PC runs slow with 35 civ map but its fine with 18 civ?

[kensington888]

quiddity this is a link to the mod.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=248049

 

[Willem]

i have played the 18 civ map and its fine.now i am using the 35 civ mod for the new patch.i have noticed that this is making my pc very slow.i got more memory for the 18
civ map and road to war.now with the 35 civ its very slow.anyone have any ideas about this?

Well duh! The game was designed with a max of 18 civs in mind, you can't expect it to run well when you double that number. Try a little common sense please.

 

[Willem]

In my experience shutting civ down doesn't fix a slow down caused by the memory leak when you play to long. I have to reboot my computer to fix that. It will usually get bad after playing for 3 or more hours straight and I have to reboot, been that way since Vanilla Civ4. I'm nearly sure this is from a memory leak, because if I press ctrl + alt + delete it shows all my computer's RAM is being used, even if nothing is running... only way to fix is to reboot for me.

In a way though it's kind of good, because it keeps me from spending too long of time periods playing Civ. Kind of an unofficial alarm clock is the way I've always percieved it.

I'd say you have a problem with your system then. I have never had to reboot my computer, and I've certainly played sessions that lasted longer than 3 hours. All I've ever had to do, even after some 12 hours of playing, was drop to desktop and reboot the game. It sometimes takes a few moments for everything to clear out of the system, but then I'm good to go again.

 

[Willem]

...and if you have enough memory slots, go to 3. (Anything over 3 GB in a 32 bit OS is a bit of a waste, apparently.)

You have to be careful when giving that advice. If the motherboard uses a dual channel configuration for it's RAM, then you can't use 3 cards. It will cause boot failures if you try. I found that out the hard way. It has to be either 1, 2 or 4 cards. Of course you could always get a 2 gig and 1 gig card, but then you won't have dual-channel anymore. And no, more than 3 is not a waste in a 32 bit system, it can actually utilize about 3.5.

 

[Dumanios]

What would be weird was if the OP's situation was the other way around.

 

[deanej]

And no, more than 3 is not a waste in a 32 bit system, it can actually utilize about 3.5.

It depends on the system. Windows can address exactly 4GB of memory on a 32 bit computer. However, that 4GB figure includes more than RAM. The amount of RAM you can use is 4GB - the amount on the video card (typically 256MB but can be as high as 1GB) - whatever the CPU uses for its own purposes. So the better your video card and CPU, the less RAM you can use.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

You have to be careful when giving that advice. If the motherboard uses a dual channel configuration for it's RAM, then you can't use 3 cards. It will cause boot failures if you try. I found that out the hard way. It has to be either 1, 2 or 4 cards. Of course you could always get a 2 gig and 1 gig card, but then you won't have dual-channel anymore. And no, more than 3 is not a waste in a 32 bit system, it can actually utilize about 3.5.

In a dual channel system, that is correct, but in the system that kensington888 gave the specs for, he/she is using a memory configuration of 1.25 GB. He/she is probably not using dual channel memory as the memory size number is incorrect for a matched pair of dual channel modules. I suspect that the motherboard has two slots, occupied by a 1 GB and a 256 MB stick each, or a 3 slot configuration, consisting of 2 512 MB and 1 256 MB modules. Again, this is unlikely to be a dual channel configuration for those reasons. In addition, the CPU mentioned is likely an older socket 754 or 939 processor, judging by the name and clock speed, meaning that the motherboard it is sitting in probably does not support dual channel memory.

I would expect as a matter of common sense, that anyone asking for computer help over the internet, from someone they do not know, would at least check the owner's manual and specifications of their equipment prior to going shopping for accessories. I give advice based on the assumption that the person will actually look before they leap, since I can't really see their equipment. You don't go buying a new video card without knowing what kind of slot it goes into, do you? Besides, the majority of posters asking technical questions here probably just ignore what I say anyway, once they find out that I'm female.

(Just for the record, boys, I do all of my own computer work, so I actually do know of what I speak most of the time. It's the only way to keep from getting ripped off. It's just like getting your car fixed. When you're a girl, you have to know as much as the mechanic to keep from getting screwed. Or have the BF take it in, and I don't have one.)

It depends on the system. Windows can address exactly 4GB of memory on a 32 bit computer. However, that 4GB figure includes more than RAM. The amount of RAM you can use is 4GB - the amount on the video card (typically 256MB but can be as high as 1GB) - whatever the CPU uses for its own purposes. So the better your video card and CPU, the less RAM you can use.

