Civ5 using DX11 Graphics: The way it's meant to be played!

[usmle]

You guys know you can force AA in the Nvidia control panel in specific applications, right? I have no idea why they disabled AA in DX9, but you can definitely force it and it looks just as good (to me anyway) as in the DX11 in game AA options. Granted you don't get all the benefits of DX11, but at least all the edges are smoothed out.

Now this is obviously going to put a strain on your graphics card so if you're running Civ 5 on a graphics card that is between minimum and recommended, you might get some lag. For the Nvidia side, this will probably work best on a 200 series card. Not sure if you can force AA with ATI drivers.

You noted that the shadows were great in DX11, but you it doesn't appear you even have them turned on in DX9 from looking at the screen shots. The only difference I can tell between Civ 5 with forced AA in DX9 and Civ 5 with the AA in DX11, is that there are no reflections in DX9.

The shadows are very light, but present, in DX9 mode. At first glance I thought they were missing too. I completely agree with this post by the way, DX11 will give you that extra bit of eye candy but if it runs slow for you definitely use DX9 and force NOT ONLY anti-aliasing but 16x anisotropic filtering as well for super crisp textures (just look at those farms )

 

[bonaldo2000]

But what about this tesselation? What is it supposed to do?

 

[usmle]

But what about this tesselation? What is it supposed to do?

This link provides a reasonable explanation. IIRC, I remember reading that tessellation in Civ V is used in the leaderhead scenes. The leaderheads do look kinda last-gen on DX9 I have to admit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eTngR6M37Q

 

[player1 fanatic]

From GraphicsSettingsDX11.ini:

; Allows use of SM4.1 codepath (if supported)
AllowSM41 = 1

; Allows use of SM5.0 codepath (if supported)
AllowSM50 = 1

4.1 is DX10.1, 5.0 is DX11

What these options exactly mean is that if you have card that supports those modes (DX10.1/DX11), endgine will use additional code to make game run or look better. If neither of them is supported it would obviously use DX10 mode.

 

[Hogar313]

I don't think one person can because if your card only supports DX10 in the first place then you won't have access to DX11 and if you have a DX11 GPU then you only have the option to select DX9. You can't select DX10 with a DX11 GPU.

My freaking God... A mod should do something about all the c**p going on here.

First of all, everyone here thinks he's a hardware expert. Well, you're not! The fact that you read something posted by someone who heard it from someone who read it on a forum where someone posted a quote of someone who heard from someone who had a dream/hallucination about something ISN'T AN ARGUMENT! You guys are noobs, face it! And there'd be no problem in being a noob (everybody starts a newbie) if you weren't so damn provocative and stubborn about it!

Secondly, a GPU is a graphics processing unit, aka the core of a graphics card
. You can't have one with the other, so your statement that having a DX11 GPU will enable you to do anything is wrong for a DX11 GPU alone wouldn't even be able to run or even fit in any of the sockets on your motherboard.

@tokala "Someone screwed up. DX11 mode on DX10 hardware runs really slow in Civ5 (or not at all). I have seen people getting ~150fps on a GTX460, while GTX2xx and Hd 48xx are struggling to get 30 fps."

That is true. I can tell because I have an HD4890 (6GB RAM + AMD Phenom II x4 955). Average fps was 43.964 (Fraps).

Peace... Was never an option while stupidity existed.

 

[Conditional Zenith]

Has anyone managed to find an Australian retailer that's offering this promo?

 

[bonaldo2000]

Someone screwed up. DX11 mode on DX10 hardware runs really slow in Civ5 (or not at all). I have seen people getting ~150fps on a GTX460, while GTX2xx and Hd 48xx are struggling to get 30 fps.

Spot on! I also think something is wrong. If I have a DX10 card (which I do) and I select the DX 10/11 mode with recommended settings (all high and anti aliasing 4x), I should have a smooth framerate (I have an ATI 4870 card), but I don't.
I can't help but suspect that the DX 10/11 mode, when run on a DX10 card, uses software for some of the stuff that is hardware accelerated on a DX11 card. Just a hunch, though.

 

[Ankh88]

Lol, we're going around in circles!

You see no difference because your card doesn't support DX11. What you're looking at is the difference between DX9 and DX10 and there is none!

You are mistaken here.

The difference in Civ 5's graphics between Dx9 and Dx10 is vast. The difference between Dx10 and Dx11 is negligible.

I have a GTX-295, and am able to select the Dx10/Dx11 .exe just fine, turn on all the options, and the game is terrific-looking: the terrain looks just as detailed as the screenshots from the OP, I have lighting, shadows, reflections on the water, AA; it's all there.

If I try Dx9, not only is the detail much worse, but the performance is 30% slower as well.

