Computer reboot reason

[RoninRo]

Hi there,

Maybe it has already been posted, but what I found regarding these two issues is the following:

Im currently playing on a large map, in 1200AD and my game kept rebooting my computer. So I decided to find out why. What I did is turn all the eye candy down and had a resolution of 1280 x 1024 and kept an eye out on how much memory the game was using. As soon as I loaded the game it was using about 500mb (1gb total). So taking into account the roughly 300 windows xp was using that left me with 200mb free. The choppiness improved and i clicked end turn. As I checked the memory again i saw it jump to about 600mb leaving about 100mb free. The interesting thing is that windows moved the civ4.exe process down to "below normal" priority and the game was choppy again. I moved it back to normal, hit end turn and boom, my pc rebooted.

So, obviously there is some kind of issue/bug with the way the game handles memory, I think.

Putting that aside, great/amazing game. I put up with about 10 reboots for that "one more turn"...hope they fix it

 

[snepp]

How much virtual memory do you have available?

 

[RoninRo]

1.5 gb to 4gb. Did you try looking at how much memory it's using? Just curious

 

[SonicX]

Over here, it's top usage was 1,1 Gb (of which 900 were due to Civ 4, 200 rest)

 

[Hypus]

I've always set virtual memory myself after benchmarking and OCing when I got this pc FOUR YEARS ago...(lol). Anyway I'd suggest doing this only because I always have and have no memory issues, I also have 1 gig of ram though.
I set the page file in winxp to be 1024 min and 1024 max (same size--never resizes); which coincidentally is the same amount of ram I have, (not sure if that means anything).
There is also a great memory managing/tweaking program I'd suggest to anyone to try--regardless of OS, (I use WinXP SP2), to try out "CachemanXP". I loathe running anything but necessary processes/programs in background also--just to show how handy this small app is.
I am able to ALT-TAB out of CIV4 while the game is running and see exactly what is going on with my RAM and pagefile. I think this kind of monitoring is extremely educational and can quickly show if programs have mem leaks etc.
I can honestly say that CIV4 uses my page file more than any other game I've seen, (almost to the point that it seems to prefer the paging file over my actual physical RAM--which I find strange). That being said, I don't suffer any memory-related problems running CIV4 at all.

If this helps ONE person I've done my job with this post

 

[mrgenie]

switch off the hyperthreading and probably your problem is gone

 

[RoninRo]

I have 1.8 P4 with no HT...so I dont think thats the issue.
Im just curious if anyone is able to play the game on a large map with 9 other civs in the industrial age? The reason is that when I run the game on a small/standard map and early on the game runs super smooth, no crashes etc; I managed to finish a standard map campaing with 6 civs no probs.
It's just really weird watching the game suck up all your ram and then the system crashes...no other app/game has ever done that on my comp

 

[Greek Plunder]

I just upped my VC thanks to your suggestion, and it HAS improved my experience. I haven't had a game crash yet (albeit, I haven't played too long, yet) BUT one thing it did fix for a fact, is the mini-map. When I used to alt+tab out, and then go back into the game, the mini-map would be all frigged up. Now, it stays perfect no matter how many times I alt+tab out.

And, just for those that are curious, I originally had my min/max at 1024, and I upped it to 4024 min/max.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

I tried this method myself, but it did not fix things for me.

 

[RoninRo]

Ok guys I managed to sort of fix my problem. I have a program called System Mechanic which one of the things it's able to do is to watch ur ram usage and perform actions on it.

Here is what I did: Started up civ4 as always, saw it was using about 100mb of ram, then loaded my save game and BOOM it was using 600 or so. Hence I had about 200 free like before when it crashed. Now the beauty of this program is that it has a function called "Defrag ram". I ran that and guess how much free ram there is now? 700!!!!!!!!!!!! Now i am able to play smooth as ever. No crashes for the 10 turns i tried it so far (before tried 2 turns max and crash). Sooo, i am sure this is the reason for all the crashes people are experiencing. And if this doesn't confirm the memory leak people are complaining about I dont know what does. Hope it helps...and I will post some results on how long i am able to play before it starts using allthe memory again.