sudden 10 minute loads, multi core queries and other rambles

[lord donkeysnot]

Hi
I recently upgraded to a shiny new i7 system for my studio. I assumed one of the extra advantages would be lightning quick turn loads vs'ing 132 opponents on 40 foot wide maps when playing civ.

So after reading lots of threds I understand civ can't address multiple cores and the performance is only marginly better then my p4 processor. Except for the fact I can multi task extreamly well during turn loads. Even work on music projects with only the occasional civ crash.

The reason Im posting is turn loading times have suddenly, with out noticble seen reasons jumped upto a ridiculous 10 minutes in my current game. It is rise of mankind mod on huge european map. During the turn load I cant access anything else, even task manager. After many attempts I was able to open task manager and saw that one core was getting absolutely smashed. So I will catalogue all the advise I've found on here and give it a go. One thing I havn't seen, Is it possible to designate which core civ uses? I've read you can change every other process over to another core to free up one for civ but it seems it would make vast amounts of sense if you could just move civ to another core.

Now this next comment/suggestion/ idea might be overly newbtastic in it's ignorance but here goes........

the makers of civ cant be assed redesigning the game to address multiple cores, it sells well enough regardless. All the amazing modders that make incredible extensions like Rise of Mankind (I cant play with out it now), would they be capable of working together to redesign the basic coding to address multpile cores or is that completely different ballgame. I for one would contribute $50 or more to a fund to pay for the modders time and effort. I have a feeling there would be a large number of people who might do the same.

 

[ori]

the game (with its core engine) was released in 2005 - when multicores where not really standard - hence its lack of support.
the game does not do multi-threading - and which core it uses is determined by the operating system - so you cannot set that (though it should usually use one with little or no other load).
the routines for this are somewhere in the .exe the code of which has not been released (unlike the cvcoregamedll.dll - which has been published) so that its unlikely non-Firaxians can do anything about it (and it would not be trivial by any stretch of the imagination).
As for your load times: does this happen randomly or can you reproduce it with a save? it is well possible that there is an endless loop you trigger in the mod (or an almost endless loop) which might cause it...

 

[Furiey]

I have no experience of writing stuff to use multiple cores, it is way beyond my abilities, so this is just a random thought that may well be complete rubbish. If it is not possible to specify which core Civ 4 uses, would it be possible to write a loader program of some kind that temporarily loads up to near 100% the cores you don't want Civ to use, starts Civ which should be allocated by the OS to the unused core, then unloads the other cores again?

 

[ori]

in my experience with win XP the OS switches the cores (i.e. the high load alternates between cpus if only one is active)...