I also don't know why people are having trouble editing their config.ini file to increase the zoom level. I bought a boxed copy of Civ 5, and had no trouble editing the file; it wasn't encrypted.

 

[1BRASS1]

You know, I LOVE Civilization, and this version is even better with better everything, except one thing. In Civ IV, I could hit the spacebar, (Enter in this version), and it would take a few seconds and then it would be my turn again. In this version, it seems to take FOREVER for it to be my turn again. Another thing, you would think this is because I am playing the DX11 version of the game, but, I loaded the same game with everything set at High, (Except AA, which is grayed out in DX9), but it takes the same amount of time between turns, just DX11 looks better. So I get better eye candy while I wait for my turn to play???

Now I know what you are thinking, I am playing on a low end machine. Well if it is, then this needs to be looked at by Firaxis:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64
Intel Core i7 920-QC
12gb DDR3 Ram
(2) NVidia GTX 280 in SLI

Anyone else seeing this?

 

[Panda_Power]

I also don't know why people are having trouble editing their config.ini file to increase the zoom level. I bought a boxed copy of Civ 5, and had no trouble editing the file; it wasn't encrypted.

Good to hear you're getting the same level of graphics.

The reason people couldn't edit their config file was because they were playing the demo and the config file was encrypted in the demo. The full game is fine.

 

[Dearmad]

Meh... the increase of graphics is trivial to me. Doesn't make me want to upgrade Windows XP.

I was a hold out for a long time... but I gotta tell you I LOVE Win7 over XP. It's a great OS compared to the other previous ones (my earlier favorite being DOS 3.3).

 

[kiwitt]

... my earlier favorite being DOS 3.3...

Ditto ... I never liked 4.0, but 5.0 with it's access to more memory was great.

Win 7 and x64 well ... you'll never run out of memory (addresses that is).

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

All the time I try running Directx11, I can see the Civilization process starting, but then I get a WerFault.exe and they both disappear. Does anyone know why it happens or how to fix it? (Sorry if it's been asked already, such threads get big fast).

I was a hold out for a long time... but I gotta tell you I LOVE Win7 over XP. It's a great OS compared to the other previous ones (my earlier favorite being DOS 3.3).

As for me, Linux FTW, currently Ubuntu and learning Slackware.

 

[Dark.Revenant]

To answer everyone's questions:

If you have a DX10 card, you can run the DX10/11 mode. DX10 and DX11 are very similar but the DX11 features will only be available for DX11 cards that run in DX10/11 mode.

The texture quality and reflections are NOT DX9/10/11 differences; any difference in texture quality and reflections is artificial and does not have anything to do with the DX version. The true differences are much more subtle, for the most part. The actual differences are:
DX9 - AA is (or at least, technically should be) enabled
DX10/DX10.1 - AA is disabled (in every case that I know of), subtle improvements in visual quality (tessellation enabled for HD 4870 and 4890)
DX11 - AA is enabled, more subtle improvements, tessellation is enabled

DX10.1 is just an updated DX10 that just about every "DX10" card can support, even if it is not explicitly stated.

The HD 4870 and HD 4890 (and 4850?) have a tessellation unit. From what I can tell from my own tests, tessellation DOES work on these cards, even though they are DX10. This may or may not be related to the fact that they have a tessellation unit, because geometry tessellation is possible in DX9, DX10, and DX11 through various means, though DX11 is vastly more efficient at it. I just know that with all of the settings on High with my HD 4870, the framerate takes a pounding when I scroll, but it's a solid 60fps when the camera does not move very much. This may be because I have a dual core CPU, though. It may also be because of the tessellation.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

To answer everyone's questions:

If you have a DX10 card, you can run the DX10/11 mode. DX10 and DX11 are very similar but the DX11 features will only be available for DX11 cards that run in DX10/11 mode.

The texture quality and reflections are NOT DX9/10/11 differences; any difference in texture quality and reflections is artificial and does not have anything to do with the DX version. The true differences are much more subtle, for the most part. The actual differences are:
DX9 - AA is (or at least, technically should be) enabled
DX10/DX10.1 - AA is disabled (in every case that I know of), subtle improvements in visual quality (tessellation enabled for HD 4870 and 4890)
DX11 - AA is enabled, more subtle improvements, tessellation is enabled

DX10.1 is just an updated DX10 that just about every "DX10" card can support, even if it is not explicitly stated.

The HD 4870 and HD 4890 (and 4850?) have a tessellation unit. From what I can tell from my own tests, tessellation DOES work on these cards, even though they are DX10. This may or may not be related to the fact that they have a tessellation unit, because geometry tessellation is possible in DX9, DX10, and DX11 through various means, though DX11 is vastly more efficient at it. I just know that with all of the settings on High with my HD 4870, the framerate takes a pounding when I scroll, but it's a solid 60fps when the camera does not move very much. This may be because I have a dual core CPU, though. It may also be because of the tessellation.

