My Game is running REALLY slowly

[NonPrayinMantis]

This is a recent problem I have had since I had a new graphics card installed. My CivIV runs really slowly when it should be running faster - I am talking about beginning of the game (ancient era) moves taking about a minute or more to move the one warrior/scout around. I do have BUG mod installed, and I know this is a big resource hog, but I haven't had problems this bad until recently.

I probably need to update my driver, but the problem is I can't find anywhere to download a FREE driver (or a FREE driver robot software that will find one). There has to be somewhere to get one.

My system is an XP with 1.5 GB ram and a Nvidia Geforce 6200 512MB video card. My dxdiag file is attached.

 

[Furiey]

The Nvidia website for your card: www.nvidia.com

There will also probably be drivers on the DELL website.

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

The Nvidia website for your card: www.nvidia.com

The good news is that they had a free driver. The bad news is that installing it did not fix the problem.

NPM

 

[ori]

did you try lowering your graphics settings?

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

did you try lowering your graphics settings?

I'm already at medium, but I think that this problem has little to do with the graphics settings. I have had the game run normally in the recent past with medium graphics, even with the BUG mod. I will try low when I get the chance.

What is very slow on my game is the camera pan controls and unit movement initiation. After a bit, when the turn is cycling, the battles with sometimes go back to a normal speed, but then slowness returns when my turn begins. It takes a long time to move the cursor to a city, but once I zoom into a city it runs normally.

NPM

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

I did try setting my graphics to low, and that did have some effect, but still not nearly as fast as it was when I had my old graphics card working.

Some other oddities about the speed: When I start civ, there is a 10 second black screen after the BTS movie but before the menu appears. The leaderheads and diplomacy screen also work at regular speed.

NPM

 

[StargazingDog]

The Nvidia 6200 is miserably slow. I'm not sure what you had before, but it could be entirely possible that your older card was faster than the 6200. Seriously. An old Geforce 4 is faster than this.

Also, make sure you have Antialiasing turned off both in-game and in your graphics control panel. That would definitely cause you system to crawl when viewing the landscape.

*edit* I over estimated the 6200. Based on the raw specs, a Geforce 2 is faster than it. How did Nvidia get away with selling that thing!?

 

[NonPrayinMantis]

Oh great!

The Nvidia 6200 is miserably slow. I'm not sure what you had before, but it could be entirely possible that your older card was faster than the 6200. Seriously. An old Geforce 4 is faster than this.

Also, make sure you have Antialiasing turned off both in-game and in your graphics control panel. That would definitely cause you system to crawl when viewing the landscape.

*edit* I over estimated the 6200. Based on the raw specs, a Geforce 2 is faster than it. How did Nvidia get away with selling that thing!?

Thanks for the information. The last card I had was a Geforce 5200. What cheap card would you suggest that I get?

NPM

 

[StargazingDog]

Since you have an AGP system, your options are very limited. The easiest and cheapest thing to do is hit craiglist/ebay/kijiji and look for something like an ATI 9700/9800 or Nvidia 5700/6800. These are tried and true AGP video cards. They should be selling for $20 used.