Slow Diplomacy/Advisor/Wonder screens

[ERLoft]

So, it sure seems like the turns themselves are quicker with BtS. However, I'm having some really long waits for the diplomacy screen, Wonder movies, and all the Advisor screens. I've timed them and it's generally 30-40 seconds before the actual screen pops up on the advisor screens or when I initiate diplomacy. A bit harder to tell how long with the wonder movies, as it zooms to the city, along with the ray of light, but freezes up for a while until the movie goes.

Granted, I can play the game with this going on, but it is quite annoying.

System specs:

X2 4400+
4GB RAM
XP Pro
(2) eVGA 8800GTS – Most recent NVidia non-beta drivers installed.

Not sure what else might help with the specs. I’ve been considering uninstalling/reinstalling all Civ programs, but haven’t done that yet…

TIA for any ideas!

 

[control740]

Yes I'm having this too. There's another thread up about this in the general tech support forum(unfortunately without a huge deal of resolution at this point):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=234185

I hope more light comes to be shed on this problem because it's HIGHLY annoying.

 

[Threarah]

I can see something of a pattern emerging here - we've all high end systems with the 88000GTS - are you running 2 in SLI also control?

I guess it could be an issue with the latest NVIDIA driver - after all, theres no BTS profile in the control panel. I guess we'll just have to keep an eye out for their next beta driver to see if that fixes the problem.

 

[control740]

I am not running SLI actually, just a single 8800GTS. However in terms of drivers, I am running the very latest official nvidia driver right now(162.18), but beforehand I was running an earlier driver(97.95) and it was exhibiting the same behavior.

 

[ERLoft]

Interesting. There is a beta driver out that I've downloaded, but not installed. I guess I'll install it today and report back...

 

[ERLoft]

Bleh, it seems that the former beta is now the official version and it's the one Control's already using.

Any one of us with this problem try an uninstall/reinstall of the game?

 

[ERLoft]

Ok, so I uninstalled the video cards, rebooted in safe mode, ran driver cleaner, rebooted, installed newest NVidia drivers.

When I loaded up a new game, it was only 5 seconds to get up a diplomacy screen, even less time for advisor screens. However at the end of about an hour session, the times were up to 15 seconds for diplomacy and 7-9 seconds for advisor screens.

This kind of lines up with a problem with Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and the 8800 series cards - kind of a memory leak in the drivers for the cards. If I'm reading things correctly of course.

 

[control740]

Ya it does seem to be a 8800 problem at this point. I've bought nvidia for years now but with how buggy this 8800 series is I'm rather disappointed in them.

As an FYI, when I was trying drivers I was making sure to do a safe mode driver clean up too so as to be 100% sure. So it doesnt seem likely that this issue will be solved by any recent or older nvidia patch.

Hopefully either Firaxis or nvidia get wind of this clash and fix it, seems that's probably the only hope at this moment. However here's hoping we hear more input from others as well.

 

[Threarah]

Hopefully either Firaxis or nvidia get wind of this clash and fix it, seems that's probably the only hope at this moment.

Looks like it. My money is on the nvidia drivers. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to wait for new drivers to fix problems in newer games.

If any of you guys come across some newer drivers then post back here so we can try them too .

Looks like the beta 163.11 driver is now available for Vista - I'm running XP so that rules me out of the guinea-pig cage.

 

[Saint Sarai]

Hi everyone,
I'm just checking in on this thread. I posted a similar one in the general BTS section. I am having the same problems and I have dual 8000 series running in SLI. I will experiment with settings some and report back my findings. Meanwhile let's hope for a fix, this is a game breaker IMHO. Takes way too long waiting for screens to load.

 

[jdscolam]

Just throwing another hat in the ring for this problem. QX6800, 2x 8800 Ultra, 2 GB RAM. No problems with the old version, but BTS is driving me crazy. No problems on my wife's laptop, running 7800 Go and 2GB RAM.

 

[Threarah]

Have you guys tried setting MemSaver to 1 in the BTS .ini file? While it doesn't solve the problem altogether (I've found the pauses return after a second game is loaded in the same session), it has helped me to enjoy BTS a bit more until a proper fix comes out. It does mean you can't alt+tab out though, which is an annoyance in itself.

The ini file is in 'My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword'.

 

[ainwood]

I'd conclude from the posts here that this is a nVidia problem, rather than a BTS one. As such, I'm tempted to move it to computer talk. But :meh: - leave it here (but I won't mark it as a bug!)