Clown2TheLeft said:
Bad RAM? As a wise man said, "[Deleted] please." 25% of the people who bought the game have bad RAM that ONLY came to light after installing Civ IV... riiiiiiiight. Believe that, and I can hook you up with this bridge in Brooklyn... C'mon.
And why not? Think about it - you have, lets say, 1GB of memory in your rig. You play games like Doom 3, Quake 4, and any number of games that are pretty system intensive. However, in those games, the levels load, you play, then they are dumped from memory and the next level loads. While I am sure they are big, they may never hit the upper regions of memory. Especially if, say, the bad blocks of memory are on the higher addresses on the chips. Many games may not ever hit that high of a memory address.
Now, you start playing Civ 4. For the sake of argument, you start a Huge map with as many civs as you can stuff onto it. The games starts out fine, since all you can see are you and your immediate surroundings. However, as the game progresses, it has to load more and more into memory, because there is more for the game to keep track of. More graphics, more units, more cities, etc. You get the picture. Suddenly, the memory it needs has grown higher. Then, out of the blue, you get a BSOD or a CTD. You may or may not get an error report, but if you do get one, it may give you a memory address. If it does not give one, check your event viewer.
Write that number down, and try again. When you crash again, check the memory address it gives, once again, if it gives one. If you start to see duplicate addresses show up, you should be suspect of that memory. I did not say toss it and buy new, I merely think it is time to test it, to see if it indeed related.
I like to tell people to check their memory because it is simple to test, and in my line of work (I am an IT Professional) I have found bad memory happens more often than you care to think about. In many cases it does no harm, but every now and then, it pops up.
Hardware does fail and does develop flaws over time. Let me see heat and electricity run through you constantly for weeks or months and see how you feel. Electronics fail. While this is not the only solution for CIV, I am sure, it is one area the USER can check and troubleshoot.
Yes, you should not have to tweak your own system to play a game. However, how will you know if you have a hardware issue unless you give everything a good check?
Yeah, 25% does seem a bit high, but they should at least check their memory, just to verify that it is good.
Clown2TheLeft said:
It is the software. Repeat: it is the SOFTWARE. Realize that, and stop trying to make chicken salad out of chicken [Deleted]. It ain't gonna turn out right; I don't care HOW much mayonnaise you use!
I have read through some of your other posts, and you are quite bitter about Civ 4 not working for you. I am sorry you have had problems, but there are many many people who are not. Be patient. There is no way they can account for the myriad of system and software configs that are out there, so it takes time.
In all seriousness, I really don't know why you would need dual +12V rails. My assumption is that it is related to SLI or some other requirement of a high-end system. Who knows, maybe one day all PSU's will be dual +12V rails. I also recall reading somewhere that when evaluating the total amperage available at 12 volts, you cannot just add the two numbers together. It is a 2+2=3 kind of situation. In other words, if one rail is 16A and the other is 18A, the total amperage available is something like 28 or 30 amps rather than the 34A sum of the two rails. But, don't quote me on any of this, as I really do not know.
