Mid-End Game Stutter !!!! HELP PLEASE !!!

[karthikus]

Hi . Friends i am a newbie to this forum

Here s my problem. I am playing Civ 4 beyond the sword lately. But my problem is at the beginning the game is very smooth but as it progresses, when i zoom out to get the holistic picture of my country ( say 5 cities), the screen navigation ( when i move mouse to top,bottom,right,left) to move the screen becomes very annoying. It seems that i am facing stuttering issues. But when i zoom in and try the same the movement is smooth. I am a great fan of civilization 4. Please help me as soon as possible to fix this issue. My system specifications are..

Graphic card : MSI gtx 260 816 mb ddr3
processor : Intel core 2 duo e7300 2.66 ghz
motherboard : asus p5kpl
ram - 2 Gb
Hdd - Seagate 360 GB

I am playing the game at ultra high settings . I have tried with / without AA . PLease help @@@@@!!!!!!!

 

[bakshi]

Its just at the start of the game you are only seeing your units move. But when you start revealing the map at mid/end game you start seeing other civs movements. And people have more cities going and more units moving.

 

[Willem]

Getting more RAM will help. The game can use up almost 2 gig by itself, never mind any background processes going on. And try reducing your graphic setting to Medium. There's very little difference and you might get better performance. There's really no need to have them set that high.

 

[PieceOfMind]

How large is the map and how many AIs?

There is freeware software called Game Booster which I am yet to try but it allows you to disable various background services while you play a game and then re-enable them after when you might need them again. I wouldn't recommend using it for any of the other functions it says it can perform, like cleaning out your RAM.

The only program I would recommend for clearing RAM is cleanmem but it is probably only for people who know what they're doing. This program doesn't pretend to do anything spectacular but it seems to be very reliable in doing what it says it does.

 

[beetz]

Try turning off vsync in your graphics card options. I recently tried civ with vsync turned on and it caused a few problems similar to what you've mentioned, it's worth a try

 

[karthikus]

Its a large map with 6 civ's . But as far i know My gtx 260 should handle civ 4 easily. And i am already using game booster as well. Please help

 

[PieceOfMind]

I myself notice stuttering when completely zoomed out, particularly on big maps like Huge.
Without seeing it for myself (so I might be wrong) I think this is a case of you expecting your hardware (which is very nice by the way) to be performing perfectly well because it is very nice hardware.

Problem is, the game was written before the more recent technologies existed (though it could be argued it is in some part Firaxis' fault for being lazy about it), and so the game is not much more impressive with the newest hardware than it was with the nice hardware back in 2005,2006.

You video card is more than enough, RAM is sufficient but since you are playing Large maps it is probably struggling near the end of the game to avoid using the pagefile frequently, CPU is sufficient (and should only really affect turn times IMO - not much to do with stuttering), your motherboard is up to scratch - no problems there, and your HDD is more or less irrelevant to performance unless it is so fragmented it's not funny.

In short, your hardware is great but Civ4 is not written to make best use of it.

My two cents...