Memory-fix by Harkonnen is out!

So this wouldn't help me since I've got 2gb of ram. I also get very bad framerate when zoomed out to cloud level on fully loaded huge maps.

( It may help when I tried playing a 256x160 map since this game started out 2.1 gb of ram.)
 
Harkonnen said:
Briareos
Yes, I have about same framerate, but now it can't be blamed for swapping since now there is no swapping anymore. I think this is some stuff with amount of cities (their bars are most probably drawn with user interface subsystem). If this is true, I have nice idea of speeding it up in my next release.
Click to expand...
I fear there's something more evil going on here...

If I load the DesertWar scenario, I get a drop from 25-30 FPS to 8 FPS as soon as I zoom out enough to trigger globe view, and that's with just a handful of cities being visible.

As soon as I hit CTRL-F to switch to Camera Flying mode, the framerate goes back to normal (i.e. more than 20 FPS as long as I don't zoom out further), even though the same city data is still being displayed - shouldn't the framerate drop when the landscape is rendered instead of being a texture? :crazyeye:

np: Eric B. & Rakim - As The Rhyme Goes On (Radio Mix) (Paid In Full)
 
Briareos said:
I fear there's something more evil going on here...

If I load the DesertWar scenario, I get a drop from 25-30 FPS to 8 FPS as soon as I zoom out enough to trigger globe view, and that's with just a handful of cities being visible.
Click to expand...
Well I get 60 fps on this map until I zoomed out to cloud level which drops to 10fps. ouch! On fully loaded huge maps my framerate varies between 50-15 fps usually somewhere around 25 late in the game but when zoomed out it drops to just 2 fps. Exactly what's in 'em clouds?

P.S with 7800 gt (256mb) card setting graphic on the lowest settings makes no differance in framerate than keeping them on the highest with 4x AA. Got any answers why this is so, Harkonnen?
 
Sir, a humble Thank You! :clap:

If you were here in the US I'd buy your drinks all night long!!!! :beer:

My specs: AMD Athlon 2400+ CPU (@GHz) 1GB DDR 333 memory; Windows XP sp2 with 3.6GB page file on separate HD drive/controller; Radeon 9550 256MB AGP Vid card with 5.11 Catalyst Drivers (control panel not CCC)

I re-installed Civ4, applied your patch and did all except lower the settings - left them all on high.

Before the patch, the game loaded okay from the desktop...after it was like greased lighteniing! This was the initial load to the main menu, opening movie etc. The movie ran much better - no stuttering at all...(Windowed Mode)

I loaded your save game, (1961) and it took about 3 minutes to load to the game screen. Without the patch, it took about 5-7 minutes. This was with your default settings, vid_mem_usage = 80. The game scrolled fine; I played a turn and the units moved with little or no lag. Scrolling was fine; even putting the cursor on an edge and letting the world scroll by over and over it never crashed; something it would always do before when I scrolled fast on this save. The only lag was zooming out past the cloud layer - as soon as the cloud texture layer was loaded things slowed to a crawl. The globe view was horribly slow - when I scrolled back in it took a while, but it was like driving a ferrari that I had wound the RPMS up to the redline and shifting gears from first to 3rd as soon as I got past the clouds - it zoomed all the way down extremely fast.

I went through all the diplomacy screens - no memory issues. I gained a lot of memory - however I beleive too much as the vid_mem_usage was set for a 128MB card on Low. The graphics card needed to be used more. BTW, Wonder Movie still stuttered really bad - I believe this is something to do with the way the game runs the Bink codec.

I quit to desktop, and changed the vid_mem_usage to 180. Again, all high video settings for the game. Again it loaded super fast to the Main menu from desktop - this time loading your save game only took a little over 1 minute. (With a cleared cache). Again great performance except for the cloud layer going to globe view. I actually had better memory performance this time...except the page file got a tad larger - but was not accessed much. Overall the game was using only about 550MB of physical RAM, wih virtual memory usage running between 375 and 450 MB, max total paged pool at 819K (compared to 712 with earleir setting).

You should get a new Civver award - "The Golden Hammer" - for tenacity and persistence chipping away at this issue. If you ever want to come to the US and need a professional reference for a job let me know...:goodjob:
 
oldStatesman
Thank you! :) Just one thing...
Before the patch, the game loaded okay from the desktop...
Did you mean after the patch...?

I have some ideas about the globe view (simple enough to be coded and checked this night).

