Civ 4 running really slow (DxDiag inside)

[Insein]

Ive included my dxdiag file. Could someone tell me if they see a problem?

I noticed in the file that it only has 256mb Memory and 298mb for Page File. What does that mean? I have 1.25gb RAM installed and recognized. Why isnt the PC using that?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Zydor]

The PC is only recognising 256Mb main ram as shown in the Dxdiag - this entry

" Memory: 256MB RAM" nine lines from the top

If you believe you have installed 1.25Gb, there is a problem with your memory boards. Could be ...

- Additional memory you fitted was the wrong type / not matched with existing memory, it will then ignore the "faulty" memory

- There is a problem with the memory chips on the additional boards fitted

- You loaded memory boards incorrectly, many PCs require matched boards in 2 slots at a time to work, some will only support memory up to a particular amount for each slot, some require the same amount of RAM for each slot. You need to check your PC manual, it will tell you there

Many utilities on the net to test memory, download one and run it.

The page file is there to swap out data not required in memory at any instant in time while an application or game is running. You have a healthy pagefile set, leave it at that.

The PC is 3/4 years old, its likely therefore you will have some performance issues with only 256mb memory running (the game running under XP needs 512Mb)

If you not sure how to test the memory you have post again

============= EDIT

Been researching your prior posts

I just dont understand why i was able to run huge maps fine with of course the freezing at the end under patch 1.09 but now they lag horribly under 1.52. There wasnt any lagging under 1.09. It just randomly froze (which of course sucks) but i dont understand what they changed to make it not freeze but run poorly on some PCs.

I think all is becoming clear .....

The reason the for the change in the quote is now apparent. You were running 256mb of RAM, not 1.25Gb. Therefore under V1.09 prior to memory fixes, it gave up and crashed (froze) just ran out of room....

Enter V1.52. The main change on that was to place more work on the Video RAM tofree up main system RAM. On yours it looks as if it did, it ran albeit slowly, but it ran - it did not before. The improved memory management squeezed enough room in your 256mb to get it going, whereas under V1.09 it just crashed.

All is consistent when you take into account you were actually only running 256mb ram, not 1.25Gb...... one up for the memory changes in V1.52 to get you going in such a small memory space compared to a crash pre patch.

Solution for you appears to me, a very careful check on your memory boards
================ EDIT ends
Regards
Zy

 

[statusperfect]

My Civ 4 lags to. Heres DxDiag.... any ideas???

 

[Zydor]

Any other symptoms? anything strange on the graphics side etc ? Have you loaded Patch V1.52 ?

regards
Zy

 

[Admiral8Q]

Patch 1.52 makes the game run faster and killed the "toast only" bug for me.

I have a question though, how do you fix the skipping sound and video in the intro screen and other movies?

 

[Insein]

thanks zy. Im not sure how to tes my memory. When i look in Control Panel at my "system" it recognizes 1.25gb RAM. Im not sure why its only using 256mb.

What do i need to do to get it too work right? I'll check the sticks again but im pretty positive they are the same RAM types.

 

[Zydor]

Bink can play fast when simply blasting movies directly to the screen. The problem in Civ is that we always put the movies inside of a window (even the opening ones). That means that for each frame each pixel must be copied from the bink buffer to the window image, scaled and converted as necessary. The bink player doesn't have to do all that. Some video cards do not support those operations so the CPU has a hard time handling it. For that situation, the low-res movies do help since they only have 1/4 of the number of pixels (half-size).

Thamer is the Firaxis chief programmer.

As far as I am aware the low res movies are not yet available, no doubt they will be on the next patch.

Meanwhile all you can do is to minimise the load on the video card, could change the bink settings in the ini file (back upini before changing), or - and not a fix, but stops annoyance if that bad - turn them off.

They are aware of it, fix to follow

Regards
Zy

 

[Zydor]

Insein

Mem test utility

http://www.memtest.org/

I am not a memory guru, so apart from the basic tests, matching etc, thats me done.....

Hopefully someone more versed in memory than I will pick this one up

Regards
Zy

 

[Insein]

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 1/10/2006, 16:36:33
Machine name: ME
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Compaq Presario 061
System Model: PP150AA-ABA SR1303WM NA511
BIOS: Rev. 3.11
Processor: AMD Sempron(tm) 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
Memory: 1280MB RAM
Page File: 170MB used, 2883MB available
Windows Dir: H:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

I checked my memory and they were both PC2700, DDR 333mhz. The one was a 256mb and the other 1gb. What i did was switched them around. The 256mb was in the main slot. Now the 1gb is in the main slot and i get this result with dxdiag. Is this ok to run now? Well i guess ill try it and see.

 

[Zydor]

go for it - its working the page file has gone down significantly

Fingers crossed

Regards
Zy

 

[Insein]

woohoo! My game that took 15 mins to load and would lag horribly if i even breathed on the mouse runs smooth.

Thanks alot zy!

I can play Civ4 again!!!!!

 

[Insein]

just for reference, what does the page file do? Im just curious so i know in the future. Like i guess lower is better.

 

[Zydor]

Excellent news

The pagefile swaps out memory not needed by the running games and apps (including those in background windows). That frees up main RAM for the current running program. When the current program needs the data again it swaps it back to memory - thats slow due to disc access, so whilst pagefile helps keeps things going - and no matter what windows needs at least 64mb pagefile space for itself. The more ram you have the less it needs to use the pagefile, the more operations are done in memory, the faster it runs. You can tell when its hammering ithard (eg like you had, or a large grahics picture) because your drive light is on continually and you hear the disc hammering away faster than the average building site ...

EDIT: by the way - thats good housekeeping you have a small pagefile being used (leave the page file settings alone - its fine, you need that overall size available in case you come a situation where it has to swap out large amounts of memory, like a mega picture etc), so you have a tight hold on background services / apps running - nice to see ....

Google "pagefile" you'll get the idea

Happy World Domination

Regards
Zy

 

[Insein]

sweet. Thanks again.

 

[Admiral8Q]

Cool! Well done!

 

[statusperfect]

Any other symptoms? anything strange on the graphics side etc ? Have you loaded Patch V1.52 ?

regards
Zy

1.52 loaded. No other symptoms, just lag.

 

[Zydor]

statusperfect

You have NForce audio on board. I seem to remember a few problems over clashes with that, Neon Deon found a workaround - this may not be the exact same issue so keep expectations down. Hopefully he will pick this up and have a natter with you.

Your pagefile is a little high considering you have 1Gb RAM, minimise the background programs and services that are running.

There are a couple of other things we can try, but wise to hang on re the NForce sound for the moment

Regards
Zy