Civilization running slow, but only using 25% processor?

[JerleMinara]

So I've done some research and tried to puzzle out what the possible cause is, with no luck.

Basically, I'm running BTS out of steam and have a Quad Core Q9300 with 8 gigs of RAM on Windows 7-64. Obviously it should fly, and I'd be happy to let it munch as much CPU as it desires, but it's not going past 25% usage.

Is there some sort of CPU limit or something it might be bumping into? It's using all 4 cores consistently, but only at 25% apiece and I'd be happy to feed it more if it'd increase map generation time and such.

 

[Furiey]

Civ 4 is not multicore aware, so will use no more than one core at 100%, ie: 25% of a quad core processor. I'm surprised at it using all 4 at 25% rather than 1 at 100%, maybe the processor itself is doing something as Civ 4 is not able to. On my dual core it will only use one core at 100%, ie: 50% overall.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

My quad will use all four cores while playing BTS, though one core is primarily at 60% or more. The others range from about 10% to 40%. I have an LCD display that someone built for me that shows lovely graphs of core use (among other things).

I read somewhere that Win 7 has some improvements in the kernel that allow the OS to sometimes share the load among cores, if they're available. It's some kind of optimization thing, and it makes sense, because I see that on pretty much everything, not just multi-threaded apps.

It doesn't answer the question of why the OP is having a slowdown, though. Sorry.