Impact on system performance

[Reffie2]

I don't think this has anything to do with adding more/better hardware to your computer.
Can you play the regular CIV4 with less or without lag? Because I can strangely. I don't know what's wrong with this game. The lag increased when I installed the patches for BTS.

The Dualoptimizer didn't affect my pc at all, there's a wierd 'but' in BTS probably.

I get fresh coffee.

On max settings, when ending a turn I can make a sandwich, eat the sandwich and then I go to the toilet. Washed my hands, go downstairs and also get fresh coffee. When I'm back, I see a diplomacy screen wich is still loading...
Five minutes a turn(not a joke).

 

[T.A JONES]

In this case I think its your side processes being handled by the second core. I turn all those off anyway.
You can clear a ton of junk. I noticed as I bought faster monocore's the same process took up less and less space. I think this may be cuz the last Pent4 CPU's I bought were mulithreaded. So ya, with your take I guess this means Civ4 optimizes multithreading on a 3.4ghz monocore.?

 

[Dan Quale]

I've got 2 gigs 800mhz ddr3 with xp a geforce 8800gts 640mb card, and 2x 2.8ghz cpu still it lags in between turns, i thinks its just unavoidable after modern era in huge/18 civs. The more of the map I have revealed the slower it gets.

 

[6K Man]

I just added 2 gig to my machine today (Pentium 3.4, now 3 gig of RAM). And a 22" monitor. Everything seems much faster.

 

[Underdawg]

It's cpu. Though it is RAM also, but there is a breakpoint in which adding more RAM than a certain amount will not yield much, or only minimal, performance gain.

I run a e6300 @ 3.0GHZ, default is 1.83GHZ.

There is quite a noticeable difference in turn wait time between the two.

 

[T.A JONES]

It's cpu. Though it is RAM also, but there is a breakpoint in which adding more RAM than a certain amount will not yield much, or only minimal, performance gain.

I run a e6300 @ 3.0GHZ, default is 1.83GHZ.

There is quite a noticeable difference in turn wait time between the two.

Yes I agree after a point its all about the pentiums. In your case dualcore reverted back to faster monocore, aka pentium to take advantage of a game that dosn't utilize 2 more
Curious while you where up their overclockin why didn't you feel like going a lil higher? You said it helps and I know they go faster without overheating No?

ANyway The only better alt from my Cedarmill 3.2ghz 2mbl L2 is this is 64 bit supported model so with Vista I could slide in another g stick of ram and average 3.6 ghz then strap in the 512mb graphics card and now tell me how can I do better? (not by going to the coredues owned by many members on this site found in tech forum anyway)

My tip to those who only fool around on the net and civ4 or other mono designed games, Don't waste money on the expensive new stuff. Go to you local computer supplier and custum order with this baby as your driving turn charger 2000 type engine ' Intel Pentium 4 650 Prescott 3.4GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 84W Single-Core Processor


I'll be trying for this one when its restocked I was acually hopin my bro had me coverd on this for Xmas but his cheap fiance put him on a budget after thier house purchase. Now Xmas has gone and so coincidingly, is the engine.
I can't complain cuz hes the one who has to install it for me! The most expensive pentium ever offered but under what you pay for core duo and well worth it in mono designed application for top performance over any other alternatives.

If you wanna go crazy heres the same model on steriods "extreme" I bet this is what Fireaxis had when they desinged civ4. Here were talkin a 3.7 ghz engine with all else the same. This is before overclocking!!!

 

[Nay]

Fun sidefact: In Multiplayer, the games goes MUCH more smoothly than in single.
Cant tell why, but last time i played single i was taken aback by the time things need.

 

[Verge]

Fun sidefact: In Multiplayer, the games goes MUCH more smoothly than in single.
Cant tell why, but last time i played single i was taken aback by the time things need.

Was it because in Multi, you were playing with smaller maps, while in Single, you were playing with larger ones?

 

[Bhruic]

Fun sidefact: In Multiplayer, the games goes MUCH more smoothly than in single.

Well, the more human players you have, generally, the less AI players you have. And it's the AI players that take the majority of the CPU time. So that's not really a surprise.

Bh

 

[Dano_01]

Hi all,
I'm new here but have been playing civ for about 10years in different versions. I have update to beyond the sword and my old putor could not run it and the investment with power supplies and graphic cards made of my mind to buy a new puter. I purchased a Gateway5485E with the quad core processor and NVIDIA® GeForce® 8500GT. The putor has been updated with 4 GB ram. I have the lastest Civ patches but still find that it is unbearable to play beyond the sword because of the slow play. I have gone as far as closing every other application I could before playing but I still have the same problem. I'm playing only 3-5 civs on a medium map but still the game is slow. Any help from would be greatly appreciated. I haven't played this game in a couple months because of the frustration.

 

[Thanny]

Uh, no. The e6600 has 2x2.4GHz. There are plenty of single CPU chips that'll easily outperform one 2.4GHz core. Unless you are trying to run something processor intensive in the background, a game like Civ IV is going to get 99.9% of the CPU time, even with a single core.

You seem to be equating clock frequency with speed. The reason the Core 2 processors are such a big jump forward is not that they have two cores - Intel did that with P4-based chips, too. They're more efficient, executing more instructions per clock cycle.

The P4 was actually a giant step back in that respect - a P4 is much slower than a P3, Herz for Herz.

A single E6600 core at 2.4GHz is 20-40% faster than a single Prescott core at 3.8GHz, despite having a only a bit more than two thirds the clock speed.

To put it into more perspective, that same 3.8GHz Prescott single-core chip ranges from 5% faster (in a small number of things) to 20% slower than a 2.6GHz Athlon 4000+ single-core processor. Those are the fastest single-core offerings from Intel and AMD, and both are slower than a single 2.4GHz core from an E6600.

