Nvidia driver 81.94 = GOOD!

[haard]

System requirements say: 256 mb ram minimum. I have twice that amount!!

This game sucks

Truth is, running Windows XP you probably have so much crap processes running that your 512Mb RAM will give you trouble with a lot of games (not to mention IDE:s). Whatever Firaxis says, any non-virgin XP installation will struggle at 256Mb.

I ran the game smoothish with the old drivers, and smooth with the new drivers, on my 1.7Ghz Athlon and GF TI 4200 128 - just becasue I've got 1.5Gb DDR.

Now if they can fix this game for my laptop, I'll never get any work done.

 

[djenghis]

djenghis, you may want to increase your virtual memory.

How do i do that? Is this going to cost me money?

 

[Chayton]

I find that interresting, from what i read made they only improvements to SLI, and the new cards (7800), how come then that a 5900 runs better if the driver for that stayed the same??

 

[DeadFish]

Wooooooow!!! I fell in love with 81.94! Performance is MUCH better now!! Now I am running Civ4 at 1920x1440 with no slowdowns at all!! Imagine what the patch will solve - soon Civ4 will be perfect

CoD2 performace is much better (200% better!) too with SLI enabled - wow!! best drivers ever - full stop!

Now you can enable or disable SLI anytime you want without rebooting PC.


One big question - Does Civ4 support SLI? I dont think so as Civ4 is not graphically extensive but...will try it if it does support SLI.

 

[haard]

I find that interresting, from what i read made they only improvements to SLI, and the new cards (7800), how come then that a 5900 runs better if the driver for that stayed the same??

I believe most of us upgrades from older driver versions since the latest driver versions have been causing more problems than they have fixed. This does not seem to be the case with this one (yet?).

 

[Roland Johansen]

How do i do that? Is this going to cost me money?

In Windows XP.

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System
Go to the tab Advanced. Click Settings on Performance. Click tab Advanced. Click Change on the Virtual Memory part. Create a custom size page file of something like 1500 or 2000 MB.

Maybe, you'll have to restart your computer before the changes are completed.

It is better to create a page file that uses a unfragmented part of your hard disk. So it is better to defragment your hard disk first.

Good luck.

 

[Pyrion]

A couple things I noticed.

2xaa, 1024x768, huge map, steady 40fps until about 1800AD, then steady 30fps the rest of the way. Wonder videos still lag.

Memory usage peaked out at 1.1gb. Ended at a 1951AD cultural victory.

 

[Roland Johansen]

double post.

 

[Chayton]

"Go to the tab Advanced. Click Settings on Performance. Click tab Advanced. Click Change on the Virtual Memory part. Create a custom size page file of something like 1500 or 2000 MB."

The Virtual Memory should not be simple put into a number, you should see that the virtual memory is 3x the size of your rams. By 512mb ram is that 1536mb.

It also works faster if your virtual memory is located at a diffrend hdd than your operation system and the game.


"I believe most of us upgrades from older driver versions since the latest driver versions have been causing more problems than they have fixed. This does not seem to be the case with this one (yet?)."

Well from what i have read of the changes in the past updates there hasnt been a update or improvement for the 5900 cards in the past 3 or 4 releases. They only always added things for 6800(and co), 7800 and SLI stuff.

 

[Pyrion]

It also works faster if your virtual memory is located at a diffrend hdd than your operation system and the game.

It works even better than that if the pagefile is located on a drive on its own bus, or barring that, if it's located on a drive on a separate bus from the drive the game is installed on.

 

[qaturn]

was leary on upgrade my drivers, 81.85 slowed my GPU down
but the 81.94 is a major improvement!

no more weird grahpical glitches
(my workers had long narrow color beams coming from their heads)
CTD's are very rare now

Nvidia 5900xt
AMD 3000+ 64bit processor
1 Gig of ram
250 SATA HD

 

[Adam7Eight]

Go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_81.94.html. When asked whether you would like to save the file or open, just click "open" and it will automaticcaly run the installation after downloading.

I would never suggest doing that.

99 times out of 100 you will have better results and fewer problems if you save the download to a temporary location, completely uninstall the older drivers, reboot, then install the new drivers...

Installing new video card drivers over older video card drivers (especially multiple times) can and sometimes will lead to problems later on down the road.

 

[atc_chief]

One big question - Does Civ4 support SLI? I dont think so as Civ4 is not graphically extensive but...will try it if it does support SLI.

Yup, I checked the Nvidia site, and CIV IV takes advantage of SLI.

 

[narmox]

smoothlessly?

BTW, narmox, have you changed the pixel shader settings for your card at all (Say, with RivaTuner or one of several other programs that can do it)?

Yeah I tried changing that, and yeah it made the game faster - at the price of making all terrain blurry or black. No thanks

 

[Sorceresss]

Previously I was using 77.77 as 81.85 was very bad. I tried 81.94 today, and boy what an improvement over 77.77! I have a nvidia geforce fx 5200.

I have a FX 5200 (like you) and 81.85 has worked perfectly for over two weeks.

It is your personal opinion, based on your personal experience (when you say that "81.85 was very bad").

I, for one, will not test the new 81.94 while my 81.85 are very good : according to my very subjective experience.

 

[DeadFish]

Yup, I checked the Nvidia site, and CIV IV takes advantage of SLI.

cool! Will try the game with SLI enabled later - will post again if there is a huge difference between SLI being disabled and enabled.



updated

No, Civ4 doesn't support SLI - Nvidia website must be mistaken. It doesn't need SLI really, the graphics are not as amazing as CoD2.

 

[MetHimPikeHoses]

I have also found the new 81.94 drivers to work much better thant the 81.85, at least on civ iv. I am trying to squeeze every bit of strength and life out of my celeron 2.4ghz with a geforce fx5200. Here is what I 've done so far:

1. Rolled back drivers from 81.85, but then updated to 81.94
2. Set graphics options to 'medium'
3. Set my virtual memory to 2.5X my RAM
4. Regularly clean civ iv cache folder
5. rolled back shaders to 1.1 on Rivatuner (some graphics sacrificed here, but really not too bad... seems to trade crispness for framerate)
6. play in windowed mode (by editing civ4.ini)
7. set nvidia settings to "performance" rather than "quality"

These are the tweaks that have come from 1 week of searching for a way to play large maps. The game speed has increased drastically since its first run out of the box. I think my units may appear more "blocky" than I would have liked, but now they move, animate, and battle very quickly and smoothly. Much more enjoyable to see than hangs and delays.

So the new 81.94 driver sped everything up again over the 71.xx, so now I will try upping the graphic and shader settings again to get the optimal config., and I'll get back to you.

If my gateway celery can run this beast, yours can too!

 

[Stoneage]

Yup, I checked the Nvidia site, and CIV IV takes advantage of SLI.

cool! Will try the game with SLI enabled later - will post again if there is a huge difference between SLI being disabled and enabled.



updated

No, Civ4 doesn't support SLI - Nvidia website must be mistaken. It doesn't need SLI really, the graphics are not as amazing as CoD2.

Dont bother SLI makes no difference at all. The scrolling is still jerky and a tad too slow. Also the new drivers make absolutely no difference to the scrolling.

 

[Hypus]

Hey

Are Nvidia video cards better than ATI video cards?

 

[Stoneage]

Hey

Are Nvidia video cards better than ATI video cards?

Please Nooooooo, dont turn this thread into a my cards better than your card flame war.