. This clearly reveals the dramatic rise of the temperature of the GPU chip when playing
civ4, at some point when it reaches about 75°C the performance degrades seriously and
the game becomes unplayable. At that point the fan is already turning full speed but doesn't
manage to cool the chip sufficiently. The fact that you won't observe this problem with a brand new
laptop, but only after some usage is probably linked to the increasing obstruction of the fan tray with
dust, thereby reducing its cooling power.

Solution: Improve the cooling. Already lifting up the bottom of the laptop, putting it on any kind of
spacer (I used a wooden bar) can do miracles (improved air flow). I bought a cheap laptop cooling pad, that keeps the temperature of all components in safe range.

Result: I played 50 turns on the 18 civs world map late game, high graphics settings, fluid gameplay, good and stable performance!