 

[Thanny]

Eh, I can clearly see both CPU's being used in my process priority Optimizer by CIV 4.

Unless you set a CPU affinity for the process, it will be scheduled on alternating cores. This will make it look like both are being used on a CPU usage graph. It's still only using a single work thread.

 

[Thray]

Hi all,
I'm new here but have been playing civ for about 10years in different versions. I have update to beyond the sword and my old putor could not run it and the investment with power supplies and graphic cards made of my mind to buy a new puter. I purchased a Gateway5485E with the quad core processor and NVIDIA® GeForce® 8500GT. The putor has been updated with 4 GB ram. I have the lastest Civ patches but still find that it is unbearable to play beyond the sword because of the slow play. I have gone as far as closing every other application I could before playing but I still have the same problem. I'm playing only 3-5 civs on a medium map but still the game is slow. Any help from would be greatly appreciated. I haven't played this game in a couple months because of the frustration.

Do you have a 64-bit OS to support that 4GB of RAM? If not, try taking some out until you're down to 2-3GB.

The 8500 GT isn't a hugely powerful graphics card, however I'm not sure what kind of impact late-game Civ has on a graphics card. Still, if you got a new high resolution display with your computer, you might be outstripping what the card can comfortably do in that regard.

I can't find the Gateway model offhand to see the specs. What sort of CPU in there beyond quad-core? Though I think any quad-core shouldn't be reduced to unbearable lag from Civ.

 

[T.A JONES]

.

To put it into more perspective, that same 3.8GHz Prescott single-core chip ranges from 5% faster (in a small number of things) to 20% slower than a 2.6GHz Athlon 4000+ single-core processor. Those are the fastest single-core offerings from Intel and AMD, and both are slower than a single 2.4GHz core from an E6600.

When you say the best prospects in pentium are slower then core due we all agree except If you bring the arguement over to Civ series you see. For instance wheres your proof civ4 was programed to get FULL use of this upgraded tech for its benifit on INTERTURN, as opposed to ENHANCED mono optimization? .
You say all software is better run on core due but have no proof to invalidate the compaints coming from coredue players of civ4.
I bet you won't hear anyone complain with a rig the likes I linked (64bit mono 64 bit supported 2mb L2cache)
Ontop, its got muti thread advantages yet this means nothing and dual, sorry duo, does?

Please Im not workin in the computer biz IM sure you know your stuff, I know my civ stuff though, you be surprised how much I spent YOUTUBING this study. I want a benchmark link that proves this is infact the case. Otherwise, I go by what I can link here to contradict your claims(IN THE CIV DEPT ONLY!!!)..This is after all not a general tech discussion where generalization has any merit. This is civ specific and we need specific evidence not what is 'suppose' to happen in a majority of instances. Here I say we have article exception to the your 'truth'

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

My biggest issue with Civ 4 is how terrible it handles memory. It definitly takes more RAM than WoW, and I think more than a lot of FPS'. Bizzare.

 

[Dano_01]

Do you have a 64-bit OS to support that 4GB of RAM? If not, try taking some out until you're down to 2-3GB.

The 8500 GT isn't a hugely powerful graphics card, however I'm not sure what kind of impact late-game Civ has on a graphics card. Still, if you got a new high resolution display with your computer, you might be outstripping what the card can comfortably do in that regard.

I can't find the Gateway model offhand to see the specs. What sort of CPU in there beyond quad-core? Though I think any quad-core shouldn't be reduced to unbearable lag from Civ.

Thanks Thray, following is a web link to my system as well as my monitor. http://www.gateway.com/retail/gm5485e.php let me know what you think. I purchased this computer with the idea I could play the game without any problem. (it seems every time I upgrade my system its due to Civ new versions ) again any help would be appreciated. If you can recommend an affordable graphics card my system could run let me know.

 

[Thray]

Definitely find out about the version of Windows; is it the 32-bit edition or the 64-bit edition? So long as you're using the 32-bit edition, 4gb of RAM isn't doing you any good, in fact it can actually slow you down. 32-bit OSes don't really handle more than ~3gb of RAM (thus why 64-bit editions are being phased in). Check this out first.

The CPU should be fine. I've got a dual-core of similar specs and the game runs great.

For the graphics card, a quick test you could try is to run the game at a low monitor resolution and low graphics (game will look extremely ugly, but it's just a test). If the lag problems are still basically the same, then it's unlikely to be graphics lag, and the problem lies elsewhere. I don't honestly know whether that card should be able to handle rendering Civ4 at full resolution on a 24" widescreen or not.

I tend to use Tom's Hardware for a quick gauge on graphics card values.

 

[Dano_01]

Thanks Thray,
this is 32bit, I had slow play when I used 2 gig of memory that came with the computer so I upgraded to 4 and that seemed to help some. I had been told that vista likes a little over 3 gigs that's why I went to 4. I can try to pull 1 gig out to see if that helps a long with changing the graphic setting. That gives me a good place to start. The first time I ran civ it set it's own graphics based on my computer config so I assumed it was set to the best case.

 

[dacalo]

I have Q6600 @ 3.00Ghz, 4GB RAM, and 8800GT 512RAM and it's pretty slow at huge. It's unfortunate that the game is not optimized for multi-core CPUs. I am toward the end of tech tree and the wait is about 50 seconds per turn now.

 

[mgbx4]

I play the cartes earth map, is super huge. I play with 32 civs, I have a gamer pc, and it runs okay. I have everything on high quality. the only thing tho is that if I play more then 10-12 turns Sometimes it crashes Civ. So i have to save it everyturn . So im just going to stop playing this types of maps, even tho i love them. And everything time it crashes, is when there is about 300 units or more in my screen.