Civ V only uses half my cpu and memory

[Diadem82]

I have a pretty old computer. An AMD 64 X2 5000+ 2.6 GHz with 2 GB ram and a ATI Radeon HD 2600 pro. So only just above the minimum specs. When I go to my task manager though, it turns out the game is only using 50% CPU, and only about 1GB of memory. That seems a huge waste. My computer is not fast enough to only use half of it and get away with it. Anyone know what is going on?

I have very regular crashes, which happen only once the game has progressed a bit, and after playing for a while. Sounds like typical out of memory problems. But it's only using half my memory!

 

[Katorok]

Yeah I'm having the same issue.


Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53 GHZ
4 GB Ram
Mobility Radeon HD 4650
Vista Home Premium 64bit

Are my specs.

I'm playing on huge, continents, and I'm towards the end of my game.

BUt I keep crashing when I try to take on these last couple of cities.

So I'm stuck :|

 

[Diadem82]

Well my issue (or at least the purpose of this thread) is not really those crashes. Of course is someone knows a solution I'm all ears, but I've kind of resigned myself to living with them 'till it gets patched.

I just want civ to use both my cores and all my memory.

 

[Katorok]

Gah I meant to say I have the same issue regarding only using 1 of my cores, in addition to that the crashes..

But yeah this is really annoying..

 

[tokala]

I have a pretty old computer. An AMD 64 X2 5000+ 2.6 GHz with 2 GB ram and a ATI Radeon HD 2600 pro. So only just above the minimum specs. When I go to my task manager though, it turns out the game is only using 50% CPU, and only about 1GB of memory. That seems a huge waste. My computer is not fast enough to only use half of it and get away with it. Anyone know what is going on?

You have a fairly slow video card, so the CPU is probably waiting most of the time for the GPU to render a frame.
Mine gets pretty busy after a bit of fog-of-war busting

And the RAM should fill up when you actually manage to get get into the endgame on a larger than tiny map.

 

[Quboid]

I wouldn't worry about memory usage, it will use what it sees fit.

Is it always exactly 50%, or does it fluctuate with an average of 50%?

If the later, it's probably as Tokala says, the graphics card is the bottleneck. Try turning every video setting to minimum and select the smallest resolution - it will look terrible but this is temporary. Load up a game as you have and check what the CPU usage is like. If CPU usage goes up to 100%, start increasing settings until it's using less than 100% frequently. Then you'll be working your chip and your graphics card both to their maximum.

 

[Diadem82]

I spent most of my time on the strategic view. I do not believe my video card is the bottleneck. It can't be too hard to generate 90s graphics on 1024x768