Movies are stuttering in civ4 because rendering is still performed in the background when they are played.
 
wait is the third thing even a file? I just get a readme
 
The third thing is an .ini file, not a readme.txt file.

Anyway, Harkonnen, my memory usage dropped from about 770 MB to 424 MB (give or take). I didn't even have to clear the cache first. Great work, and I look forward to the next release. =)
 
it acts like a website.
 
Too bad Firaxis hasn't hired Harkonnen when they've started to work on Civ 4 :(
 
He could also just right click and choose Save Link As... from the context menu.
 
Thanks alot
 
Just got done playing for several hours on my huge modern era game. No crashes at all!! :goodjob:

Using:
graphics settings on medium
low res textures
full screen mode
vid_mem_usage=180
insane_mode=1

System:
Athlon 64 3500+
1 GB RAM
2 x Geforce 6800GT 256MB PCI-express
Win XP SP 2

I might mess around with vid_mem_usage to see if I can get even better performance. What do you think would be a good number for systems using two pci-express video cards in SLI mode?
 
Harkonnen said:
oldStatesman
Thank you! :) Just one thing...
Before the patch, the game loaded okay from the desktop...
Did you mean after the patch...?

I have some ideas about the globe view (simple enough to be coded and checked this night).

Movies are stuttering in civ4 because rendering is still performed in the background when they are played.
Click to expand...
Before the patch the game would load okay, from desktop to main screen, but it took a while...after the patch it speeds through the initial load. In other words, the initial loading time to Main Menu is greatly decreased. An unexpected bonus...

Something is wierd with the cloud layer texture ...I remember this was one of the things that caused crashes early on before the first Firaxis fix.

Yeah...it's amazing to see the difference in the initial movies before the game is actually run...and the wonder movies.
 
BlueLikeYou
With 256Mb of video memory you definitely should try 'vid_mem_usage = 180' or 'vid_mem_usage = 200'. I don't know if SLI cards work in interlaced mode like 3dfx Voodoo did (in this case they share only CPU power) or they share memory as well. You might try 'vid_mem_usage = 300' or 'vid_mem_usage = 400'. Though, all geometry data peak level is ~300Mb, so there is no need to set it to higher values.

oldStatesman
Thanks! I see the point now about "before" and "after".

I am not sure this is clouds layer problem. I'd rather think this is too-much-geometry problem.
 
Harkonnen said:
BlueLikeYou
With 256Mb of video memory you definitely should try 'vid_mem_usage = 180' or 'vid_mem_usage = 200'. I don't know if SLI cards work in interlaced mode like 3dfx Voodoo did (in this case they share only CPU power) or they share memory as well. You might try 'vid_mem_usage = 300' or 'vid_mem_usage = 400'. Though, all geometry data peak level is ~300Mb, so there is no need to set it to higher values.

oldStatesman
Thanks! I see the point now about "before" and "after".

I am not sure this is clouds layer problem. I'd rather think this is too-much-geometry problem.
Click to expand...
Have you tried Civscale too work with the clouds?
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3399385&postcount=222

It's the utility that is partner to BlueMarble Mod. I will try to adjust the clouds with it tomorrow if I have time to play to see if it helps at all.
 
where can i find this 1961 game save file to try out? (forgive me if it is in plain sight and im too lame to see it)
 
It works for me too ! I had tried everything before now in these forums, but nothing worked except this. Intro.bik movie still jerky and I still have the zoom out globe view slowdown described by others but even that is very much improved. Game play is much faster now. Thanks a lot. You are the man.

Specs:
Dell Dim8250 3Ghz 512MB ram
Geforce 4 Mx 420 64MB Yes only.
WIN XP Prof SP1

insane_mode = 1 ( Switching back to game gives me the black map )

I wish I could get my 50 dollars back and send it to you.
Is there something we can do to help with Firaxis on your behalf ?

I know the patch is working, but I didn't see a banner or anything stating your patch was running/active in the game.

Thanks Again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Blake00
Multithreading & 64bit memory access to increase Civ4's speed in large games?
2
Replies
35
Views
2K
snowern
snowern
K
4GB Patch
Replies
8
Views
2K
Jdoug312
J
primem0ver
Weird Memory Allocation Failure
Replies
0
Views
507
primem0ver
primem0ver
usadefcon1
UI - Production Menu Cheatsheet
Replies
6
Views
451
ryanmusante
ryanmusante
A
Having trouble figure this game out
Replies
8
Views
206
awost1
A
Top Bottom