Huge Map, 20 Civs, Settings

[OpticalOrange99]

Hey.

Just wondering what settings you guys run Civ4 at on a Huge map with 20 civs (yourself inclusive) on it. This is for Civ4 Vanilla v1.74.

I'm finding my fps dips quite low on a Huge map when I have it at:

1600x1200
Everything High, high detailed terrain, etc.

My computer Specs are:

Windows Vista 32-bit
nVidia Geforce 8800GTX
3GBs of RAM
Intel Core 2 2.7Ghz processor

What about you guys? I'm at the medieval age only and yet I'm getting 20fps when I zoom out of the map to the globe view.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

I think my computer can decently handle a huge map. I just prefer 18 civ standard or large maps. I don't enjoy having to settle more than a few cities.

 

[Underdawg]

Does it really bother you that it is only 20FPS? I mean most of the screen is static. The reason you are getting such low fps is due to the nature of the build of Civ 4 (Based on the gambryo engine).

I play with

e6300 @ 3.0Ghz
2GB Ram
X1900XT 512MB

at 1680x1050 with everything on, yadda, yadda, yadda and get the same fps as you do.

This is on 18AI Huge maps on BTS. 20FPS is smooth enough for this game, there's not much movement anyways. Turn off the FRAPS my man.

 

[OpticalOrange99]

Yeah. I guess i was just expecting a smoother game with the new rig I bought.

Anyways thanks.

Do you get 20fps when zoomed out in the globe view or in the game itself, by the way? Just wondering.

 

[Underdawg]

Yeah. I guess i was just expecting a smoother game with the new rig I bought.

Anyways thanks.

Do you get 20fps when zoomed out in the globe view or in the game itself, by the way? Just wondering.

I get about 15-20 fps in globe view and about 20+ fps in normal view (in late game where it bogs down)... it's more like 25+ fps really in normal/close view just that sometimes it dips into the sub 20s.

 

[Atticus]

How do you play 20 civs on a huge map? Isn't 18 the upper limit?

 

[kt_atis]

How much did you guys spend for your 512MB card?

 

[OpticalOrange99]

Sorry I mean 19 civs (yourself inclusive); 18 AIs + you.

Mines a 768MB Card with a 1.35Ghz GPU (I think. I'm not really sure how to find out. Under "Display" in the DirectX Diagnostic it says my card has "2010MB" of available memory, whatever that means...)

Anyways, my nVidia Geforce 8800GTX cost around 500 euros.

 

[dutchking]

I have a standard map with 34 civs on it! An earth map I got here. Not slow or anything... 2GHz

 

[Ksim3000]

I can play a decent sized game of Civ with about 12 Civ's I'm reckoning on my 512MB of Ram (I know, I'm lazy to upgrade) but I probably could run more. However.....considering I struggle just on simple Noble difficulty, I doubt I need to be going tOO gigantic at zee moment.

 

[jlindy]

My computer Specs are:

Windows Vista 32-bit
nVidia Geforce 8800GTX
3GBs of RAM
Intel Core 2 2.7Ghz processor

Just a personal observation here but, when I finally broke down and switched from 32bit Windows to 64bit I noticed much better performance from my machine overall. Huge maps with many civ's still bogs down some, but there again I'm asking the system to do a lot.

My specs:
Windows XP Pro x64
nVidia 6800 w/256mb vram
2gb ram
AMD Athlon 64 3500+

 

[OpticalOrange99]

My friend advised against switching to the 64bit version as games aren't as compatible with it as of yet. Maybe later.

It just annoys me that I spent more money on my pc and yet people with older cards and less RAM, etc. get EXACTLY the same fps/performance as me. It's as if it doesn't matter whether you have 256/512/768/1024MB of Video RAM on your card, it doesn't make a big difference in Civilization 4 when it comes to big maps.

But guys. It's not like I'm a complete perfectionist. I tuned down my resolution, I turned everything to low. I conceited that maybe I couldn't run it with all the bells and whistles yet I only gained.... Guess how much fps I gained?
10!! TEN frames per second!

Sorry about the rant anyways. This isn't directed at you guys or Firaxis. I just don't understand how they made a game that runs at 20fps on a card that came out exactly 1 year after they shipped the game. Please will someone explain it!?

I really hope it's just nVidia's buggy drivers for Windows Vista 32-bit at the moment. I hope when they come out with better drivers for Vista then I will see somewhat of a performance boost. The guys over at the nVidia boards said the drivers as of the moment are pretty much just betas.

 

[jlindy]

My friend advised against switching to the 64bit version as games aren't as compatible with it as of yet. Maybe later.

I really hope it's just nVidia's buggy drivers for Windows Vista 32-bit at the moment. I hope when they come out with better drivers for Vista then I will see somewhat of a performance boost. The guys over at the nVidia boards said the drivers as of the moment are pretty much just betas.

Could be that the problem is with Vista itself. It apparently has a lot more overhead than XP! I haven't had too much trouble with XP x64 other than the hassle of tracking down drivers for all of my hardware. I was having a few issues with graphics performance until I installed the 64bit DirectX SDK ( June 2007) now all is well. If I were waiting for stable versions of stuff, I'd still be running Win95, and my (grey) beard would be dragging on the ground. I'd go ahead and try the beta's. If they don't work out you can always roll them back.

 

[OpticalOrange99]

I have the latest ForceWare drivers for my nVidia card. I might download drivercleaner and try and clean away all traces of my drivers and then reinstall them. Maybe that will help.

 

[Underdawg]

My friend advised against switching to the 64bit version as games aren't as compatible with it as of yet. Maybe later.

It just annoys me that I spent more money on my pc and yet people with older cards and less RAM, etc. get EXACTLY the same fps/performance as me. It's as if it doesn't matter whether you have 256/512/768/1024MB of Video RAM on your card, it doesn't make a big difference in Civilization 4 when it comes to big maps.

