game slows down and stutters

[DrGt]

when playing civ4 both online and offline, the game slows down and stutters when moving over land with alot of trees (meaning the movement isnt as smooth). this is really irritating. I have tried turning all the graphics details and resolution down bit it makes no difference. i have also messed about with the nvidia driver settings by turning off vsync and alot of other options but nothing is fixing it is this because my graphics card isnt good enough??

CPU - AMD athlon 64 3700+ 2.6ghz
Ram - 2gb corsair xms3200c2 twinx
Gc - nvidia xfx 7600GT 256mb

i have windows xp and all the game/driver/chipset/windows updates

 

[Zanmato]

I doubt it's anything to do with your spec. It certainly shouldn't be anything to do with the video card. I can only suggest shutting down as much as you possibly can in the background, ie. any AV programs. Is the card AGP? If so, you could enter the BIOS and increase the AGP aperture to speed it up slighty. You can find the setting for this under 'Advanced Chipset Settings' in most BIOS setups.

 

[DrGt]

no its pci express. i have overclocked it to its full potential. i cant see what it can be i have tried reinstalling but that doesnt sort it

 

[Velvet-Glove]

I agree that your specs should be perfectly adequate. For comparison purposes I have:

• GeForce 6600GT PCI-e 256Mb (a less powerful card than yours I think. It's about 4 months old. SLI capable but I just have the one card for now.)
• identical RAM
• a slightly beefier CPU (which I don't think would make all that much difference, I'm sure it's the graphics card capability that is the important thing here)
• Windows XP Home
• nVidia driver v81.98 with all the default settings (I am not one for fiddling very much in this department)
• screen res = 1280x1024
• game graphic options are set on high for everything.

Result: no problems with any of the game graphics or performance, windowed or full screen.

I was just wondering if you had tried an earlier nVidia driver? Sometimes the latest and greatest driver is not always the best - I have read on here countless times how a different driver version cured some evil or other so it may be worth a try if you haven't done so already?

Another thought was whether you have ever installed any mods to the game? If so then a complete clear out, re-install and update to a clean vanilla version of Civ might be worth a try too, just in case some incompatible old mod is causing this effect.

Sorry I can't offer more concrete help, I am not really much of a techie with things like this, but I hope you can get to the bottom of the matter as it sounds like a real pain. Good hunting to you!

 

[superslug]

i have overclocked it to its full potential.

Maybe just maybe too far? Have you tried downclocking or temporarily restoring the stock settings and see what happens?

On a related note, what's your PSU like? Good ventilation in the case?

 

[DrGt]

i have tried all the above apart from using older drivers.

i have an enermex 530w psu

loading times each turn are 2 seconds, all the way thru the game.

it just stutters when moving from city to city with alot of trees. well anoying.

im going to buy another 7600gt next week to go with my new widescreen monitor, i hope it sorts it, if that doesnt do it then it has to be the cpu, i cant think of anything else

 

[DrGt]

when using fraps to see what fps im getting, i get 75 when im over a dark area or a greyd out area of the map. but when i move within my borders, it drops down to 35/40. which for me is unplayable

 

[crunch]

Hmm Well, when scrolling far on a large map, I am quite happy to get above 1 fps... which is quite playable for me