Performance is terrible, I am frustrated!

[Bertilsson]

My secondary computer with 512 MB RAM, XP2000+ and an rotten old ATI 9200 card runs the game just fine. I can sell you that computer... Or call it an even trade for your computer if you like

 

[screwtype]

Now that's really a smart thing to do....

I've had a PC for five or six years, I'm on the net all the time, I don't run an antivirus program and I've never copped a virus.

I just work by a few rules. I use a firewall. I never open attachments from unsolicitied emails. And I scan my system regularly with AdAware. IMO, the threat from viruses is greatly overrated, and virus programs themselves are not as effective as they claim to be. And they frequently interfere with your system in other ways. When I first got my PC I did run PC-Cillin for the first year and it never found a single virus, but it did cause programs to randomly crash, so eventually I got tired of it and deinstalled it. I also ran the AVG free antivirus program for a few months and it too caused problems. And neither of them ever found anything that AdAware or CWShredder didn't.

 

[DraconisRex]

I'm running a 3GHz Athlon with 512MB RAM and an ATI Raedeon card with plenty of memory, yada, yada, yada. I don't have the ATI won't run problem. I don't have crash-to-desktop.

I'm clean, I disable my anti-virus, I disable my anti-spyware programs, I have plenty of room on my HD, it's defragged, I run maintence religiously and all the rest of the usual things. My opinion is that it's come down to this: It is the same type of problem I've encountered with other memory-leak games.

And, if I let it get to a crawl, even after I quit the game, my computer is a slug. Everything loads slowly. Everything runs poorly. Another classic memory-leak problem.

All-in-all, I still love and enjoy the game. But I'm also looking forward to a patch that will address this issue.

 

[rob.derosa]

I'm running a 3GHz Athlon with 512MB RAM and an ATI Raedeon card with plenty of memory, yada, yada, yada. I don't have the ATI won't run problem. I don't have crash-to-desktop.

I'm clean, I disable my anti-virus, I disable my anti-spyware programs, I have plenty of room on my HD, it's defragged, I run maintence religiously and all the rest of the usual things. My opinion is that it's come down to this: It is the same type of problem I've encountered with other memory-leak games.

And, if I let it get to a crawl, even after I quit the game, my computer is a slug. Everything loads slowly. Everything runs poorly. Another classic memory-leak problem.

All-in-all, I still love and enjoy the game. But I'm also looking forward to a patch that will address this issue.

get some more ram. its what i did. made it run so much better.

 

[GreenMonkey]

512MB of RAM is not enough with the advent of WinXP and newer games. 1GB is almost becoming the minimum. Battle for Middle Earth and CnC Generals ZH all run way better with 1GB over 512MB.

I get great performance. AVG anti-virus, no resident in memory programs, no spyware. 2800+, 1GB (no dual-channel capability - socket 754), 9800pro. Problems only occur on huge maps once a lot of cities have spawned.

I think the game is very RAM and CPU hungry, as most strategy games are.

 

[jpinard]

I'm running a 3GHz Athlon with 512MB RAM and an ATI Raedeon card with plenty of memory, yada, yada, yada. I don't have the ATI won't run problem. I don't have crash-to-desktop.

I'm clean, I disable my anti-virus, I disable my anti-spyware programs, I have plenty of room on my HD, it's defragged, I run maintence religiously and all the rest of the usual things. My opinion is that it's come down to this: It is the same type of problem I've encountered with other memory-leak games.

And, if I let it get to a crawl, even after I quit the game, my computer is a slug. Everything loads slowly. Everything runs poorly. Another classic memory-leak problem.

All-in-all, I still love and enjoy the game. But I'm also looking forward to a patch that will address this issue.

There's no such thing as a 3 Ghz Athlon processor unless you're cooling it with liquid nitrogen

 

[I_batman]

Tell you what...My new computer will be built and in my hands in a couple weeks. It will have a dualcore Athlon proessor, a couple gig high end memory and a very good ATI or NVdia card.

It will NOT be connected to the Internet, so spyware and viruses will be a non-issue, unless XP is a virus in itself, which is another issue.

The first thing that will be loaded on this (OS excepted) will be Civ IV.

If this game runs like crap on a virgin machine, built solely for gaming, I think that will put to bed the weak hardware vs crap software game argument.

I have not played the game, because it completely locks up my existing machine, which was to be expected with a laptop with 64 MB video card.
Therefore this is as close to an unbiased test bed as can be found.

 

[jpinard]

Tell you what...My new computer will be built and in my hands in a couple weeks. It will have a dualcore Athlon proessor, a couple gig high end memory and a very good ATI or NVdia card.

It will NOT be connected to the Internet, so spyware and viruses will be a non-issue, unless XP is a virus in itself, which is another issue.

The first thing that will be loaded on this (OS excepted) will be Civ IV.

If this game runs like crap on a virgin machine, built solely for gaming, I think that will put to bed the weak hardware vs crap software game argument.

I have not played the game, because it completely locks up my existing machine, which was to be expected with a laptop with 64 MB video card.
Therefore this is as close to an unbiased test bed as can be found.

You do realize that unless a game is written for multi-processing, dual-cores do next to nothing for your in-game performance? The only game I know of that can truly use multiple processors is Falcon 4 AF.

 

[elderotter]

how many save games do you have? include in tha thow many autosave games - I delete them regularly and have set auto save to 0 so tha tit only saves once at the beginning. How many screenshots. These things all eat up kb quickly. I let things go for a bit and had way over 8,oookb when I finally did a disk clean.
Might be something to check. This game is for me atleast what I used to call a core-eater back in the 70's when I programmed.

 

[NinjaGnat]

There's no such thing as a 3 Ghz Athlon processor unless you're cooling it with liquid nitrogen

Well, it isn't that hard to get an Athlon 64 to 3 Ghz, just take an Fx-57 and increase the multiplier by 1. 3 Ghz, and it only cost you 1,000$.

Topically, this game is a resource hog compared to any 2d civ game, and it should be expected to reach this. By going 3d, they give many more options to change the system settings, AA, resolution, detail of graphics, so I'd assume after the patch this week anybody can find a setting the works well for their system.

Right now I'm running the game just fine at 1280x1024, 4xAA and max details with this system, so we're not talking future tech here to get this thing to run.
AMD 3500+
1 gig ram
6800 GT