nVidia GeForce Problems

[EvilCanevil]

Hello, im sort of a newbie here so I dont know if I should post this in this thread at all, but anyway, bought the game last week and have been playing a couple of times now and have never completed the game, the first crash where when the victory screen should have come up (so that time I got to play really long) the second time it crashed when I built the Pyramids and the last time (last night) when i built the Eiffeltower.

My graphic card: Nvidia GF 6600GT (128), DX 9.0c w. the latest nvidia drivers (81.85).
After I played the first time I re-installed the old drivers to see if it work but No,
Have read all the other threads here and it seems to be a "bigtime" graphic bug so hopefully it will come out a patch really soon so we can enjoy the game.

 

[ledhed]

Hello, im sort of a newbie here so I dont know if I should post this in this thread at all, but anyway, bought the game last week and have been playing a couple of times now and have never completed the game, the first crash where when the victory screen should have come up (so that time I got to play really long) the second time it crashed when I built the Pyramids and the last time (last night) when i built the Eiffeltower.

My graphic card: Nvidia GF 6600GT (128), DX 9.0c w. the latest nvidia drivers (81.85).
After I played the first time I re-installed the old drivers to see if it work but No,
Have read all the other threads here and it seems to be a "bigtime" graphic bug so hopefully it will come out a patch really soon so we can enjoy the game.

I had no problem except for slow down and memory leak ( ? ) type problems until I changed to the 81.85 nvidia driver..then I got fragmentation about an hour into the game followed by a black screen . no way to recover from it , it seems ...I unistalled the driver and reinstalled ...got fragmentation again ...I restarted and unistalled the Nvidia driver ..I downloaded the omega driver..6693 ...I'll get back to ya ..got to run it a while to see what happens .

Six hours on a huge map ..islands and 7 civs left...I have one or two techs left to discover before I go into future tech...some slow down on turns but no where near as bad as before I installed the new driver ...not to mention the black screen nvidea one...so I would say its successfull so far.

 

[TSteamer]

Has anyone tried the game on an nVidia Go card (the Geforce range for laptops)? I'm in the UK so I have another week or two to wait before my copy of the game arrives and I'd be interested to know how laptop cards handle it.

I have an NVIDIA GeForce 4 448 GO (64MB) card running driver version 5.4.0.1 and am experiencing the same "Intro & Wonder movies stutter" and "Food only on City/Resource toggle Screen" bugs.

The game is playable, but not optimal. Im almost afraid to try and fix the bugs with drivers for fear of making it unstable and thus, unplayable.

 

[TSteamer]

Another Laptop player here,

System : zd7010us
2.66 Ghz Pent 4
512 MB SDRAM 333Mhz
Screen Resolution 1440-900 -17 widescreen

Video card : GeForce4 448 Go
Bus AGP8x
64 MB
Driver Version 5.4.0.1
date 2/3/2004

Problems :

Choppy video and stuttering sound at opening and wonder videos.

Had the fog of war, till I deleted the cache folder.

Still only have no hammers or trade.

Crashes to desktop probably every 30 minutes, but can get it to come back up, without rebooting.

So my laptop is only upgradeable with ram, might have to go back to CIV III, till a patch comes out.

Still the game is playable, but only CTD's and missing content is stopping me from truly enjoying this game.

Elu -
I have the same EXACT system as you zd7010 and are experiencing the SAME exact problems. Let me know if you come across anything that relieves the problems!
-TSteamer

 

[muziqaz]

I don't know what I did, but:
reinstalled nvidia drivers from 81.85 to 81.85
and hurray, I've just completed 1st game, being greek.
but decided not to play another game until I get 512mb ram, because playing with 256mb ram is self killing ;/
civ 4 takes 500mb of virtual memory aka page file.that is horrible waiting at the end of the game, then U meet every nation.
besides my gf fx 5500 has no problems at all with wonders movie playback.
only my hdd has loads of work to do
anyway great game, really.More options and control over your nation, and over rellationships with over nations.nice one [;

 

[Ebany]

Most of you will probably sort your own problems soon enough, but for those who still find persistant problems, here are some simple fixes which may help;


DOWNLOADS

1. Nvidia drivers; Due to v81.85 not recognising the 5xxx series I was testing (unable to detect hardware), I belive they had a fault, I used v81.87 Beta instead. As of 14th Nov there is a new driver (v81.94), and although I still see little difference for anyone using a video card lower than a 6xxx series, I would recommend changing.

v81.85

v81.87

v81.94


2. DirectX 9c; I realise the CD came with dX9c updates, but I would HIGHLY recommend you scap those (July updates) and go for the Oct updates. The Oct updates seem to address a few issues which caused CTD (Crash to Desktop) in other games and could be just as effective with Civ4.

