Patch and ATI Radeon 7500, good news.

[yo_gadgetboy]

Well the patch is good news for me. My machine meets the minimum required specs for Civ IV, running the latest drivers available from Compaq/HP (version 8.143-050607A 020515C (6 Jul 05))
I have always had good compatibility with games, no problems running Age of Empires III, which is much more graphic demanding than Civ and that game runs great.

Compaq EVO N800v (Notebook)
Windows XP Pro (SP2)
Processor 1.7 GHz
Memory 512Mbs
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (64MB)

but I had the following problems when I played Civ IV.

1. Black terrain
2. Graphic glitches on the water sometimes when at a particular zoom distance.
3. Strange faces of leaders.
4. No hammers or gold on tiles only food icons.

After installing the new patch all the previous graphic problems are now working, have not been able to run a full game yet to test if the performance issues (disk thrashing) have been improved.

I also read somewhere else that the patch does not install to the correct directory if you have not used the default path. This is not correct as I never use the default directory path, I always install into my games directory and the patch installed fine.

I have a lot more to test, but defiantly there are big improvements if you meet the minimum spec requirements.

 

[wilwil]

i'm using radeon mobility 7500 too in my ibm T42
i have patched and the only problem is missing cattle pig elephant horse etc

 

[BigCMan]

I'm getting the same result with an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, with 32 mb even! The only problem that really bothers me now is late game slowdown. Just have to grit and bear I guess.

 

[DamRho]

32Mb ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 and it works just fine after the patch. Of course, it's still slow in the late parts of the game, but it's playable (and it wasn't before).

 

[DiscomBob]

Very interesting results. If a 32/64MB video card can run the game fine, what's the cause of all the problems people are having? Why are people with high-end rigs, fast video cards, and >1Gb ram having problems?

My "theories":
- Rendering issues caused by dodgy coding/incompatibility between the game and some video drivers. I haven't experienced this first hand, but the fact that the patch, and in some cases updating/rolling back the video drivers, reduces or solves these problems suggests this.
- Late-game slow down caused either by inefficient coding, or by an unavoidable increase in the memory (RAM/pagefile) requirement as the explored map size, number of civilizations, cities and units increases. Increasing RAM should reduce this, but I'm not sure thats the case; I have 1.5Gb RAM, but still get the late-game slowdown. Is this because 1.5Gb still isn't enough, or is the game code not utilizing this efficiently, and still relying on the pagefile?
- Instability (crashes to desktop, freezing, rebooting) could be caused by any number of things. Since my CPU runs at 100% playing Civ, maybe the CPU/memory system, rather than graphics system, is the cause? I have eliminated my instability problems by reducing my CPU/RAM overclock and using more conservative RAM timings (AUTO settings in bios), but maybe this isn't a general solution. Maybe performance tweaks for specific video cards are causing problems? Maybe it's inadequate case cooling to run a game that is stressing your video card, CPU, RAM and (because of the pagefile) your hard-disk?

 

[yo_gadgetboy]

Yes I have the same issue with the missing animals, but at least Ctrl R does help to get around this problem.

The game does slowdown dramatically towards the end and saved games take forever to load, but at least it is playable.

I am wondering if using XML files is part of the reason for the slow performance. Although I also think that coding issues and possible memory leaks are another factor.

 

[DamRho]

Yes I have the same issue with the missing animals, but at least Ctrl R does help to get around this problem.

The game does slowdown dramatically towards the end and saved games take forever to load, but at least it is playable.

I am wondering if using XML files is part of the reason for the slow performance. Although I also think that coding issues and possible memory leaks are another factor.

Well, "possible" memory leaks are always a factor, but it should affect lower-end machines even more and it doesn't seem to be that way, at least with me. But I'm still playing halfway through a game so I have to test it in late-game circumstances.