Memory Management

[Caradoc]

I understand that Civ IV is hungry for memory. But is there some way to avoid some of the obnoxious side effects?

1. I would like to be able to listen to streaming audio (like Air America Radio) while playing. But as time goes on, Civ begins to impede the audio feed and it eventually breaks off.

2. After exiting a Civ game, it seems to not have released its memory resources, so I have to wait a couple of minutes to run something else.

3. After breaking out with Alt-TAB, it seems to take forever to resume.

 

[cthom]

before playing i get rid of all unnecessary progs, then defrag memory at least twice. after playing i switch off- it's bed time.

 

[Ben E Gas]

how much memory do you have? I have 2 gigs ram. Civ works great for me.

 

[DaveShack]

before playing i get rid of all unnecessary progs, then defrag memory at least twice. after playing i switch off- it's bed time.

Defrag memory? How do you do that?

 

[cthom]

Defrag memory? How do you do that?

there are a few freeware utilities around for that. i use AMS Fast Defrag.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

If your running windows xp, defrag program is in-built ...go start/control panel/performance and maintenance/rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster..then analyse your hard drive. If it needs to be defagged it will tell you so.

I also switch off all anti-spyware, anti-virus programs and manually kill all the redundant progs that xp produces that eat RAM (don't do the last unless you know what your doing)

This makes quite a difference in late huge maps..

 

[enchanter100]

I've got a gig of nice fast low latency memory, 3000xp processor, and a x850 XT video card. I listen to music in the background, transfer files from my laptop to PC, and sometimes will have a Azureus running (torrent). I can alt-tab with no isses. All this while playing a large map, 8 civs, multiplayer with a friend from work. Game runs great for me.

 

[neriana]

Running the game in a window actually sped it up for me. You don't have to worry about ALT-TAB performance issues in windowed mode either, obviously, though there are sometimes some slowdowns later in the game when switching between programs.

Yay Air America!

 

[Commander Bello]

I've got a gig of nice fast low latency memory, 3000xp processor, and a x850 XT video card. I listen to music in the background, transfer files from my laptop to PC, and sometimes will have a Azureus running (torrent). I can alt-tab with no isses. All this while playing a large map, 8 civs, multiplayer with a friend from work. Game runs great for me.

You forgot to mention that you play the piano with your right hand

 

[DrewBledsoe]

In addition to the above comment, pls pls guys, in ALL posts like this that ask for help , DON'T reply that you have 17.5 quagga-googleplex gigs of RAM , a mega-waffler devastater quadron mark3.2 graphics card, and a cpu that can calculate PI to 20 trillion places in 3 seconds...it really doesn't help..


P.S. My computer can do all the above but still struggles with CIV

 

[Tae]

I am pretty sure Civ does not support googleplex RAM.

 

[McLMan]

Well put Mr. Bledsoe.

Somebody looking for ideas in improving performance ends up with a bunch of chest pounding.

My system that is only slightly better than the recommended specs runs Civ IV very well. I've tried turning off processes that I don't need while playing (Antivirus, etc.) and it did improve performance somewhat.

 

[Jastrow]

I run civ on a borderline system (1.6 GHz, Geforce grafic card, 512 MB ram laptop). It has always run decently, tho with significant slow down after about an hour of playing, and with alt-tab or shutdown taking forever... Based on a suggestion I saw in this forum, I install Freeram xp (google "freeram xp" for dozens of sites where you can download it). The improovement was impressive! Bassically, I can now play for several hours, without any slowdown (other than the normal slowdown of more units being in play), and shutdown/alt-tab are at least a factor of 3 to 5 faster!

As I understand it, the big problem with civ is that everytime that it opens a new function, it puts it in memory, but never removes anything. With freeram in the background cleaning up after size, it prevents it from using up all resources, and improoved my preformance dramatically!

(And as a side bonuse, it also made all my MS-office programs more stable!)

 

[cthom]

If your running windows xp, defrag program is in-built

that's only for the hard drive. for memory you need something else. i have to say that although i try to grab back as much mem as possible, i still get slow down once full map is shown. but that's down to my crappy gfx card.

 

[Caradoc]

I run civ on a borderline system (1.6 GHz, Geforce grafic card, 512 MB ram laptop). It has always run decently, tho with significant slow down after about an hour of playing, and with alt-tab or shutdown taking forever... Based on a suggestion I saw in this forum, I install Freeram xp (google "freeram xp" for dozens of sites where you can download it). The improovement was impressive! Bassically, I can now play for several hours, without any slowdown (other than the normal slowdown of more units being in play), and shutdown/alt-tab are at least a factor of 3 to 5 faster!

As I understand it, the big problem with civ is that everytime that it opens a new function, it puts it in memory, but never removes anything. With freeram in the background cleaning up after size, it prevents it from using up all resources, and improoved my preformance dramatically!

(And as a side bonuse, it also made all my MS-office programs more stable!)

That's the ticket! Thanks, pal.

 

[Snerk]

On my pc civ IV cant be very memory hungry. I updated to 2 gig RAM from 512 without any big preformance increase..

 

[5cats]

Well put Mr. Bledsoe.

Somebody looking for ideas in improving performance ends up with a bunch of chest pounding.

Indeed!
My former PC was WAAAY under the specs, but I could run civ4 just fine!
It's a matter of balance, if you're weak in one area (on your PC I mean) you'll probably have troubles.
My ubiquitous suggestion is to LOWER Windows' default cache. It fills up in a blink, and holds all that RAM hostage for no particular reason! It is the second thing I do upon installing any WinX system. The first is to disable 'restore'... oh, and task schedualer! Do that too!

Wanna see my old PC specs?
Hee hee hee!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=149649

 

[salty]

In addition to the above comment, pls pls guys, in ALL posts like this that ask for help , DON'T reply that you have 17.5 quagga-googleplex gigs of RAM , a mega-waffler devastater quadron mark3.2 graphics card, and a cpu that can calculate PI to 20 trillion places in 3 seconds...it really doesn't help..


P.S. My computer can do all the above but still struggles with CIV

My Vinnie Testaverde computer is 40+ years old and has a 17.5 guagga-googleplex gigs of RAM , a mega-waffler devastater quadron mark3.2 graphics card, and a cpu that can calculate PI to 20 trillion places in 3 seconds and has no problems playing beat the Redskins.

 

[casey1966]

On my pc civ IV cant be very memory hungry. I updated to 2 gig RAM from 512 without any big preformance increase..

Hey that must be a Pentium 1 proc you have there....no good unless you upgrade everything else. Are you sure your playing Civ 4 & not the original,cause the Civ 4 game I play uses memory out the ya-hoo...

 

[Overcast32]

Well, I upgraded from 512 to 1GB of ram - I noticed a significant improvement in alt-tab, but the game itself still acts quirky once most of the map is visible and the cities are built up pretty well (1500AD-ish)