Memory-fix by Harkonnen is out!

[srdjann]

I am primarily interested in following three things:
1) Do gray leader-boxes still appear? If the answer is 'yes', did you have this problem before my fix?

2) Do black terrain/colored trees still appear? If the answer is 'yes', did you have this problem before my fix?

3) Does globe view perform worse than before the first version of fix? It shouldn't become faster on its own, my aim with this is not to make it slower at least.

4) Any new problems / improvements as compared to previous version of the fix (post #1)?

1. I didn't experience such thing neither before neither now

2. Black terrain a) didn't appear before your 1st fix 2) did appear with your 1st fix only when I alt-tabed to windows and get back 3) with 2nd fix that situation repeats partialy – only the part of the map which is focused when I alt-tab (and back) gets black terrain

3. I do not swich to globe view so I can not provide this kind of information, but...

4. The sound (the music) is better with this 2nd fix since it goes fluently which was not the case without your fix and with 1st fix (with your 1st fix it got fluent after couple of minutes)

5. Scrolling the screen with this 2nd fix is worse than with the 1st one – sometimes it get totally stuck. With 1st fix (and without it) it does not go fluently but it doesn't get blocked...

My configuration: Civ4 ver 1.09, AMD Sempron 2500+ (64bit), 512Mb RAM, nvidia geforce 2 mx400 (64Mb) – I applyed 1st fix without changing anything (vid_mem_usage=80, insane_mode = 1) and with 2nd fix I changed vid_mem_usage like you said to 64.

I got back to 1st fix since that screen blocking is unplayable and with 1st fix I can wait couple of minutes for music to stabilize and if I alt+tab I just load a game and the black terrain dissapears – gets normal (coloured trees does not appear – sometimes it just dissapear).

 

[Harkonnen]

Walter Hawkwood
I will be very thankful if you check it for 150, 180, 200 and 220 Mb... Start with highest until you kill bugs. Currently I reserve 20Mb for whatever is already allocated (screen image for example), but this seems not to be enough.

 

[Harkonnen]

srdjann
Thanks for the info, I will wait for some more replies to decide what causes all these problems...

Since it worked with 80 (over 64Mb) with fix #1, you may try 100 or 128 with this fix. Probably it will make it better. This way you are hitting AGP memory which is sometimes slower, but there is no better solution with 64Mb of video memory.

Black terrain after alt-tabbing is expected issue if you are using 'insane_mode = 1'. I was curious about this thing happening on its own... (updated post #640 for further reporters).

 

[Gaias]

What can I say Harkonnen, the intermediate patch works like a dream.

Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz
1024 Meg Ram
Geforce fx 5950 ultra 256 Meg
Patch vid_mem_useage = 256
insane_mode = 1

The problem I used to have with the studdering video with 1.09 patch is now gone. I loaded up your savegame file and zoomed out to global view without haveing it watch it by 1 frame per second. Now I get a healthy 4 frames per second. I use to get black terrain in a few games that I played, depending on the setting I was trying out with the old patch. Now that I have played a few quick games to finish (bout 2 hours long) I haven't had any black terrain rear its ugly head. Never did have trouble with the leaderheads being in a grey box, so cannot really say anything there. Nor did I ever experience any problem with golden ships with the first patch.

Man oh man this stuff just gets better and better! I have so much CIV4 goodness not I do not know what to do with myself.

P.S. On a side not your nice little indicator with FPS and Mem useage shows me that I saved a whopping 269 megs of ram with your savegame! Superfly fast!

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

150 seems to be the highest working. Starting with 160 it crashes. If I can help with anything else, ask away. Oh, and a proper thank you from a fellow countryman is due...

Огроменный спасиб! Становишься знаменитостью. Своими ушами слышал, как "волшебную заплатку" в Москве обсуждали друг с другом на улице незнакомые люди, глядя на диск Цив4 в витрине... Супер!

 

[cintorix]

I've never posted anything before, ever, but went and signed up just so I could sing praises to Harkonnen for the good work and generosity.

Lat night i put in patch#1, and it works perfectly.

512MB.....okay
128MB.....okay
1.3GHz....not so good

I had upgraded ram and vid just so I could play civ4 and was, like everyone else here, extremely disappointed in the late game performance. (and i usually only play standard size).

This weekend I will put in the intermediate patch and track some numbers and post.

Once again, Excellent Work!

