massive hard drive access even though the game is not installed there

[kefka01]

I don't know if this is necessarily a problem, but I noticed something strange about hard drive accesses while playing Civ 4. Now that I'm towards the end of my current game, the whole game has slowed down to a crawl, often taking many MINUTES just to cycle through a turn, thus completely destroying any fun factor the game had. Note this is on an "always peace" game, so there are hardly any units and absolutely no combat to account for in between turns.

Here's my question: I noticed my "main" drive (the one Windows is installed on) is being accessed almost non-stop when I load my savegame and even after the game gets up and running. The thing is, Civ 4 is not even installed on this drive, it's installed on a drive in a USB enclosure - the drive the game is actually installed on almost never gets accessed at all. I was wondering if this was normal, or if there's something funky going on on my end. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Vorpal]

How much RAM do you have? -- I guess when you run out of RAM Windows creates virtual memory pages on HD (this could be anywhere and any of your partitions) and thus the problem...

 

[kefka01]

How much RAM do you have? -- I guess when you run out of RAM Windows creates virtual memory pages on HD (this could be anywhere and any of your partitions) and thus the problem...

That thought crossed my mind as well. I have 512 MB of RAM, which is the recommended amount, but maybe it's simply not enough. I did a CTRL-ALT-DELETE once while running the game and noticed that the "commit charge" was at about 1000M out of 1500M. Does that mean my RAM is completely used up and I'm using 500 MB of pagefile, or does it mean something else?

Do you think upgrading to 1 GB of RAM would make much of a difference on an older (1.7 ghz) machine? Or at least make a difference on anything outside of Civ 4? If I buy RAM I have to get a lot of use out of it - my computer (unfortunately) uses RDRAM, meaning upgrading memory is a ridiculously expensive prospect (512 megs of RDRAM = ~$120).

 

[ainwood]

Bring up task manger via CTRL-ALT-DEL (assuming you have win XP).

Click on the "processes" tab. In the 'View' menu, choose 'select columns'. On the dialog that appears, check the box for 'virtual memory' and hit 'ok'.

Back on the processes tab, look for CIV4, and you can see how much virtual memory is being allocated to it. The commit charge is total memory used, not just the memory used for Civ.

 

[NP300]

That thought crossed my mind as well. I have 512 MB of RAM, which is the recommended amount, but maybe it's simply not enough. I did a CTRL-ALT-DELETE once while running the game and noticed that the "commit charge" was at about 1000M out of 1500M. Does that mean my RAM is completely used up and I'm using 500 MB of pagefile, or does it mean something else?

A commit charge of 1000M in a system with 512M makes me think RAM is the problem. You are using 1GB of memory but your system only has half that much. You might also try closing any programs running in the background, stopping non-essential services and the like to free up some RAM.

 

[kefka01]

I double-checked when I ran the game today, and sure enough, Civ 4 was using almost 700 mb of virtual memory, around 260 mb of "normal" memory, and of course CPU use was at 100%. Guess I'll just have to live with it for now and try to do what I can to optimize the game and free up memory. Thanks for the help!

 

[Hardin]

You can increase the page file if you have extra space on the harddrive. I have 1gb of ram but my page file is 1536Mb. It can increase to 3gb if need be.

 

[brbdc]

I have this exact problem but my ram is 2 gig. I cant stand the spinning of the hard drive constantly. Its loud and quite bothersome.

Any fixes for turning it off.

 

[TheBarnacle]

I don't know if this is necessarily a problem, but I noticed something strange about hard drive accesses while playing Civ 4. Now that I'm towards the end of my current game, the whole game has slowed down to a crawl, often taking many MINUTES just to cycle through a turn, thus completely destroying any fun factor the game had. Note this is on an "always peace" game, so there are hardly any units and absolutely no combat to account for in between turns.

Here's my question: I noticed my "main" drive (the one Windows is installed on) is being accessed almost non-stop when I load my savegame and even after the game gets up and running. The thing is, Civ 4 is not even installed on this drive, it's installed on a drive in a USB enclosure - the drive the game is actually installed on almost never gets accessed at all. I was wondering if this was normal, or if there's something funky going on on my end. Any help would be appreciated!

sorry for not really offering any help. but i can tell you anecdotally that i notice this game chewing up my HD pretty hard. after running/quitting the game, everything is slow to respond.

i remember years ago when i got alpha cent, that game did similar things to my computer then. so much so that i ended up having to wipe it all clean and reformatting (which it probably needed anyway). point is, i'm a little nervous now about similar problems occurring. i really don't want to have to worry about a game killing my machine.

i can only offer this nugget re: your problem (and take this as a total novice suggestion): while the game might not be installed on the windows drive, i'm guessing your virtual mem is, so the page file swapping would show your drive as very active and that's a typical story with this game.

 

[kefka01]

I have this exact problem but my ram is 2 gig. I cant stand the spinning of the hard drive constantly. Its loud and quite bothersome.

Any fixes for turning it off.

It seems as though Civ IV might have a memory leak, meaning that no matter how much RAM you have it will eventually get used up and then move over to virtual memory. I'm not entirely sure that my problem is symptomatic of a memory leak, especially since it starts happening right away, but it's a possibility.

I think my problem is that I simply don't have enough RAM to run the game properly (even though it EXCEEDS the (original) minimum requirements), leading to constant use of the page file. It's disheartening that even someone with 2 GIGs of RAM is having this same problem.