Serious concerns about game stability...

[Halberd]

I have:

Athlon 64 3000+
1gb generic ram
Radeon 9600SE
Windows XP SP2

Motherboard, ram, processor all very recent and with latest drivers and bios
No problems with any other game (apart from Rome: Total War which is a software issue!).

Got the game last night, and managed to play about 4 to 5 hours until now. However, I'm having to save each turn as it has repeatedly CTD (or even worse, locked up completely) or CTD'd in 16-col 640x480!

I haven't yet applied the .pak fixes - I have no graphics issues with the game (running 1280x1024, med quality) - but I was just wondering whether anyone can suggest anything sensible I can do to improve the game stability. Or whether this is quite common?

I get the crashes generally when I try and access the city screen or just before the leaderhead anims (I think - obviously they don't appear as I'm back in XP by then).

Any help would be greatly apprec...

 

[AsnoT]

Athlon 64 3000+
1gb generic ram
Radeon 9600SE
Windows XP SP2

the ATI SE cards only have a 64 bit bus between chip and ram. this is NOT adequate for games.

128 bit bus: 32 bytes each cycle, with 300mhz chips that is 9GB/s, which is the bare minimum for games. (latest cards have a 256 bit bus).

sooooooooo, if you wanna greatly improve gaming performance of your rig, update the gfx card to a non-SE model.

 

[Halberd]

the ATI SE cards only have a 64 bit bus between chip and ram. this is NOT adequate for games.

128 bit bus: 32 bytes each cycle, with 300mhz chips that is 9GB/s, which is the bare minimum for games. (latest cards have a 256 bit bus).

sooooooooo, if you wanna greatly improve gaming performance of your rig, update the gfx card to a non-SE model.

Fair do's (I'll use your post to convince the wife ) but I really can't work out why I need to upgrade my box for a supposed STRATEGY game when HalfLife2, NFS Underground 2, Rome:TW, Warhammer 40,000K etc. - with far flashier eye-candy - all work ok!

 

[AsnoT]

I'll use your post to convince the wife

*g* feel free.

and for the rest - it's in 3d, that wants some steam to run on (not a HL2 reference).

i can recommend the 9x00 pro series from ati, budget cards that have decent specs.[/spam]

 

[kalif]

aya, your performance will increase, but it wont make the game more stable.

 

[AsnoT]

aya, your performance will increase, but it wont make the game more stable.

how do you know that?

 

[mrgenie]

the game gets slower at some point..the point where that happens depends on your system..with my system P4 2,8Ghz, 1Gigs Ram, and Radeon 9800 Pro 128, it's somewhere near the industrial age on a huge map. I can play standard and smaller maps without ANY problem for stability. It will never crash nor getting slow..use the alt-tab for several times makes the game slower though, so i advise not to use it..if the game finally gets slower because of alt-tab..reboot the pc, it solves that problem! as for the huge maps on my system...after it gets slow(not because of the alt-tab but just because of the requirements of the game) there is no way to make it more stable, after getting slower it will crash from time to time..though, only once every 2hours or so..on a gigantic map it will start to crash even at medieval age and more frequently, every 30mins or even sooner. so...you must just take a smaller map size if you want to have performance and stabvility, or wait for a patch to at least fix the stabilty, however, i doubt your pc will get faster because of a patch. there is no other way then buy more decend hardware. For this game, the minimum system performance on the box counts for the smaller maps..the recommended specs are proper up to smal or MAYBE standard maps..for Gigantic maps i recommend P4 or athlon with 3,5GHz, 3Gigs DDR2 Ram, ATA 100 HDD to make proper and fast swapping, of course buy a new mainboard to support the DDR2, and I would recommand the X850 of ATI or the similar card of NVIDIA..anyway, only the 3 or 4 fastest Videocards listed on toms hardware pages or the faster and newer ones not listed there...anyway, to play such maps, the huge/large/gigantics custom mades..i would recommend to invest around 3000 US Dollar on your hardware, in case you don't want to work your life to play just one game of 50dollar, stick to the small maps at least your sure not getting any performance issues does this mean its crappy programmed? no, performance issues you'll always have with 3D games with huge amound of data..does the crashing means its crappy programmed? yes, definitly!! but maybe they going to patch that within the next 6 months...about people yelling PATCH ON THE WAY, OR PATCH COMMING in NOVEMBER? there is NO STATEMENT on that from neither firaxis nor 2kgames!! maybe they will, maybe they won't..for you as paying customer it's like participating in the lottery..i wouldn't bet on it, but we might be lucky and firaxis is maybe working hard to solve the issues mentioned by ten-tousends of players worldwide and im sure they are working hard, because they know else civ4 will be the last game as long as 2kgames is dictating firaxis

 

[onedreamer]

how do you know that?

because if you and the original poster would bother reading the other 250.000 messages about CTD, you'd notice that video card is unlikely to be the cause of this widespread problem. I have a nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT videocard and I don't have any graphical issue with any game including Civ4, but I do crash to desktop all the time.

PS Genie I wouldn't be so sure about your assumptions. I have finished a game on a big map and am finishing a game on a standard map, and I have crashed with the same exact frequency, and completely era-indipendent. Actually I crashed more in the middle age than during the space race...

 

[mrgenie]

that's wierd, because me and my best friend finished 4games on standard maps already without crashing..first at large our systems hang...but like i wrote down in another post..i assume its depending on the system itself...i heard some can't play any maps..others can play up to large not huge, others can play even huge...so there's definitly some point at which the system is just floated with information, can't handle it, and dang...ORRRR maybe it's some incompatability with some windows version..i dunno..like you said, it's only a assumption..however..i still do see a straight line in it..but remember i don't mean it as absolute that EVERY system must crash on bigger then standard..i just assume that most systems with recommended spacs can play safely up to standard..

 

[Halberd]

because if you and the original poster would bother reading the other 250.000 messages about CTD, you'd notice that video card is unlikely to be the cause of this widespread problem. I have a nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT videocard and I don't have any graphical issue with any game including Civ4, but I do crash to desktop all the time.

Note I didn't agree with him. I don't think it's my poor crippled Radeon that's the problem - as I have no problems with the graphics or speed or slowdowns or any latency or anything. Wish it was, as I'd love the excuse to buy a new card...

I can also discount mrgenie's advice, unfortunately, as I have played on various map sizes now, with various #'s of civs and invariably get CTD's or lockups (but with no predictable pattern).

 

[kalif]

how do you know that?

because usually stability depends on either your drivers, your OS or the programm youre running...anyway feel free to correct me

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

because usually stability depends on either your drivers, your OS or the programm youre running...anyway feel free to correct me

Usually, yes. That does not apply in the case of Civ4, where a large percentage of users have major problems.

 

[onedreamer]

the program we are running is the problem, exactly
I don't think it's the system which can't handle huge amounts of informations from the game. I've had this happen all the time with my old PC, and the symptoms (sp ?) are quite different. In fact, when I quit to desktop I should have a slowed system, or some sign of a problem from the side of the system, like an error message. Instead the OS doesn't seem to suffer or care at all from Civ4, but the game still crashes with no predictable pattern, as Halberd has said. I think that if you seem to see a pattern in the crashes, it's only by chance, by case, or by your superstition