performance tweaks?

[raginaot]

I have a pretty high end system, but even with every graphics setting on low + aa off the game is all really choppy in the later stages of the game.
First I though it was the cpu bottlenecking since there's so many operations going on every turn, but it's actually the graphics card that's at 100% load while the cpu is usally below 50%.

Here are my specs

cpu: i7 920 @ 3.8GHz HT off
gpu: HD 5870 (not OCd)
ram: 6GB DDR3 triple channel 1600MHz

It certanely doesn't feel normal, the graphics look horrible on the low settings.

Is there anything I can do to make it run smoother, I don't care if I have to turn down the grapchics till it looks like civ 3

 

[lovexylitol]

Maybe a look in this thread will help.
(If you are using DX10/11, hopefully tweaking those BicubicTerrainTessSubdiv values will help)

IMO this is not a problem with your computer(nice specs you got there), more likely everyone is experiencing lag in late game periods.(And I might add, for the level of graphics Civ 5 presents the performance is quite horrible.)

 

[raginaot]

Maybe a look in this thread will help.
(If you are using DX10/11, hopefully tweaking those BicubicTerrainTessSubdiv values will help)

IMO this is not a problem with your computer(nice specs you got there), more likely everyone is experiencing lag in late game periods.(And I might add, for the level of graphics Civ 5 presents the performance is quite horrible.)

thanks, I didn't see that thread
now where do I find the config file these values you mentioned?

 

[PieceOfMind]

My advice on graphics settings, if you want to go fairly minimal but without sacrificing too much of the 'pretty':

Leaders Min is static leaderheads. Low seems alright, but 3d objects in the environment look a bit weird.
Fog of War Low is ok. Min is not
Shadow 0 is not ok (terrain looks aweful). Low is ok.
Overlay Low is perfectly ok, I think.
Terrain Detail Low isn't very good, but still playable. MEdium looks to be perfect.
Tesselation Seems to be perfectly ok on Low. I don't know what this even does.
Water Med is ok
Terrain Shadow. Low is ok. Off is still acceptable, as terrain is still clear etc., but no more shadows from mountains.
Texture This is a tough one. Low looks a little bit ugly, but is just as clear and playable as high. Using high here is a bit of a luxury.

The card I use is a hd4850 and it runs those settings just fine. If you have a more powerful card you could afford to up the quality on some of those settings.

Also, the tip from Kaell about the BicubicTerrainTessSubdiv setting seems to help a bit, but it's hard to tell exactly. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9747313&postcount=50)

 

[dannythefool]

Tesselation Seems to be perfectly ok on Low. I don't know what this even does.

The sort of thing this improves is if you have lots of planar surfaces with displacement maps, because having tesselation implemented in hardware means the surface can be treated as a plane for much longer before it has to be resolved into smaller polygons. I don't think it's very relevant to a strategy game where the camera is far away from almost everything. Displacement maps are just an example, it does more than just accelerate those, but there is a reason why 90% of the example pictures for DirectX11 tesselation are close-ups of cobblestone roads