 

[srdjann]

srdjann
Thanks for the info, I will wait for some more replies to decide what causes all these problems...

Since it worked with 80 (over 64Mb) with fix #1, you may try 100 or 128 with this fix. Probably it will make it better. This way you are hitting AGP memory which is sometimes slower, but there is no better solution with 64Mb of video memory.

Black terrain after alt-tabbing is expected issue if you are using 'insane_mode = 1'. I was curious about this thing happening on its own... (updated post #640 for further reporters).

Amazing! With 100 or 128 it works much better (even though I have got 64Mb of video memory).

I'm still trying to figure out which value works better (It seems that with 100 music is a little bit smoother than with 128 and with 128 scrolling is a little bit smoother then with 100) but anyway it's much better than without fix or with 1st fix (or with 2nd fix with 64 value).

Thanx a lot for this, you did amazing job!

PS. I checked the globe view and it's totally ok!

 

[Harkonnen]

Walter Hawkwood
That's strange indeed... Can you please run 'dxdiag', enter 'Display' tab and tell me "texture memory available" from there?

I would understand if 200 would be highest working, but 150... It looks like 100Mb of video memory are wasted or inaccessible for unknown reason.

I just don't want to believe that that's due to fragmentations as I can't control it with video memory... at least not being part of Firaxis, i.e. w/o source code.

P.S: (rus. lang): Che-to raskladka poletela... Spasibo, ne ozhidal takoy populyarnosti patcha

 

[Harkonnen]

srdjann
Well, stepping ahead - AGP memory is bounded by 64Mb with my system (512Mb limit). With 1Gb it's usually limited to 256Mb (check BIOS). If so, you may set it even to incredible 256mb...

Just note that 'memory_saved' in my FPS meter won't be correct when you use AGP memory and 'insane_mode = 1' since actually AGP memory is eaten from your physical memory.

cintorix
Actually 1.3Ghz is so-so good, at least with civ4. AGP-4x limit is bad. And 512Mb limit is bad - all due to P3-days chipset.

 

[Pheoni]

@ Harkonnen
At this point in time has there been /ANY/ contact from Firaxis/2K?

 

[DuncanIdaho v.1]

First and foremost, THANK YOU!!! You da man!

My system:

AMD Duron 1.3 Ghz
512Mb RAM
GeForce FX 5200, 64Mb (PCI)
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

With patch 1.09, and before your original patch, I was getting good (but not great) intro movies, barely tolerable gameplay on large maps (too much stalling to play huge maps), wonder movie stuttering on both video and audio, leader profiles laggy; but no major bugs like CTD's, lockups, or black screens. I play with AA=0, graphics on low, 1024x768, animations and effects on, fullscreen on.

With your original patch, I set vid_mem=32, insane_mode=1, and got great results for game speed and scrolling. I had problems with leader profiles going grey, the odd ship would go golden, and wonder movies were still bad. I started a huge map game yesterday, and it's playing better than the large maps I've played without your patch. This is the map I'm testing your intermediate release on.

I downloaded your updated patch, installed, and set vid_mem=64 with insane_mode=1. Intro movies stuttered horribly, but no audio problems; FPS~30. Game loaded per usual, and FPS on loading were around 10. Mouse scrolling on fullscreen mode dropped FPS to 4 or 5, as does the movement of units. Scrolling to globe view locked game for 20 or 30 seconds, then FPS averaged 4. Wonder movies went untested, but no grey screens with leader profiles.

Hope this helps, and once again,

 

[Private_pAuLa]

I am primarily interested in following three things:
1) Do gray leader-boxes still appear (not after alt-tabbing, just on its own)? If the answer is 'yes', did you have this problem before my fix?

2) Do black terrain/colored trees still appear (not after alt-tabbing, just on its own)? If the answer is 'yes', did you have this problem before my fix?

3) Does globe view perform worse than before the first version of fix? It shouldn't become faster on its own, my aim with this is not to make it slower at least.

4) Any new problems / improvements as compared to previous version of the fix (post #1)?

1) didn't get this. as far as i played to test it didn't show up.

2) same as 1) didn't apear on my machine

3) as fast/slow as allways

4) didn't encounter any problems, but i didn't play for long

 

[Gen]

Really hate to say it but...

1) Do gray leader-boxes still appear (not after alt-tabbing, just on its own)?

Yes, they're still around and I had them before. Now they seem to appear even faster (after 2-3 or so turns I believe).

