Lag/frame drops

[bobwwd]

I don't think there is much to be done about the frame skip, although it does sound somewhat worse in your case than I've experienced myself.

Have you tried rolling back to an older graphic driver, or perhaps make sure you have the latest version?

I have the latest version, haven't tried rolling back yet. I need to test it on my other PC and virtual PC first to be "almost" sure what is causing it. But I'm pretty sure it'll work flawless on virtual PC with Windows XP installed, gonna install my old Win XP 64Bit version on it. It will be enough for me if it does, I can play the mod on that. Cannot play (but I can test) it on my other PC because it only has 2GB RAM at the moment, so hoping it works OK on virtual PC.

Two last options if none of above gives me a plain answer would be
either overclocking RAM just to test
or re-install Win7 but I'm not gonna do that

I've encountered many problems with PCs, for 99% of those problems I've found a solution. I like figuring out these kinds of problems haha, there has been only 1 case I haven't figured out, that was hardware related on my friend's PC (I guessed he had some problems with RAM-CPU interaction on the motherboard but he never sent the motherboard to the manufacturer to confirm it. So it will remain a mystery). This Civ thing might be the second but I won't give up unless I've tried everything

 

[bobwwd]

Alright the frameskip has something to do with Civ4 gameloop code. Can you Toffer90 and someone else too to post your system specs and operating system for me to compare? Those who don't have freezes or frameskips on C2C. Because on my second PC which sucks. The game makes same effect when holding F(fortify button) even on vanilla game.
(Can't start a match in C2C on my second PC, crashes everytime after initializing match. 2GB probably not enough for it. I tried duel map size, etc. That second PC just too crap haha)

 

[Toffer90]

Windows 7 x64
i5 2500k quad (over-clocked from 3.3 → 4.3 GHz)
SSD 550/510 MB/s Read/write
16GB RAM 1600 MHz
Radeon HD 7950 3GB VRAM; Effective Memory Bandwidth: 240 GB/s (and over-clocked core clock from 810 → 1000 MHz)
Mootherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3

No paging on SSD; 16 GB paging file on another HDD.

 

[bobwwd]

Windows 7 x64
i5 2500k quad over-clocked to 4.2GHz.
SSD 550/510 MB/s Read/write
16GB RAM 1600 MHz
Radeon HD 7950 3GB VRAM; Effective Memory Bandwidth: 240 GB/s (and over-clocked core clock from 810 → 1000 MHz).
Mootherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3

No paging on SSD; 16 GB paging file on another HDD.

Thanks, I need to try overclocking on my parts if it makes any difference.

Here's though a video of the lag/frameskips:
First I just keep holding the F button and scrolling with the mouse.
But after that you can see the lag while I move units and use city screen.

This was recorded on 60fps and those lags/stuttering on the video were the frameskips where FPS dropped to 0 or around 0. At the end I hold W button (unit wait). Any stop/freeze in the video is a frameskip

Sometimes it seems to be frameskip, sometimes just a freeze.. I'm not even sure anymore myself..

Just posting the video if that helps better to describe my problem

https://youtu.be/zSMalJfrSTo

My friend had no issues with the mod, he's running an old AMD processor and has less powerful GPU / specs than I have... but has also Win7 64bit. Figures...

Btw, why is there Ultima 8's Avatar running as the cursor loading icon.. lol. That game sucked plot-wise compared to earlier Ultima series (don't even wanna mention U9... because EA)

EDIT: That's weird.. why is it +100 turn.. That was just started Duel match.... is that some mod thing or glitch?

 

[Toffer90]

Your problem is worse than I thought.

Perhaps it's a NVIDIA driver issue. More often than you would think both AMD and NVIDIA tend to create large issues with older games when they release a new update to their HW drivers; I've seen many specific cases of this before.

Does your friend have AMD or NVIDIA GPU?


EDIT: Are you by any chance running the game on the debug dll?

The one (see attached picture) that does not have .debug at the end of the filename should only be 10MB big if it is 20MB then you are running the game with the debug version of the dll and it would cause similar slowdowns as shown in your YT video.

 

[bobwwd]

I have intel CPU and Nvidia GPU, my friend has AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU. I have ASUS motherboard, my friend has ASUS motherboard too if I remember correct..

I'm running the game on the default DLL, default mod DLL. No debug versions

 

[Toffer90]

Have you run stress tests on both GPU and CPU to ensure they perform as expected at reasonable temperatures? If you don't have any problems with newer games then that would be a good enough stress test in and of itself. RAM diagnostic test perhaps?

Hmm, have you checked that there are no unexpected processes consuming processor power while running the game?

Perhaps there is some odd motherboard BIOS fault that have been fixed in a newer BIOS version?

EDIT: Do you have 1 RAM chip that is significantly slower than the others? Faster chips cannot perform faster than a slower chip when working together.

 

[bobwwd]

I haven't run a CPU or GPU stress test in a while.. or diagnosed RAM, should probably run memtest. All temperatures are ok, few weeks ago I replaced thermal paste on CPU cooler and cleaned insides good, so no problem there.
No unwanted processes running on the background. No viruses, etc.

I'm gonna check BIOS tomorrow if there's something wrong..

EDIT: I have 2 RAM chips, both same manufacturer, same type, both 4GB. I know these things ..and they are on dual channel slots on motherboard

I need to try also if Civ4 runs in Windows safe mode, if it does I'll see if any difference.
But that's tomorrow's thing.. time for some sleep now here heh

 

[JosEPh_II]

@bobwwd,
My Comp specs:
OS win10 x64
i7 2500K Cpu 3.2ghz (no overclocking for me)
MoBo MSI 1155 DDR3
8GB 1066mhz DDR3 ram
Nividia GTX 550 ti 1GB DDR3: Dedicated 1024MB, Shared 3071MB
2-1TB HDs
Performance Settings:
1.Visual Tab set to Custom ( I never let windows manage this)
2. Advanced Tab set to Programs
Paging File set at 8166MB

Monitor set at 1920 x 1080 60hz

Can't say that I've ever noticed frame skip, but then maybe I don't know what to look for either.

