civ 5 hogging all computer ressources when loading

[whismerhill]

is there a way to make civ 5 not hog all ressources when loading ?
I'm a multitasker at heart and

my main annoyance with civ 5 is the long loading times (mainly when launching & reloading a savegame)
well it's not really THAT long

but the fact that you can't ALT-Tab or Shift-Tab (steam overlay) during the load times is a bit annoying. especially when I'm following a conversation and can't reply right away
well I can alt-tab but civ 5 doesn't really give back the focus that easily it seems

I wish there was like a lazy loading option or something.

 

[docbud]

Well...it depends upon what you have so far as your computer. What is your graphic card? How much RAM? What is your processor?

EDIT: And to be honest--the game loads faster and plays faster between turns than this forum and its threads loading.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

It also crashes sometimes when trying to tab out during a load and it refuses to be minimized. I think putting it into windowed mode fixes that. Don't know how to do it, and I kinda like the fullscreen feel.

 

[reddishrecue]

I had to window mode civ 5 bnw after the patch as well. I used to use fullscreen before the patch with no problems, but now I get the resource issue when full screened. I guess you can do other things like surf the web and take turns online when people are taking their sweet time.

 

[whismerhill]

I had to window mode civ 5 bnw after the patch as well. I used to use fullscreen before the patch with no problems, but now I get the resource issue when full screened. I guess you can do other things like surf the web and take turns online when people are taking their sweet time.

maybe I'll try to run it in a window though I don't much like to run games in a window


@docbud
no it doesn't really depend from all that, or rather yes it's influenced but you knowing that stuff won't change a single thing
but since you asked for it:
i7-2600k
16Gb RAM
GTX470 oc (approximately the performance of a GTX560Ti)

 

[joncnunn]

I've always found it better while Civ V is loading to serf the web on my phone instead of trying to serf on the computer while still loading.

I find that full screen makes little difference; as far as windows is concerned it's still a window; and will be shrunk out of maximized mode if some other process demands screen real estate (such as avast or windows wanting you to reboot to finish installing updates)

 

[docbud]

@docbud
no it doesn't really depend from all that, or rather yes it's influenced but you knowing that stuff won't change a single thing
but since you asked for it:
i7-2600k
16Gb RAM
GTX470 oc (approximately the performance of a GTX560Ti)

I know me knowing that stuff won't change a thing. I only asked because if you posted your specs, someone who knows more about PCs than myself (I'm a Mac guy) might have some input. I've seen threads where someone met the very minimum requirements for the game. That was the only reason I asked.

Good luck.

 

[joncnunn]

Civ V was notorious at time of Vanilla CD release to take several minutes to load (even with machines that were state of the art at the time.) In fact long time Civ V players may remember that until shortly before G&K was released that if they wanted to skip the video that they had to go to the ini to do so as it wasn't on the options menu and when they did that they were treated to a black screen.
And there was also a period of about a month where connecting to steam took forever before the game would even begin to start.

What I've often done is things like click the button to start and then go take a coffee break while it's loading.

As to loading an existing game same; in ancient & classical era that is fairly quick; but later it becomes another coffee break and by atomic era loading a save takes longer than it does to have started civ V initially.

On machine specs, I think on a higher level (what year was it made and describe where it was in power rankings at time it was bought [state of the art / above average / average / below average]
There has been little additional advancement in raw computing power for desktops & laptops since Windows 8 came out. The industry is concentrating on solid state drives [faster access to long term storage] and supporting faster internet speeds as they are bumping into limits with increasing CPU speed further.

 

[phillipwyllie]

It could be the DRM that steam has added to the game. You can play in offline mode so steam needs a (complicated) way to know that your copy is legit.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

No, that would only happen on startup, and it would only need to query your steam account

 

[Bergerperson]

Well what do you expect for a graphics-heavy game like this? Games like Civilization IV or Age of Empire III don't have long loading times because their graphics aren't as insanely detailed like this one.

