How do you speed the game up?

[Benjie]

128mb GeForce 6800 (latest drivers),
1.8G AMD CPU,
512mb RAM,
Audigy Sound Blaster Platinum Pro II (no music in game either),
Win2k.
Everything on the lowest setting.



This meets the recommended requirements. Why is the game running so slow at the lowest setting? Also why are Jalapenio peppers so tasty?

 

[Mazruk]

Are you playing in windowed mode? Most people have said its better that way (edit the civilization.ini file in docs\my games\civ4 and set FullScreen=0)

Zoom in to a city and you should hear music. I've got an outstanding question about whether you have to be zoomed in to hear it.

 

[Mr_V]

1. Start Task Manager
2. Kill all pointless processes that are not system crucial (programs like Skype, MSN Messenger, countless AutoUpdate applications still have active processes even if not being used). You should be looking at about 15 processes.
3. When the game starts, minimize it (go back to windows desktop that has your task manager). Find Civ4 process in the Task Manager, right click on it and assign it a high priority.

 

[pjdodd]

How do you speed the game up?
Return it to the shop and wait for the company to re-write it properly and efficiently.

 

[Benjie]

How do you speed the game up?
Return it to the shop and wait for the company to re-write it properly and efficiently.

A patch would be nice.

This brings me back to the good 'ole days of Ultima IX: Ascension. (Which *still* doesn't run very well on the above mentioned PC, even though it's a 233mhz game. )

 

[Darth Gromit]

A patch would be nice.

This brings me back to the good 'ole days of Ultima IX: Ascension. (Which *still* doesn't run very well on the above mentioned PC, even though it's a 233mhz game. )

I know this is off topic, but u9AssEngine runs great with an unofficial patch I found somewhere through message boards for that game. The patch also corrected the bugginess of doing quests out of order.

As to Civ4, have you dialed down the resolution? A friend of mine got much better performance at 1024x768 than 1280X1024. If that doesn't work, definitely start taking down processes, esp. a firewall and virus scan, esp. if you have a virus scanner that scans every file you open.

 

[Ravinhood]

Toward the middle and especially the late game the game starts requiring over a gig of virtual memory. The more hard memory you have like 1gig the better your system will run it. I have a virtual memory of 2500 (1 gig hard ram) and I don't have these slow down or lag issues like others with 256mb or 512mb.

Even recommended requirements aren't alway the "very best" you can have, they are just recommended for at least better performance than low end systems requirements.

Anytime a game is sluggish, first thing to do is always upgrade ram first 1gig or 2gig even better (and don't forget to change virtual memory to adjust for added hard ram) . Then upgrade graphics card, then upgrade system processor. Also a well defragged hard-drive helps also. Turn off all virus protection and any other programs running in the background also. Many of these background programs take up a lot of memory and also can conflict with the game in certain memory locations of your ram.

 

[Greatfellow]

--more ram, friend. then up your AGP aperture to 128, in BIOS.
--Or, make that 128mb 6800 a 256mb 6800, but that's a lil more costly.
--and, as the other fellas suggest, close unneeded applications/processes.