Slow game...

[camel]

At first my computer is:
celeron 2,4 ram 512 and nvidia 5200 256

I have installed program named fraps which is displaying fps.

And i have at start of the game no matter that huge or duel fps somewhere about 25-30, but when i play it for while and i have revealed some place
with living cities (roads and so), fps is going down do 12-15 and the game is
starting to go down...

Main problem is not in thing like waiting for next turn and so that only minimal amount of time like one second or so. Responses is too good for moving units.

But the problem is in scrolling especially with mouse... There is fps main problem.
It is surprising that if i scroll with mouse on the minimap fps is going up...
Just bad code probably of the game.

I'm attaching dxdiag if somebody have some ideas what to do.
I'm running the game with everything low 16bit and so on. Main video an videos in game are going superb surprisly...
In rivatuner when i set textures to minimal so the screen look likes a ....
it doesn't help with fps suprisly.

Perhaps the problem is in nvidia 5200 a have readed on the forum about it to much . Or have somebody experience which operating system is faster with this game 2000 or XP?

Thanx for ideas

 

[Zanmato]

I have the same card only at 128mb. I have the same issues plus the movies won't play right. Unit movement alittle sluggish. I think it's alittle of both, bad coding and the card. I usually wait around 5-10 seconds for a turn in the modern era, still playable however. I run on Win2k but I think it makes little difference to gameplay. XP has bigger RAM overheads anyway. Considering upgrading the card to a 6600 or 6800, it's about as far as I go with my current AGP slot.

 

[camel]

I had too choppy video from patch 1.52 but then i turn on screenshots in ini and there where gone... Just try that

 

[Zanmato]

Strange, I put screenshots back on as suggested and the movies played a little better. They still skip but it's an improvement in any case. Don't why and how allowing screenshots helps movie playback though. Will try forcing them to 16-bit and see if they improve further.

 

[camel]

Yes it is very strange that it help the performance of video, but this game is strange in some things...

I have slower comp than you and my video has no problem, perhaps when i'll come from work a i can post you my civilization.ini may it help you. But it can be in some preferences on graphic card too or so.

Yesterday i have tested worldbuilder where is revealed whole map and fps is very good, so i can't imagine where is the problem in the game, where when i reveal too much map, game is going to be choppy. Perhaps this damned game
just do too much operations if you are only moving with mouse on the map scroll and so. Or it depends on a lot of improvements displaying above surface.

Perhaps the next patch will be more optimized. Or it can help perhaps new video card but if i don't know it certainly...

Of course game is playable on my comp but 15fps later in game is noy very enyojable...
Camel

 

[Zydor]

Definitely the fx5200 card

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3590705#post3590705

Regards
Zy

 

[JerichoMyst]

what fx5200 you have? 64bit or 128bit? cause 64bit is reall crap...

I'm going to run Civ4 on AMD duron 850Mhz, ~400MB of RAM, and fx5200 128bit with 128MB... if to be precise the date is o6-o2-o4...

why? cause I was running pretty new games on that one without much trouble, but with lower graphics and other settings (Cold Fear, NFS_U_U2_MW, GTA:SA, C&C:Generals (high settings here) and others)

 

[Zanmato]

My FX5200 has a good 18 months or so on the clock. Don't know if it 64-bit or 128-bit. Tried dropping the vids down to 16-bit and it just does the same as 32-bit. Strange because at one point prior to the latest patch they did work pretty well sometimes. I'm just going to bite the bullet on this one and go out and get a newer card. The 6600 or 6800 (256mb) should do the trick and are pretty reasonably priced with a couple of extras. The only other games I had were Homeworld 2 and Nexus but I guess these two didn't really put the FX through any kind of heavy processing. That's why I left it has it was. I find it really unplayable if the world is a Huge map, it's much more playable on just Large maps. I guess if I tried the 18 civ game it will proberly just fry the card when the whole map is revealed.