Game Freezes for 5-30 seconds, no CTD though

[Zar090]

Hi, I just bought this game earlier today, but have not been able to play it any significant amount as of yet. When playing either a regular or tutorial game, the game will "freeze" for a couple of seconds up to a minute, seemingly at random. When I say "freeze", I mean all the animation on the screen stops, and I am not able to click on various buttons. Although, it does seem to carry out the first thing I clicked while it was frozen once it becomes unfrozen. Sometimes when it does this I can still move the mouse cursor around, sometimes I can't. In either case, it makes playing such a chore that it's really not worth it. I haven't yet had it actually crash all the way to the desktop; it's always started working again if I wait long enough.

I've downloaded the latest patch, 1.52, and also updated my video and sound drivers. And I've attached my dxdiag.txt. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Akhenaton]

Hi, I just bought this game earlier today, but have not been able to play it any significant amount as of yet. When playing either a regular or tutorial game, the game will "freeze" for a couple of seconds up to a minute, seemingly at random. When I say "freeze", I mean all the animation on the screen stops, and I am not able to click on various buttons.

I think your problem is most likely just paging (running out of RAM and using the HD instead). This obviously can slow the game down so much that it doesn't respond at all for a while. You should be able to verify this by checking the HD access light if it's on and whether the drive keeps a fairly constant seeking noise.

Solutions are to play with smaller maps, try to reduce background memory usage and ofcourse to get more RAM.

 

[Zar090]

Well, I finally figured out what's wrong. It had nothing to do with Civ 4 in particular. I discovered this when I tried to run some other 3D-intensive games and the same problems cropped up. I then narrowed it down to my video card, and after messing with a bunch of different driver versions, finally opened up the case and took a look inside. It seems that the built-in fan on my nvidia ti4600 has died, causing the card to overheat. I was able to play Civ for longer than 5 minutes for the first time by allowing it to cool all the way down and leaving the case open. Voila, no freezing! At least for about 30 minutes, when it started to get hot again.

Anyway, looks like it's time for a new video card for me. Just thought I'd post this in case anyone else is experiencing anything like this.