RAM will solve the problem?

[morchuflex]

Not at all.
The Civ4 game taxes both CPU and GPU.
CPU for AI and all those pathfinging algorithms.

And GPU for graphics.

Also, the nature of Civ4 is progressive, so the farther are you in the game, the more units, the more cities, more graphics per screen and more pathfinding.

I am aware of that. I just wanted to point out that previous Civ games didn't require that you bought a whole new PC.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Are you sure?

I think Civ3 was really big resource hog when it was released.
Especially on big maps. Things like wait 5min for AI turn or so in late game (on poor computers).

 

[morchuflex]

Yes, Civ3 was already very demanding in terms of RAM and CPU power, but it's the first Civ game that really taxes your graphics card.

 

[Willem]

but it's the first Civ game that really taxes your graphics card.

The move to 3D is the cause of that. It was inevitable that Civ would move to that medium, since it's becoming the standard in the industry. Civ was probably one of the last franchises to use it.

 

[Kjaran]

A friend of mine "tested" civ4 on a server Pentium3 Xeon with 4 gigs of ram, on huge map setting.

It screamed, never a slowdown, not ever. (he said he won a diplo victory)

That, to my mind at least has to mean that it all comes down to a decent (not excellent but decent) card and lots, LOTS of ram.

 

[Pantastic]

I remember playing Civ1 on a 286 with no hard drive, the game itself actually ran OK but for some reason generating a map took like 15 minutes. Been a while since you could run a game with no hard disk.

 

[boneys26]

You would need at least 1024 MB of RAM to play Huge maps without it slowing down. I think your processing speed is a tad low also.

LMAO Civ3 runs great on my system unlike Civ4's end game talk about c**p!

I got
athlon xp 3000+ 2.2GHz MMX 3DNow
1GB pc3200 400MHz ram
radeon 9600pro 256mb Vram w/shaders
soundblaster live 5.1 s/sound
650w power supply

and the end game is still really slow on large/huge maps with only 8 civs I'm now saving to upgrade my ram to 2GHz 400Mhz to see if that works

 

[MxxPwr]

My personal benchmark:

Minimum for Standard maps: 1024MB RAM; 2.2ghz processor; 128MB GPU w/shaders

Minimum for Huge maps: looking like 1.5GB ram or better (speed's important too; at least 333); 3+ghz processor; 256MB GPU w/shaders (speed's important on this one too); and as a side requirement at least 350W of power supply

 

[Mista]

I have an Athlon 950mHz ( below standards) witih 1 G RAM Video GF6600, When the game starts on large or huge at Marathon setting, it runs fine. After about 15 minutes it slows down to a crawl, panning is jerky, etc. I looked at the system perfomance chart, found the CPU pegged at 100%, memory at 790. That leaves over 200 M unused. It appears to be continuously swapping to virtual memory, even though more memory is available. I have played large maps at the Epic setting, so it appears to be the marathon that is forcing this. CPU temp also rises to 57C when running the game. Normal idle is 41.

 

[caknuck]

I upgraded from an Athlon 1.2 GB w/ 384MB PC 133 to an Athlon 3700+ w/ 1 GB DDR 400. Made a WORLD of difference.

 

[hilkos]

LMAO Civ3 runs great on my system unlike Civ4's end game talk about c**p!

I got
athlon xp 3000+ 2.2GHz MMX 3DNow
1GB pc3200 400MHz ram
radeon 9600pro 256mb Vram w/shaders
soundblaster live 5.1 s/sound
650w power supply

and the end game is still really slow on large/huge maps with only 8 civs I'm now saving to upgrade my ram to 2GHz 400Mhz to see if that works

If on that system you still have a problem you should look at what programms are running in the background (for example via: msconfig/services). On a machine like that it should run perfectly.
I have a slightly lesser pc with only 768 MB RAM and a Geforce 6200/256 MB. After closing all non-microsoft and non-virusscanner services i have no problem at all, even end game on huge map. Before i closed those background prgramms the game slowed down too. It made a huge difference for me.
Leave microsoft services and virusscanning running and close the rest. If not online you could even close the virsusscanner. Try it, it could save you some money