DirectX 9.0c Redistributable (October 2005) for Software Developers
filename: directx_9c_oct05sdk_redist.exe
dX9 Oct 2005


3. Codecs; There are two (2) I would recommend installing, Bink and WMP.

The Window Media Player 10 codecs can be found here...this link allows download without the "Windows Validation" process.
(filename: WM9Codecs.exe)
WMP Codecs

Bink and Smacker v7.0 should be installed for the files, you wont use the programs unless you are a developer. You can also download and install Miles sound from this site (I see no need as the files installed do not effect Civ4).
Bink


4. Chipsets; Update your chipset drivers!!! This is an absolute must for Nforce chipsets and extremley important for all others, especially in multi-player. Most motherboard companys support thier products with drivers but tend to stop updating these after 6 months or so. Most cases are that these drivers are just generic and can be found at there home sites.
ie. Your (Soltek) mainboard may use Nvidia Nforce 2 bridging chipset, onboard graphics, and Realtek Audio. So;
4in1 from Nvidia
&
Audio from Realtek


TWEAKS

We have seen most of these already, but I will outlay some others.

1. CivilizationIV.ini; These are some changes which can be made. They are the "safe" changes which should allow most people to play with few problems. The most important would seem to be Screenshots: Having AllowScreenShots = 1 seemed to cause CTD on few of the machines I tested on.

AllowScreenShots = 0
FullScreen = ask
AutoSaveInterval = 0
SyncInput = 0
LoggingEnabled = 1
OverwriteLogs = 1



While there are numerous other things which can improve the game and your chances of playing, most include changing or deleting files so I will not put these up. Logging is also important as the success and failure of loads will be recorded. If you can extract the info from a log, put it up so we can all help, other wise just describe the problem.

This is an awesome game which has been developed specifically for those who enjoy MOD's. It is frustrating to spend the money on anticipation of a great game only to find the hours wasted in screwing around without getting results, but hang in there, a patch will be out soon.

 

[Rnard]

Pentium 4
3 GHz
1 Gb of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600

First i want to thanks all peoples that send their fixes here.
I have seen some of the different forums about videocard problems (even these about ATI), but i still have problems. I mostly play on big map with max of civilizations, and my main problem is that the application crash to desktop at some part of the game, when i unzoom, when i scroll the map, or when i go from one city to another in the city screen. It happens more and more often now, since i conquest the new world (and so they are more and more cities). Less often the computer reboot and tell me after that the system come back from a serious error. Another is the wonder animations problem.The video is ok, and the sound is as the other players describe it here.
I had the 78.01 driver, i updated to 81.85, and then, sometimes it still crash, but less often, because sometimes it only froze, and show the map as it is before it froze, or with only the landscape, then after 20 seconds i can come back to the game.
Yesterday i read the post of Ebany, and updated to 81.94, updated to DirectX 9.0c Redistributable (October 2005) for Software Developers and changed CivilizationIV.ini except AutoSaveInterval, but the problems are still the same.

 

[Roetghoer]

Running on
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 (DirectX 9.0c)
Athlon 1800+
768 RAM
SB Audigy Audio (5.12.0001.1162)
Windows XP SP2

I also see the swamps near rivers through the undiscovered blackness

Sometimes strange things happen showing vertical fields of some color shooting up from the terrain right towards you. I can even move to the sides of these fields and change my perspective on them. Clearly a videocard or driver problem.

 

[Ebany]

CTD (Crash To Desktop) seems to be caused by either of two (2) problems;

1. Outdated, incorrect, or corrupted files.
(I KNOW Civ 4 kept deleting some of the .tga files on atleast one of my systems which, until I manually replaced them, was causing crashes. (ie. My city_titlearrows.tga was missing from Resoure/Civ4/HUD so the computer crashed every time I entered city view.)

*If this is the cause, you will normally experience constant problems with chunky graphics and crashes at the same time or a specific location

2. Civ4 settings.

*The signs here seem to be simple; The game will slow (normally when you are at an advanced stage with many units & workers) and every now and then pause. You may even find that during one of these pauses the map will go funny losing citys units and so on. You can force a crash at this stage by shaking the system (click & hold on minimap and move view around, or use world zoom going out and in).

FIXES for Prob 1.

1. Download & update as required. Re-install Civ4 (and alter .ini if needed).

FIXES for Prob 2.

1. Check logs for errors. These can be found in;
./Program Files/Civ4/*.txt & ./My Games/Civ4/Logs/*.txt

2. Change graphic and detail settings to lowest. (Once prob is fixed, you can always change them back)

3. Set Nvidia Image Settings to High Performance. (Test to your satisfaction) Anisotropic Filtering to "8x", Antialiasing to "max" or "off" (Having this on seemed to cause massive graphic problems during startup, nad in one case, could not even see the menu).

4. Change .ini file if required.

**As a note; Have not found solution for glitch in sound when playing "Wonder" movies. If anyone has any idea's, please post.

 

[Berserker824]

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
512 RAM
NVidia GeForce FX 5200
SoundMAX Digital Audio

Game completely crashed to a 10-minute, blue-screen re-boot on a standard map with 6 Civs. I was able to view a few wonder movies (but not w/o the stuttering) but about 200 turns from 2050 it crashed at Rock and Roll. I loaded the latest auto-save and it did the same thing again. I left the graphics quality setting at high.

Narration/sound was choppy from the start and general game movement was very slow compared to CIV 3. Sounds like the NVidia 81.85 driver update worked for some but not others. Should I d/l 81.85 or should I just wait for a patch? And will a patch be available before the end of the year?