EDIT: Perhaps you should set the unit animation to Single instead of 3. If you have not already tried that.

JosEPh

 

[Usul13]

My system:
OS Win 8.1 x64
CPU: i3-4170
MoBo: Gigabyte B85M-D3V
Ram: 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon HD7950 with tweaked BIOS, the GPU runs on 925MHz
Driver: Crimson 16.1.1
HDD: Samsung HD 401LJ 400GByte
12 GByte fixed size page file on a dedicated partition

I never experienced similar graphical problems. Not even on my old computer with C2D E6400 CPU and Radeon HD 4870 video card, although on that I played a much older SVN version.

 

[bobwwd]

I just realised in my BIOS the SATA is running on IDE mode... I'll change that

EDIT: Well, it didn't make a difference either

EDIT2: I overclocked my RAM and it seems the frameskips are slightly shorter or I'm just imagining things. I also disabled pagefile for Civ4 drive and increased pagefile on C: drive

EDIT3: Yea they are definitely way shorter than before.. So I guess the RAM overclocking helped. It's way more playable now.. Don't wanna overclock too much though to prevent overheating since I don't have a proper cooler on the RAM

 

[Toffer90]

Curious, what is your RAM standard clock?

 

[tmv]

What is your RAM type?

 

[Usul13]

In the first post bobwwd wrote that he has an i7-4770k CPU so his RAM should be 1333Mhz or 1600Mhz DDR3.

In theory he shouldn't have problem with his RAM bandwidth even if he is using it in single channel.

Edit: I have to change my previous statement. I have small lags too. I tried a little experiment with single and dual channel memory settings and I looked for this lags. It isn't a frame skip, it is more like a short freeze. In my unit's movement animation I have a 0.1 maybe 0.2 second freeze before it starts moving to the next plot and there is another freeze before it stops. When I enter into the city screen I have a 0.4-0.5 second freeze. When I exit to the map I have a 0.1 second freeze.

If I use single channel settings the freezes are seem to be a little longer, but I am not entirely sure. It wasn't a blind test so maybe I imagining the longer times.

I guess it never bothered me so I didn't remember this.

 

[strategyonly]

OK i just had the same problem, and was on the phone with the Geek Squad for over an hour, and they re-did alot in my PC and to find out the REAL problem was actually the program (CIV IV) itself). Never has this problem before in 10 years, so what they said was UN-install ALL of Civ IV, and RE-INSTALL from scratch.
I did this and poof no problem any longer . . .

 

[bobwwd]

My RAM is Corsair DDR3 1333mhz (well technically it is 1600mhz but RAM is usually underclocked by stock default), I upped it to 1600mhz and the freezes/frameskips/whatever it is were shorter. Then I put it back to stock default 1333mhz and the freezes were again longer. So for my case, increasing it to 1600mhz worked.
The freeze times are about half from before. I'll try tomorrow if increasing from 1600mhz helps even more

I did re-install Civ4, delete all cache files and old settings, but it didn't help at all. I even re-downloaded the mod.

Figures..

Now I'll play some C2C.. finally..

Thanks all for helping out

EDIT:

I have to change my previous statement. I have small lags too. I tried a little experiment with single and dual channel memory settings and I looked for this lags. It isn't a frame skip, it is more like a short freeze. In my unit's movement animation I have a 0.1 maybe 0.2 second freeze before it starts moving to the next plot and there is another freeze before it stops. When I enter into the city screen I have a 0.4-0.5 second freeze. When I exit to the map I have a 0.1 second freeze.

Reading your post makes me feel like my RAM is running in single channel eventhough it's running on dual channel, even according to CPU-Z. I've noticed in other games, like Battlefield 4 that load times are a bit longer than what my friend has. He has the same memory 8GB, no SSD and less powerful AMD CPU and GPU. He has also Win7 64bit.

So maybe there's something wrong with my RAM or motherboard or BIOS settings. But those load times haven't never really bothered me that much to check if everything is correct in BIOS on the stock default settings (except when I noticed SATA was running on IDE mode and I thought it was on ACHI, it's on ACHI now though. That might have had something to do with load times in other games. To my knowledge, ACHI is slightly slower during boot than IDE but overall a bit faster).

My motherboard is ASUS B85-Plus and my PSU is 700W so there shouldn't be a power shortage.

 

[bobwwd]

I overclocked my RAM to 2000mhz and the freezes are "almost" non-existant. I could go higher with this Corsair RAM but I cannot get stable BIOS settings above 2000mhz. I also heard that Corsair RAM is designed mainly for AMD systems, no idea if that's true or not.

However, still small freezes but it's now even more playable for my taste.

Sorry for double post

PS. I've had 3 crashes in the mod when I found a Stone Spearman from a Tribal Village, then explored another Tribal Village with that Stone Spearman and everytime I got hostiles (warriors) the game kept crashing when it started to load Barbarian movements/AI during turns (it was when turn was about to end. Last units were Barbarian). Reloading fixed it though because I enabled Random Seed on reload in the C2C files..
Sometimes Civ4/Windows gave me "not responding" and sometimes it just went to desktop with no error message.
..Also those volcano messages/events.. I assume it's a glitch..
(maybe I should put this in a new topic? anyway...)