What?!?

 

[bonaldo2000]

Regarding slow scrolling speed (which I also suffer from), that could never have anything to do with the CPU can it? That should be all down to graphics card?

 

[player1 fanatic]

DX9 - AA is (or at least, technically should be) enabled
DX10/DX10.1 - AA is disabled (in every case that I know of), subtle improvements in visual quality (tessellation enabled for HD 4870 and 4890)
DX11 - AA is enabled, more subtle improvements, tessellation is enabled

There is something mixed up here.
In DX9 mode, you can't enable AA in-game, exempt when forcing through drivers.
With "DX11" exe, DX10.1 cards have AA in-game and works perfectly. Tested on 4850 radeon. Probably true for DX10.0 cards too (GTS/GTX 2xx users should confirm this).

As far as I know, only DX9 mode prevents use of AA (in-game), and it is not first game that does that.
For example, Bioshock when released, also didn't allowed AA in DX9 mode. And there are many other games too.

^still, it doesn't prevent use of AA through drivers, of course.

DX10.1 is just an updated DX10 that just about every "DX10" card can support, even if it is not explicitly stated.

This is plain false!

GTS and GTX cards from 200 series, as well as older models, don't support DX10.1
Only 4000 series radeons do. As well as weaker GT cards from 200 series (G210/GT220/GT240).



P.S.
Anyway, what matters for users is that in DX9 mode, newer card is crippled to not use its DX10 or DX11 features. Also, it's only mode that works in WinXP.

On the other hand, with "DX11 exe", card will use all features it can. DX10 just core stuff, DX10.1 additional 4.1 codepatch, DX11 additional 5.0 codepatch. You can manually tune this through ini files. For example disable DX11 features, but keep DX10/10.1 ones.

 

[player1 fanatic]

DX10.1 is just an updated DX10 that just about every "DX10" card can support, even if it is not explicitly stated.

This is plain false!

GTS and GTX cards from 200 series, as well as older models, don't support DX10.1
Only 4000 series radeons do. As well as weaker GT cards from 200 series (G210/GT220/GT240).

 

[bruntfca]

Regarding slow scrolling speed (which I also suffer from), that could never have anything to do with the CPU can it? That should be all down to graphics card?

I think I found the a reason for slow scrolling speed amongst other things. Yes CPU starvation can cause graphical slowness eventually especially as the untilization gets very high. For example I've seen Opera browser shoot up to 90% CPU when its running say 20 tabs, and a lot of flash garbage - games suddenly come to a crawl.

I think I've discovered a new bug in Civ5 anyway, and this may be causing the problem, I also made a separate thread about this,

"If you play for a while at a nice smooth 40FPS+, then for some reason you drop down to a chuggy 15FPS, I think I've found the reason.

I have a 8800GTX 756MB, it was the one of the first DX10 cards released. I've played around with DX9/DX11 and found that in the end the card will run OK in the DX11 option. So in a nutshell if my generation 1 DX10 card can run it yours should too.

On an aside note, if you must run in DX9, turn on Aniostropic Filtering, 2 times Anti Aliasing in the control panel of your graphics card. For some reason the Devs disabled these options in game for DX9, the result is the textured look like junk, and the roads are almost invisible.

I've tracked down the slowness bug to what I believe to be a problem with the multi-threading. The nice thing about Civ5 is that while the CPU take its turn, you can open dialogs, check things, and **even initiate diplomacy**.

Now this is pretty cool, as it basically means there's no real reason to "wait" for the computers turn. Except there's a slight problem! I found that if I frequently accessed the diplomacy dialogs during the CPUs turn, when it came back to my turn, I could randomly lose about 30FPS!

It was a chuggy mess, and for me anything uder 15FPS is just too annoying to bother with. These are the exact same symptoms I get in games if I run too many processes that steal CPU. What I think is happening here is that somehow the thread that runs diplomacy concurrently with the CPU turn does not get cleaned up correctly.

In effect Bismark or whoever, may now be running in a background thread eating up more and more of your CPU. Since this is an internal thread you can't kill it from Task Manager, you simply have to restart the entire game from the windows desktop. The moral of the story is that it's best to leave the interface alone until the CPU has finished, for fear of triggering this bug."

 

[TheLean]

I have a 8800gt card with dx10.0 and the demo run like crap in dx10/11 mode but fine on dx9.

Based on this and what others have said it seems 10.0 cards cant play civ5 on dx10/11 mode with good performance but dx10.1 cards can. When dx10.1 came out a few years ago there was a big hallabaloo about it being much more optimized and faster than dx10.