But guys. It's not like I'm a complete perfectionist. I tuned down my resolution, I turned everything to low. I conceited that maybe I couldn't run it with all the bells and whistles yet I only gained.... Guess how much fps I gained?
10!! TEN frames per second!

Sorry about the rant anyways. This isn't directed at you guys or Firaxis. I just don't understand how they made a game that runs at 20fps on a card that came out exactly 1 year after they shipped the game. Please will someone explain it!?

I really hope it's just nVidia's buggy drivers for Windows Vista 32-bit at the moment. I hope when they come out with better drivers for Vista then I will see somewhat of a performance boost. The guys over at the nVidia boards said the drivers as of the moment are pretty much just betas.

Civ 4 is very unoptimized; it takes way too much graphical power/resources for its output (which isn't much...)

It is not efficient at all. I wouldn't worry about it.

How much did you guys spend for your 512MB card?

Video card RAM has very little to do with indicating the performance of a video card, a 512MB 7600GS is 10x slower than a 8800GTS 320MB, other factors are in play regarding performance: number of pixel shaders, vertex shaders, stream processors, unified shaders, core clock speed, RAM clock speed, shader clock speed, architecture (important), etc, etc.

 

[Jay]

My friend advised against switching to the 64bit version as games aren't as compatible with it as of yet. Maybe later.

It just annoys me that I spent more money on my pc and yet people with older cards and less RAM, etc. get EXACTLY the same fps/performance as me. It's as if it doesn't matter whether you have 256/512/768/1024MB of Video RAM on your card, it doesn't make a big difference in Civilization 4 when it comes to big maps.

But guys. It's not like I'm a complete perfectionist. I tuned down my resolution, I turned everything to low. I conceited that maybe I couldn't run it with all the bells and whistles yet I only gained.... Guess how much fps I gained?
10!! TEN frames per second!

Sorry about the rant anyways. This isn't directed at you guys or Firaxis. I just don't understand how they made a game that runs at 20fps on a card that came out exactly 1 year after they shipped the game. Please will someone explain it!?

I really hope it's just nVidia's buggy drivers for Windows Vista 32-bit at the moment. I hope when they come out with better drivers for Vista then I will see somewhat of a performance boost. The guys over at the nVidia boards said the drivers as of the moment are pretty much just betas.

Trust me CivIV is NOT a top notch game graphicaly so the graphics card doesnt give much of a boost, this game requires ram and processor really. Graphics cards are for supporting graphics etc. not processing/creating/storing information which is what CIV is as far as i can tell.

Switch over to any other game and trust me you will see the difference. The 8800GTX is a brilliant piece of work and worth the money! If you bought it in anticipation of such games like bioshock that is where you will need it. If you have any RTS's such as total war series or a Battlefield game *general games that need good graphics card) that you couldnt play too well before load em up on ultra high if you wanna see your new machine in action

EDIT: i see you have a 2.2ghz (single core im assuming) - if this is correct it is your achilles heel right there, it is below average really with dual cores now cheap and getting easily above 3ghz they are easy solution. So that may be your problem

EDIT2: Core 2 might mean dual core but i cant remember, its late. If so then obviously my above edit doesnt mean anything

 

[OpticalOrange99]

Trust me CivIV is NOT a top notch game graphicaly so the graphics card doesnt give much of a boost, this game requires ram and processor really. Graphics cards are for supporting graphics etc. not processing/creating/storing information which is what CIV is as far as i can tell.

Switch over to any other game and trust me you will see the difference. The 8800GTX is a brilliant piece of work and worth the money! If you bought it in anticipation of such games like bioshock that is where you will need it. If you have any RTS's such as total war series or a Battlefield game *general games that need good graphics card) that you couldnt play too well before load em up on ultra high if you wanna see your new machine in action

EDIT: i see you have a 2.2ghz (single core im assuming) - if this is correct it is your achilles heel right there, it is below average really with dual cores now cheap and getting easily above 3ghz they are easy solution. So that may be your problem

EDIT2: Core 2 might mean dual core but i cant remember, its late. If so then obviously my above edit doesnt mean anything

Um it's a 2.7Ghz dual core. I think it should be enough for civ, although civ doesn't have dual core support so the second core really doesn't make much of a difference.

 

[Quintillus]

Hmm...my only guess is the 1600x1200 resolution is causing the low FPS. Or you could be noticing it only because of Fraps. Does it look choppy without Fraps running?

I have no idea what FPS I'm getting when I run CivIV (1024x768), but I know you don't need anything close to an 8800GTX to run it at High graphics and get fluid motions. And your other specs pwn the specs I've run Civ on, too. Fraps is probably just making you hypersensitive.

 

[Smidlee]

My friend advised against switching to the 64bit version as games aren't as compatible with it as of yet. Maybe later.

It just annoys me that I spent more money on my pc and yet people with older cards and less RAM, etc. get EXACTLY the same fps/performance as me. It's as if it doesn't matter whether you have 256/512/768/1024MB of Video RAM on your card, it doesn't make a big difference in Civilization 4 when it comes to big maps.

Bingo. That's because it has a lot more to do with software (the game engine itself) than hardware especially the graphic card. In fact the later your game gets the less your GPU has to work (runs cooler) because you got a less trees and jungle on the map.(these two works you GPU the most in civ4)
As far as I can tell it's the cities themselves which seems to slow the game down. Thus the more cities with all it's buildings there are then the slower it gets. This is why there's an option to knock off the cities from globe view.

 

[Smidlee]

dp ........
P.S if you are a serious PC gamer I still believe you made a good choice for 8800gtx card as it should be a good card for many years to come.