Yes. This is an important point. Something to note is that many new motherboards have a remapping feature, where they move all of the device memory (video card memory, system vectors, etc.) up into memory locations above the high RAM boundary, allowing the OS to see all of real memory. I.e. the whole 4 GB. In my 64 bit system, which has 8 GB, all of my RAM is usable by the OS. The video memory etc., is parked above the 8 GB limit by the motherboard. If I disable the remapping feature, I have about 7.2 GB of usable RAM. It works the same using 4 GB of memory, too. A 32 bit OS can address the whole 4 GB that way, but most of the programs can't, because of the way that programs for 32 bit Windows are written, so it's a bit of a moot point there. There are methods to get a program to see more memory in a 32 bit OS, like the /3 GB and the /pae switches, but the program has to be /3 GB switch aware in order to use that feature, and the added RAM. Btw, BTS is /3 GB aware.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

You (sprig) and Lemon must play hard. My machine barely gets warm.

I almost missed this one!

It's actually happened twice, though there were no flames on the second one, just a lot of smoke and Phenom dust.

It was a bad power supply that burned the first one, and the second had a faulty component on the brand new motherboard.

And if your machine isn't getting warm enough, you just aren't using it properly. I have one word for you: OVERCLOCK!!!

 

[Willem]

I would expect as a matter of common sense, that anyone asking for computer help over the internet, from someone they do not know, would at least check the owner's manual and specifications of their equipment prior to going shopping for accessories. I give advice based on the assumption that the person will actually look before they leap, since I can't really see their equipment. You don't go buying a new video card without knowing what kind of slot it goes into, do you? Besides, the majority of posters asking technical questions here probably just

I prefer not underestimate the stupidity of the general public myself.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I prefer not underestimate the stupidity of the general public myself.

I like to think that people aren't quite as dense as the general opinion holds that they are. Most people are actually reasonably intelligent, if you believe in IQ scores as a measure of intellect, which I do not. People aren't stupid as a rule, they just don't use their heads sometimes. Then again, many television shows used to be geared toward a grade 5 or 6 education level, at least when I was studying psychology in college.

Hmmm, I think I just proved your point...

 

[3 EMS]

Part of Lemon Merchant's Post
And if your machine isn't getting warm enough, you just aren't using it properly. I have one word for you: OVERCLOCK!!!

I'm putting a triple radiator on my E8400. Hoping for 4ghz.

 

[Willem]

People aren't stupid as a rule, they just don't use their heads sometimes.

Exactly, which still amounts to the same thing. Sense isn't really all that common.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I'm putting a triple radiator on my E8400. Hoping for 4ghz.

Oh great. Now I have to try to find some liquid helium to keep up.

 

[Spiceweasel]

You're asking your computer to do twice as much work with the same resources. Sorry, but it is going to slow down.

A quick lesson in computer science, for anyone who's interested:

I don't know about Civ's bottlenecks in particular, but there are a *lot* of cases in computing where doubling the size of the data requires a great deal more than double the effort. It wouldn't surprise me if the amount of work Civ has to do is proportional to the square of the number of civilizations.

If this is counter-intuitive, consider the following example. Let's imagine that part of what each civ does during its turn is decide which other civs to ask for tribute/gifts.

If there are 2 civs, then each civ performs this check once. So the total number of checks is 2*1 = 2.

If there are 3 civs, each civ does it twice - once for each other civ. So that's 3*2 = 6.

If there are 4 civs, each does it three times. That's 4*3 = 12.

For 5 civs, 5*4=20.
For 6 civs, 6*5=30.
For 7 civs, 7*6=42.
For 8 civs, 8*7=56.

Notice that if we go from 4 civs to 8, the amount of times this particular piece of work needs to be done goes 12 to 56. That's way more than double.

Of course, Civ4 is a very complicated game, and there are hundreds of things the computer has to do every turn. Some of them will have a nasty explosive curve like this one, but others will actually get more efficient when you increase the number of civs. As a result, the bottleneck may change with different numbers of civs (or different map sizes, or numbers of cities, or whatever).

 

[Zylornck Davis]

A quick lesson in computer science, for anyone who's interested:

that's a pretty cool example. maybe only three of us understood it, but pretty cool all the same. heh heh. nice job!