Hardware Solutions for end-of-game slowness??

[kiwikim]

Hi there,

I've been immersed in Civ 4 for the past 3 weeks, and am loving it, having been a Civ 3 fan for a few years. It's been a long route to get it working though - firstly I forgot that I hadn't gotten around to installing DVD drive, so major disappointment that day the game arrived! Cost playing game so far £60.

Then, every time I built a wonder the game locked up. After reading some of the posts on here, came to the conclusion it was the 3-year-old graphics card. New one arrives but I forgot when I upgraded the motherboard last year, I stuck with AGP, so PCI express graphics card ain't gonna work, doh! Resold on Ebay (couldn't send it back cos I had opened it ) net loss £25, plus new AGP 8x card at £95 = total so far £180! And while I was getting the graphics card sorted, I figured taking the ram up to 1GB would be wise idea, extra cost of £60 (I decided to exchange the 512 mb I already had for some with a copper heatsink in the name of a fraction extra speed).

All-in total £240 to play (Just as well OH doesn't play, so he won't see this post ).

But, I still have the same headache I endured with Civ 3, that being in the later stages of the game when I am running my large armies of mass-destruction, it all becomes mind-numbingly slow and clunky.

So, to cut a long story short, is there another upgrade that'll remove this and make Civ 4 the truly mindblowing game it should be?

PS I'm running a P4 3.2ghz, 1 GB RAM, Nvidia 6600 GT 256mb onboard.

Cheers!

 

[Zanmato]

Your spec is now good enough to play Civ4. From what you describe it sounds like you might have to much other stuff running in the background so try these pointers. I assume that the game is patched to 1.52 and your graphic card driver is up to date, currently is v81.98. If not check the nvidia website.

Open the 'CivilisationIV.ini' and turn off 'MemSaver' set it to 0 as this places more work on the graphic card slowing it down rather than the main system RAM, which you have enough of to run the game.

Lower the graphic settings in the game options. Huge worlds could well run slower in the latter stages of the game, again you can ease the game processing by shutting down some processes and the graphic level requirements.

Try reducing the memory load by closing down some processes. Shut down any Anti-virus to start with as these can take a good lot of RAM.

If still no luck, increase the AGP aperture size through the BIOS to 128mb or perhaps 256mb, but 128mb should be enough.

If you're still have problems repost and attach your dxdiag log so we can offer more help of we can.

 

[kiwikim]

Thanks for that Rob! I'll give those suggestions a try - I think the suggestion about the background processes is definitely going to help, all the background security is a killer on speed no doubt, as long as I remember to pull the ethernet cable out that is!

Problem is now I've moved up to Prince level, I'm getting annihilated myself so no big armies

PS how's Preston? Lived there for a few years until 03.