Game runs smooth as long as I don't do anything?

[Merugo]

Hi! I have a problem with my Civ 4 - Beyond the Sword.

The game runs nice and smooth on my Athlon XP 3200+ and Geforce 6600GT, except for when a unit is moving, or when I select a town. Then the game runs extremely choppy for about 10 seconds before it goes back to normal. Scrolling is otherwise smooth and zooming out to world view doesn't affect performance either. Seems like everything is fine as long as I don't click around.

I find this very strange! Last time I had Civ4 installed, I didn't have this problem. Does anybody have a clue as to what is causing this? I'd be grateful for any help.

<edit>

I should add, that if I put the graphics on High the game is choppy all the time. With medium or low it's just choppy when I give commands or double-click a town. But other from that, lowering the graphics doesn't solve the problem. And I used to be able to run it on high, if I remember correctly.

 

[ori]

please post you dxdiag results file

 

[Merugo]

Here ya go.

 

[ori]

install windows service pack 3 (might help)
update your graphics drivers from: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_185.85_whql.html

 

[Merugo]

Service pack 3 didn't help, but good to have none the less. The latest nvidia drivers, I had before. I downgraded to see if it helped in any way. Right now, my problem is just choppy scrolling and animations overall. Doesn't scroll smooth or anything like it used to (unless i scroll over unexplored territory that is). Nah well. Thx for the help! I'll just have to see if I can figure this one out.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Looking at your DXdiag file, it looks like you don't have the system memory or the graphics memory to run the game at your current video resolution (1920 x 1200). Try reducing the the resolution to something lower like 1024 x 768 and see if that works. If you want to run Civ at that high resolution, you need more RAM and a graphics card with more memory. My old machine was an Athlon 3200+ like yours, and with 2GB RAM and a 256 MB graphics card it ran Civ just fine all the way up to 1650 x 1050 on large maps.

So it is possible. Good luck.

 

[Merugo]

Thx for the tip. I'm running civ4 in 1440x900, but lowering to 1024x768 doesn't solve the prob. No matter what I try, it's the same I'm afraid. It's weird, because (as I said) it wasn't like this the last time i had it installed, and Colonization runs much better for some reason, and I can even have higher settings there..

 

[ori]

open the civilizationIV.ini and set binknoskip=1 to 0

 

[Merugo]

Nope, doesn't do anything. Ah well, thx for the help. I've given up on this for now. I'm getting a new computer sooner or later so I'll just have to do something more productive on my spare time until then .