 

[whismerhill]

Well what do you expect for a graphics-heavy game like this? Games like Civilization IV or Age of Empire III don't have long loading times because their graphics aren't as insanely detailed like this one.

you're joking right ?
I mean ok civ 5 is pretty for a turn based game but that's pretty much it
Skyrim with tons of mods is very pretty and has near instantaneous startup time

so no I don't think the graphics have anything to do with the time it takes to startup & load a game

and as I said it's not just a matter of how long it takes to load but also how much of a computer ressource hog it is
I've had lots of games where you can shift-tab and access steam community while the game is loading just fine.

honestly it needs more "sleep 1ms" in its code to give back the controls to the rest of applications xD

 

[joncnunn]

No, that would only happen on startup, and it would only need to query your steam account

About a year after the Civ V (Vanilla release), Steam's verification server was overloaded for a month before they fixed it.

 

[joncnunn]

honestly it needs more "sleep 1ms" in its code to give back the controls to the rest of applications xD

Preventing one thread from monopolizing all resources is supposed to be the job of the OS; not that of an application developer.

I also note that modern compliers will optimize empty loops away and in addition it's considered bad design to have code with a manual polling process. (Best practice is using a wait notify process)

 

[whismerhill]

Preventing one thread from monopolizing all resources is supposed to be the job of the OS; not that of an application developer.

I also note that modern compliers will optimize empty loops away and in addition it's considered bad design to have code with a manual polling process. (Best practice is using a wait notify process)

on the other hand dealing with the limitations of the OS you design your applications for, is the job of the application developer

personally I feel like being able to use 99% of the ressources of a computer is good design, because it might be wanted in some situations, and let's be honest, the majority of users just don't multitask that much

 

[reddishrecue]

I've always found it better while Civ V is loading to serf the web on my phone instead of trying to serf on the computer while still loading.

I find that full screen makes little difference; as far as windows is concerned it's still a window; and will be shrunk out of maximized mode if some other process demands screen real estate (such as avast or windows wanting you to reboot to finish installing updates)

Issues with hardware didn't arrive until after the windows 8 upgrade and the civilization 5 bnw upgrade. After these upgrades, memory use pop ups appeared which had to be ignored if one wanted to continue with the full screen. Removing the full screen no longer brought pop ups, but graphics performance wasn't as good as having the full screen.

 

[pvtjava]

Well...it depends upon what you have so far as your computer. What is your graphic card? How much RAM? What is your processor?

EDIT: And to be honest--the game loads faster and plays faster between turns than this forum and its threads loading.

That is certainly not my experience. What browser are you using? It usually takes less than 15 seconds to load a web page. It can take up to to 5 minutes to load this game. Its not even remotely comparable.

 

[whismerhill]

Issues with hardware didn't arrive until after the windows 8 upgrade and the civilization 5 bnw upgrade. After these upgrades, memory use pop ups appeared which had to be ignored if one wanted to continue with the full screen. Removing the full screen no longer brought pop ups, but graphics performance wasn't as good as having the full screen.

never had these memory use pop ups
win7 x64 here , no reason to downgrade to windows 8

That is certainly not my experience. What browser are you using? It usually takes less than 15 seconds to load a web page. It can take up to to 5 minutes to load this game. Its not even remotely comparable.

+1

 

[Pietato]

Well...it depends upon what you have so far as your computer. What is your graphic card? How much RAM? What is your processor?

EDIT: And to be honest--the game loads faster and plays faster between turns than this forum and its threads loading.

This game takes forever to load. You might want to update your 9.6k modem.

 

[docbud]

@pvtjava: I use the most recent version of Firefox for the Mac. Yes--you are right--starting a game takes longer than it does to read a thread here. And it was stupid of me to compare loading times to visiting a thread here. I was frustrated that night when I posted because it was taking a long time to read some threads. I do stand corrected.

@Pietato: I've got way more than a 9.6 k modem. I have Verizon FIOS 50/50 package.

But ditto about my stupid comparison.