Hi guys, I'm playing on an older gaming(lol) laptop, and since I've started playing Rise of Mankind, my games have grown in size considerably. Now there are many more units and nations in my games, and the time between turns is growing and growing. Now, I'm just wondering if my laptop specs have much to do with it, or is it simply a limitation of the game's engine? I'm asking because soon I'm going to be building myself a desktop, and I would like to know if RAM or CPU increases on the PC will help move the game along better.
Is there anything that can make my turns move faster?
- Thread starter Admiral_F
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tokala
Emperor
For a new computer 4 GB RAM is a good idea in any case, and Civ4 cannot use more than that anyway. RAM is quite cheap at the moment. Will not make Civ run faster, but enable you to play on larger mapsizes into the lategame without running out of memory.
Civ4 uses only one CPU core, so you will want a high-clocked i3/i5 as the most efficient CPU for Civ4. If you don't mind being a "early adopter" of brand new hardware, those new "Sandy Bridge" CPU should be the fastest CPUs for Civ4.
What is your current CPU, how much do you want to spend and what stuff beside Civ4 are you planning to run on the new machine?
Civ4 uses only one CPU core, so you will want a high-clocked i3/i5 as the most efficient CPU for Civ4. If you don't mind being a "early adopter" of brand new hardware, those new "Sandy Bridge" CPU should be the fastest CPUs for Civ4.
What is your current CPU, how much do you want to spend and what stuff beside Civ4 are you planning to run on the new machine?
My laptop has an older Core 2 Duo 7700 at 2.4 Ghz, It has 3GB worth of ram, but it's slower, older DDR2 from around '07. I have a decent budget for a new desktop, $1000-$1100, and I've already assembled the parts together on a Newegg wishlist. I've got one of the better i5s on it. And with 8GB of RAM, I shouldn't have any RAM problems. The RAM may be overkill, but I found a great deal, and I might as well get it.
While playing on standard sized maps with the RoM mod, the Revolutions mod causes the number of civs playing in the game at once to over 20. This has caused occasional memory related crashes. If 4 GB is max Civ 4 can use, then how do people play with over 30 when I'm crashing at 3GB?
While playing on standard sized maps with the RoM mod, the Revolutions mod causes the number of civs playing in the game at once to over 20. This has caused occasional memory related crashes. If 4 GB is max Civ 4 can use, then how do people play with over 30 when I'm crashing at 3GB?
tokala
Emperor
Strictly speaking Civ4 will even use only 2 GB out of the box. If you jump through a few hoops, you can get it to use 3 GB, but that's the hard limit. 4 GB of RAM will allow you to run Windows and some other stuff besides Civ4.
Your crashes might be due to Civ running into the 2GB limit. You need to flag the Civ4.exe as 3GB ready, and, if you are using a 32bit Windows, enable the 3GB switch for the OS as well.
Old or not, the speed difference between the different RAM types has only a marginal effect on overall performance these days, somewhere in the single digit percent range.
Going from 4 to 8 GB will make no difference whatsoever for Civ4. RoM is simply pushing Civ4 to or even beyond its limits, and it might depend on your specific hardware configuration how far it can be pushed. (And there might be still some bugs lurking in RoM/Revolutions).
Your present laptop is not bad at all for Civ4. Don't expect miracles from getting a new state of the art desktop, at best you will see roughly double the performance in Civ4.
Your crashes might be due to Civ running into the 2GB limit. You need to flag the Civ4.exe as 3GB ready, and, if you are using a 32bit Windows, enable the 3GB switch for the OS as well.
Old or not, the speed difference between the different RAM types has only a marginal effect on overall performance these days, somewhere in the single digit percent range.
Going from 4 to 8 GB will make no difference whatsoever for Civ4. RoM is simply pushing Civ4 to or even beyond its limits, and it might depend on your specific hardware configuration how far it can be pushed. (And there might be still some bugs lurking in RoM/Revolutions).
Your present laptop is not bad at all for Civ4. Don't expect miracles from getting a new state of the art desktop, at best you will see roughly double the performance in Civ4.
Thanks for the help. I researched the RAM limit upgrade and implemented it, and so far no crashes. I appreciate the feedback about the desktop, and I'll lower my expectations a little bit for Civ4 performance.
One other issue I've noticed is that it literally takes 5 minutes to boot Rise of Mankind. Is this an issue with my computer, or is it typical?
One other issue I've noticed is that it literally takes 5 minutes to boot Rise of Mankind. Is this an issue with my computer, or is it typical?
Could be that civ/RoM allocates so much Memory that your OS has to swap out some of it to the page file. Once actively used stuff can no longer be kept in RAM, system slows down to a crawl.
Even if that doesn't happen, with 3GB there is propably little space left to cache Files in memory. Which means every time civ reads a file, it goes to the slow HD.
Even if that doesn't happen, with 3GB there is propably little space left to cache Files in memory. Which means every time civ reads a file, it goes to the slow HD.
tokala
Emperor
That's normal for large Civ4 mod, though 5 minutes sounds a bit excessive. AFAIK Civ is mostly reading the bazillion of game data files from the harddrive during start up. Notebook harddrives are notoriously slow; that point might improve significantly when switching to a desktop.
If you are planning on getting a $1000 machine, I highly recommend getting a (quality) SSD as a boot drive and for essential programs/data (like Civ
). SSDs excel in handling data structured like the Civ4 game data, and it will mean a tremendous improvement in general windows usability, access times are a order of magnitude faster than from a HDD.@ mintgear: the 2/3 GB are hard limits of a 32bit Windows application. It won't matter how much more RAM you have, a application can simply not access it, and if it tries it will crash
Hmm, i don't think i made a wrong claim, but maybe i was not verbose enough.
I didn't intend to claim that civ would claim more than 3GB. You'r right that as a 32 bit programm it can't.
But even if it just claims, let's assume 2.5 GB. The windows kernel and various services can very well take a few hundred MB for themselves. Now all it takes is some other app running, and you'll have more Memory in use as there is available in RAM. Some of it is swapped out.
I didn't intend to claim that civ would claim more than 3GB. You'r right that as a 32 bit programm it can't.
But even if it just claims, let's assume 2.5 GB. The windows kernel and various services can very well take a few hundred MB for themselves. Now all it takes is some other app running, and you'll have more Memory in use as there is available in RAM. Some of it is swapped out.
tokala
Emperor
Rather me not reading carefully enough
No doubt your scenario is in principle correct. Any idea how dependent is Civ on memory latency/throughput, are people really seeing a massive slowdown when it's forced to access some data from the swapfile?
kiwitt
Road to War Modder
Actually going x64 is great and having more that 4 GB is also good.
Civ 4: BTS is Large Address Space Aware so while it is only a 32 bit program running it on a x64 Win 7 OS, you will get the full 4 GB it requires. A great help for large maps, but the AI is still limited to one CPU, so the faster the CPU is the better.
I run my demanding mod on core i7 with 6 GB of RAM and it runs well.
Civ 4: BTS is Large Address Space Aware so while it is only a 32 bit program running it on a x64 Win 7 OS, you will get the full 4 GB it requires. A great help for large maps, but the AI is still limited to one CPU, so the faster the CPU is the better.
I run my demanding mod on core i7 with 6 GB of RAM and it runs well.
tokala
Emperor
And I thought I knew what I was talking about ... 
I stand corrected, and going for a 64 bit Windows on a new machine is a good idea anyway
I stand corrected, and going for a 64 bit Windows on a new machine is a good idea anyway
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