Thanks everybody for posting on this thread.

 

[Ebany]

Have tried altering the binkw32.dll file (as civ4 uses a very out dated version) and even installing latest Quicktime (since bink seems to piggyback some of its codecs) but have had no success. They only way I have found to stop the stuttering is this;

Set AllowScreenShots = 1 *which can cause CTD more often unless graphics are set to lower detail.

As for CTD, especially the blue screens, the only simple way is to download and install updates, then re-install Civ4, have not found any other fail safe way. Civ4 corrupts its own files causeing about 90% of the CTD I have seen, and most of this corruption is due to outdated files (DirectX and so on).

Patch is (hopefully) out on Monday, so dont think I need to leave any more dribble......Goodluck all.

**ps. Some people are setting a fixed framerate in the .ini file, and testing is all part of the fun , but I know anything below about 30 will give some (not much) stutter.

 

[Talandor]

I have same problems(Blue screen on begin and i don't see eny words of the main menu) whit a radeon 9600\9700.But i'm on a notebook and i don't have patch for nvida ob a notebook...Hok can i resolve that trouble?

 

[HounddogLGS]

I have same problems(Blue screen on begin and i don't see eny words of the main menu) whit a radeon 9600\9700.But i'm on a notebook and i don't have patch for nvida ob a notebook...Hok can i resolve that trouble?

???? Radeon is an ATI card, not nVidia!

 

[Patriot Xeno]

I have GeForce 440. Black terrain. Very frustrating. Old computer plays it just fine.

S.

I had the same thing. All I had to do was download and install the forceware drivers from the nvidia website(had forgotten to do so after a recent reformat).

Apologies if somebody else answered this - didn't feel like searching through 6 pages of stuff to find out.

 

[Chopperhead]

Running on
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 (DirectX 9.0c)
Athlon 1800+
768 RAM
SB Audigy Audio (5.12.0001.1162)
Windows XP SP2

I also see the swamps near rivers through the undiscovered blackness

Sometimes strange things happen showing vertical fields of some color shooting up from the terrain right towards you. I can even move to the sides of these fields and change my perspective on them. Clearly a videocard or driver problem.

It must be a ram thing I had the same card and it was all black terrarian so i bought a new card (Needed one anyway). I have a P4 with 512mb Ram. XP with SP2, SB Audigy2 sound card so it's either a problem with RAM or the P4.
anyway I now have GF 6600 GT which was working great but now I cant play at all because it freezes every couple minutes so Im waiting for the patch and hoping it helps whatever is wrong.

- I had the latest Drivers for MX 440 still didnt help anything

 

[Rnard]

Thanks for answer.
Please, where i can acceed to Nvidia Image Settings, and all that things ? I have searched it, but found nothing. Does it be installed, or do i have to download something?

 

[Anderic]

I have been trying for ages to make Civ4 work. I have called their support line and had nothing but unhelpful people with very good manners recommend futile changes. I'm running a 6600 GT on a p4 with over a gig of ram and nothing works. If anyone can help me i'd be extremely grateful because to date i havent been able to play one game without the rendering being sporadically black or fuzzy and i havent been able to finish once because the crashing is constant.

What is worse is i have no idea how to even attempt some of the fixes people have suggested here because i am so NOT tech savy.

Any help?

Thanks
A

 

[Chopperhead]

I have been trying for ages to make Civ4 work. I have called their support line and had nothing but unhelpful people with very good manners recommend futile changes. I'm running a 6600 GT on a p4 with over a gig of ram and nothing works. If anyone can help me i'd be extremely grateful because to date i havent been able to play one game without the rendering being sporadically black or fuzzy and i havent been able to finish once because the crashing is constant.

What is worse is i have no idea how to even attempt some of the fixes people have suggested here because i am so NOT tech savy.

Any help?

Thanks
A

Sent you a PM

 

[Berserker824]

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
512 RAM
NVidia GeForce FX 5200
SoundMAX Digital Audio

Game completely crashed to a 10-minute, blue-screen re-boot on a standard map with 6 Civs. I was able to view a few wonder movies (but not w/o the stuttering) but about 200 turns from 2050 it crashed at Rock and Roll. I loaded the latest auto-save and it did the same thing again. I left the graphics quality setting at high.

Narration/sound was choppy from the start and general game movement was very slow compared to CIV 3. Sounds like the NVidia 81.85 driver update worked for some but not others. Should I d/l 81.85 or should I just wait for a patch? And will a patch be available before the end of the year?

Thanks everybody for posting on this thread.

I tried switching graphics quality to medium, then low, still the same thing. I then downloaded the NVidia 81.85 update and it worked. Everything ran much more smoothly and efficiently and I was even able to watch the wonder movies (a couple were choppy, though). Gameplay was much faster.

 

[shocky]

Get blue screen and reboot here with windows xp and following system,,

A64 X2 4400+
Asus A8N SLI Premium
2GB of Corsair 3200PT Twinx
nvidia Geforce 7800GTX
Audigy 2 ZS

Its odd how I can play all the latest games fine, all but Civ4.. I love the Civilization series and if this isnt fixed soon they lost a fan..