2) Do black terrain/colored trees still appear (not after alt-tabbing, just on its own)?

No, and didn't before.

3) Does globe view perform worse than before the first version of fix? It shouldn't become faster on its own, my aim with this is not to make it slower at least.

It's considerably slower. However I think it's not the globe view problem, but general one... see below

4) Any new problems / improvements as compared to previous version of the fix (post #1)?

Strange thing is, in my case new patch performs much worse than the previous one, performance-wise.
Opening video is a bit choppy (didn't before) but that's not a big problem. Problem is that scrolling map (by mouse or minimap) and zooming are extremely slow. I mean, FPS goes down even below 0.5 for several seconds, even up to a minute, if I try to scroll just few tiles in any direction. Sometimes it works a bit faster but sometimes it seems the program enters some kind of long loop (definitely not infinite though), while interface is hardly responding and FPS goes way down. I've no idea what might cause that - reloaded old patch again and everything is fast again.

My system specs
Intel pentium 4 2 GHz
Mainboard: MSI 465 PE Max2
1,2 GB RAM (that is 1GB + 256 MB chips)
Video: Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200, 64 MB (AGP 8x)
AGP aperture: 256MB (max possible)

Hope it helps.
Let me know if you need more test data.

PS. Tried also old setting vid_mem_usage = 100 with new patch, even if it should be set to 64 - game was a bit faster but still not comparable to first patch. Also, switching insane mode didn't help either.

 

[cymru_man]

Just a quick post to re-iterate everything all the happy people said. The fix works great!

System:

AMD Athlon XP 3200 (2.2Ghz)
1 gig RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 256meg (yes..I was also one of those with the dreaded "Failed to init render" problem...)

 

[Harkonnen]

Gen
Ok, please try '128' for vid_mem_usage. I will update post #640 to force 64Mb users to set 'vid_mem_usage' to 128Mb and they MUST have AGP on. You do have it on since you had '100' before without problems.

DuncanIdaho v.1
Ok, that makes some sense... I will check why all that happens.

Pheoni
No. But other companies did

 

[Smidlee]

No change in globel view for me as I'm still getting a wonderful 3 fps. I can now load games from desktop. With 7800 gt (256) with everything high plus aa x4; 1280X1024 ( lower settings doesn't increase my framerate anyways) while looking at Delhi on hark's saved game I get 60fps totally zoomed in , 25fps to max zoom before the clouds then 3 fps globel view. (Blue marble graphics) In the first patch the movies did run smoother but with this new patch I back where I was in choppiness. Still, not a game breaker by a long shot but it would be nice to get more than 3 fps when using globel view.

edit: In window mode my movies are running smooth with the new patch again. I also tried run two games on both monitors. I had civ 4 on one and Doom 3 demo with high settings (both in window mode) on the other and still get the exact same framerate with civ 4. My graphic card was getting a little warmer running both yet obviously civ4 isn't working my graphic card or processor very hard.

 

[druade]

HELLO
I havent been up to date to this site for some days and i was wondering if the auto-install patch has already been released. I were also wondering if i had to do something else but installing this patch (changing properties or something like that)?

 

[arioch99]

Gen
and they MUST have AGP on.

When your say AGP on it is in BIOS or in card configuration in Windows.

Where can I see if agp is on for Geforce3 Card?

GEN can you answer this question for me Please

 

[Gen]

Gen
Ok, please try '128' for vid_mem_usage. I will update post #640 to force 64Mb users to set 'vid_mem_usage' to 128Mb and they MUST have AGP on. You do have it on since you had '100' before without problems.

MUCH better Everything is again fast and smooth. It must be then that 64MB video memory thing. Thanks!

However, corrupted leaderheads are still there. But I've also noticed that they are not always permanently gone - even after they turn invisible a little bit later sometimes show again correctly.
Also, one thing I forgot - sometimes after pressing F9 I don't see the histograph. To be honest, I don't know if patch causes that, it could be very well game bug, I will turn patch off for a while and test that.

Edit: unfortunately it seems to be the patch issue...

 

[arioch99]

HELLO
I havent been up to date to this site for some days and i was wondering if the auto-install patch has already been released. I were also wondering if i had to do something else but installing this patch (changing properties or something like that)?

No the auto-Install patch has not be released but you can see post #640 for intermediate update and instruction how to use it.