SLOW SLOW SLOW (Menu load, game load, AI turn) and Crash - updates ?

[PieceOfMind]

Heh, civ5 gives new meaning to the phrase "Just one more turn".

If I had more time, maybe I'd play two more turns.

/harsh

 

[Becephalus]

Going through my steam list of games that actually worked (performance wise) the first week.

Fallout 3, Left4Dead1, Left4Dead2, Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare.

These games were fully functionally at release. Anything major added to them were additional content. Firaxis Games is knocked off the list of dependable developers.

Edit: With a 93% review rating with metacritics, I actually did expect a working game. Guess I'll just have to test-pirate before purchasing.

Every one of those game you listed was predominately a console release. Don't tell me you didn't realize that? The differences between PC publishing and console publishing and completion are huge (though are getting smaller slowly).

And also the PC version fo Fallout 3 did have some major issue son release, though they were fixed right away (console always worked fine).

 

[zarakand]

You can disable the intro movie in UserSettings.ini located in:

C:\Users\NAME\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5

My box isn't fantastic (dual core, 2.6 Ghz, 4 GB, GTS 250), and while turns aren't instant, I don't wait more than 10 seconds in the late game on 10 civ standard maps. Graphics are fine, no big issues here.

Considering the game has an alternate 2D view, which pretty much requires no modern video card, I'm surprised it's not possible to just play in that mode without needing an actually decent graphics card. It would probably run on my netbook then. (Okay, no, it's a CPU hog.)

I'm very surprised to hear that you don't wait more than 10 seconds in the late game. I have a new PC i7 3.2gz, 12 gb ram, ati hd 5800 1gb, and i hate playing this game due to the long turn times by the Renaissance era.

My PC should be flying through this game...yet on a large map, default number of civs, it takes 2-3 min per turn making the game unplayable for me. As much as I enjoy all the new things, if the game continues to be like this I don't see myself really playing it as much as I played Civ IV.

I have a i7 920, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 9800GTX, and a fast SSD disk. I have no problems with any other games or applications.

I tried a huge map with default number of AI and city states, and now at turn 270, the turns take ages to complete. I'm writing all of this while waiting for my next turn.

I have a G15 keyboard which shows me CPU and memory usage, and I don't think the problem is a memory leak. 3,5GB are used atm, so I still have 2,5GB free. The CPU usage is never higher than 25% on each core, and Civ 5 seems to be making no use of hyperthreading.

I'm starting to wonder if the problem is that the AI moves you can't see are played out at the same speed as if you could see the animations...

I think its how the AI turns are played that is causing the slow down for me as well. I switched to playing in a windowed mode just so alt tabing would be easier....that's a major annoyance. I hope the first patch comes soon to fix the performance issues.

 

[Drago Askani]

Hmm I wonder what the defining factor here is. At first I thought perhaps you guys games were taking forever cause you might have been running win 7 where I was running xp. But I just upgraded to win7 64 yesterday (which I had intended to put on here when I build this damn system in the spring, but then finances went bad and had to stick xp home on it, so couldnt use my 8gigs of ram...) and I am still not experiencing end game turns lasting more then 30 seconds. Even on huge maps... It clearly could be an optimization problem I guess...I just wish I knew why I don't have the same problem you guys do. Not that I want your problem, just curious what the defining difference is.

 

[patgarr]

Hey are you sure to use the official retail version ? not a cracked one ?

because the cracked Civ V works very slowly !

i just bought the original, and it is better...

 

[HeavyTwenty]

http://www.techspot.com/review/320-civilization-v-performance/page5.html

Apparently Geforce GTX 2XX series (pure Directx10 card) in general have terrible FPS because of the Tessellation. The Radeon 4XXX series has Directx10.1, basically a few features from 11 but not the entire package and I guess that includes Tessellation? $300 GTX 285 beaten by a $100 Radeon 4850 is real cute.

I never expected a turn based game requiring the latest generation GPU...

 

[MisterBarca]

Get a better computer. My Core i7 920 has no problems making late game modern end turns take no more then 30seconds if even that. Which feels long to me, but its not a huge issue.

30 seconds is not exactly fast

 

[w00tm0ng3r]

What I've noticed is that turns take far longer in single-continent maps, and especially in multiplayer. Up to a full minute.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but how can turn times have anything to do with your graphics settings when it takes equally long in strategic view with basically no graphics at all?

Theoretically they shouldn't. The graphics aren't even that good. If you showed me the graphics at maximum settings to this game, told me it was a turn based strategy, and asked me to guess which video card you'd need for it, I'd tell you something in the range of a Nvidia 6800 with a 7600 as recommended. Instead, we have 7900 as minimum and a freaking 9800 as recommended.

Slowdown is most likely caused by either CPU or RAM screwups compounded by the worst optimization I've ever encountered in the industry. There is also very likely a memory leak since the game keeps getting slower and slower every time I play. Even after finishing a game and starting a new one it still takes me minutes to load new turns, to say nothing of saving and loading games... And this is on the very first turn!

I have a i7 overclocked to 4ghz with 2x 5870s and 12gb of RAM. Even during the AI's turns, my CPU never goes above 30% usage and it never uses above ~1.5 gb of RAM. The game is also a RAID 0'd volume consisting of 3x SSDs which has benchmark performance of 800mb/s sequential reads. Yet the game is still painfully slow towards the end, or even mid game on the Large size maps and above.

So, it is not a hardware bottleneck.

Well there we have it. Hardware has nothing to do with it. This rig should be sufficient to run any TWO bleeding edge, even halfway optimized games on the market right now at the same time.

Every one of those game you listed was predominately a console release. Don't tell me you didn't realize that? The differences between PC publishing and console publishing and completion are huge (though are getting smaller slowly).

And also the PC version fo Fallout 3 did have some major issue son release, though they were fixed right away (console always worked fine).

And yet they still work beautifully on the PC. Fallout 3 and Modern Warfare in particular are some of the best looking first person shooters out there right now, operate in real time, and yet manage to run on release in an acceptable fashion.

 

[patgarr]

I use a ram gadget for my DDR3 4 go.

Before launch Civ 5 : used memory : 1564 mb
Running Civ 5 : used memory 3420 mb

After exit Civ 5 : used memory 2852 mb

???

 

[jaldaen]

As I mentioned in another thread, Gamespot has a Civ V on the Cheap articles that recommends switching to strategic view before pressing the END TURN button... it's about 20% faster.