Graphic Oddity / Glitch

[CivNut034]

System Spec: Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM
Video: 5500FX 256 MB, Driver is newest available

I had been playing Civ with reasonable (although not perfect) stability for months -- and then I fried my old graphics card. As my PC is nearing the end of it's useful life, I didn't want to dump a lot of money into an AGP graphics card, when I'm sure my next system will be PCI-E, once Windows Vista is released I'll upgrade the whole thing.

Anyway, so I bought a cheap video card, but within spec for at least tolerable play.

when I bring up civ IV, I get the strangest like Polygons blasting out of the terrain and the models, no matter how low I turn down the graphics, antialiasing on/off, etc.

See attached DX Diag and screen shot. While this doesn't really prevent me from playing, these flashing and dancing polygons really suck the fun out of the game -- they are extremely annoying. Any ideas?

View attachment DxDiag.txt



Thanks!

 

[crunch]

Try playing in a window, maybe?

 

[Zanmato]

Test the DirectX from the DxDiag.
Perhaps try rolling back the drivers to at least 66.93.
Test your RAM.
Make sure the card is cooled and is getting enough power.
It's an odd problem, if all the above fail to remedy the problem it might be a faulty card.

 

[CivNut034]

Running the game in Windowed Mode exhibits the same symptom.

I've tried several versions of drivers, but not the 66.93 version. I'll give that a whirl tonight.

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

 

[JesusOnEez]

I had a similar problem with a Radeon 9800, it got worse the longer I played until it was unplayable...turned out the card was faulty, and although the fan was working fine, it became overly succeptable to heat, and obviously, the hotter it got, the worse any game was to play.

Unfortunately, it was one week past it's year's guarantee and I had to buy a new card...got a Geforce something or other...much more powerful than my Radeon 9800 and games play very nicely now.

My guess with yours is it's something similar, heat related or not. If drivers make no difference, it's definately the card.

 

[CivNut034]

I replaced the video card with a radeon 9550 256 AGP ($90, including tax) -- works perfect, haven't crashed at all (which was common / every few hours with nVidia card).

TY for the suggestions, I think it was a bum card.