Suggestion for jerky graphics / regular crashes - help required

[ainwood]

Users at Civilized.de believe that the problem that many people are experiencing with jerky graphics & regular crashes can be explained by variable pagefile sizes.

It is therefore suggested that they can be reduced simply by setting a (large) permanent page file.

I was going to post screenshots of how to set this in XP, but I have windows 2000 here. Can someone please post screenies of how to set it?

Edit: Screen shots have been supplied by franlato - in french, but the buttons are in the same location:

Spoiler First Pic: Click start, and go to the control panel :

Spoiler Second Pic: Double-Click on "System" :

Spoiler third pic: On the "Advanced" tab, look for 'performance', and click the 'settings' button. :

Spoiler fourth pic: On the "advanced" tab, look for 'Virtual Memory', and click 'modify' :

Spoiler Final Picture - Set the minimum & Maximum size to be the same (recommended value = 1.5 times whatever your RAM is) :

Also - can people experiencing these problems please try this solution and report back if it improves anything?

Thanks.

 

[ctiberius]

Mine has always been set to a custom fixed size. Min of 1536 and a max of 1536 on Winxp with 512MB ram.

Sadly it has not helped.

 

[Tempete]

Same. My paging file has always been set at min & max 1.5GB, adding up to 2GB with physical memory. I don't see how having larger memory would alleviate consistent choppy frame rate (which in fact doesn't help), maybe it'd help with the crashes. Oh umm...my game crashed for the first time after playing for three hours straight.

 

[Cantankerous]

Ainwood,

It sounds like you have a lot of computer knowledge and I would love to give your suggestion a try, however I am NOT particularly computer knowledgeable myself.

Unfortunately I have no idea what you mean by "setting a (large) permanent page file". For those of us that don't understand what you're trying to say, could you please try to explain things more in layman terms?

Please don't think that I'm being short with you, as I am hoping that you have some serious input on what ails those of us that are having the "crash to desktop" error. And it's one that is frustrating me to no ends.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My system:

Windows XP Service Pack 2
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
1022MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

 

[ainwood]

Ainwood,

It sounds like you have a lot of computer knowledge and I would love to give your suggestion a try, however I am NOT particularly computer knowledgeable myself.

Ok - that was why I was hoping that someone who knew how to do this would take the time to post sone step-by-step screenshots. From the two responses above, it doesn't look like its much help though (however it certainly won't hurt!)

I managed to find this though:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/physically_setting_the_page_file_size.htm

If you set it to a minimum of (say) 1000 and a maximum of 1000, and then see if it helps.

 

[admobadmo]

Ooooo! I just had my first crash, too. Thought I'd try this out.

Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced tab > Performance > click Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory. You can adjust it to whatever you want in there.

Another one I noticed there was a setting for Memory Usage, I'm also going to try switching that to Programs, since mine was set on System Cache previously.

My real question is: where do the Auto-saves go? All I can find are my manual saves.

 

[Ruffin]

I have about 700M of memory it's not doing anything with (1.25G less the 460m the game is using). Why should it even need virtual memory? It's eating it like candy, yes, but why?

 

[ainwood]

My real question is: where do the Auto-saves go? All I can find are my manual saves.

my documents\my games\saves\
and then there are various sub-folders for single, multiplayer etc.

 

[franlato]

the screen are there, in order :

enjoy (don't know if it will work, this theory is more of a myth I think)

http://learnciv4.blogspot.com/

 

[ainwood]

I have about 700M of memory it's not doing anything with (1.25G less the 460m the game is using). Why should it even need virtual memory? It's eating it like candy, yes, but why?

Some sort of windows issue. You can have literally gigabytes of RAM, and for some reason windows still wants to use a swap file. Don't really know why, unfortunately.

 

[ainwood]

the screen are there, in order :

enjoy (don't know if it will work, this theory is more of a myth I think)

http://learnciv4.blogspot.com/

Merci beaucoups!

 

[admobadmo]

Thanks ainwood. I found them in them in the folder, but I missed it in the game somehow.

 

[dresteves]

Guys,

Has anyone tested this solution ? I've just changed my Virtual Memory and I would like to know if this will be effective...

Anyway, I'll test and keep you informed about the results...

Thk
Denis

 

[Thorek]

I tested it and it did not improve performance. However it is nice to know that all my crashes (after about 5 mins or so) did stop after using 3DAnalyze. That might be worth a try.

 

[Ruffin]

Changing the Virtual Memory min/max to 1915 (the "recommended" amount) didn't do anything. I did go to the next tab and change the DEP ("Data Error Prevention") so that it didn't apply to Civ4. It didn't change the gameplay in that I still start to lag horribly after about 3 turns. But it did seem to lower my pagefile usage from about 450 to 150. No idea what that means.

Back to restarting every couple of turns.

 

[godevils]

I followed the directions and played for the last hour without any crashes.
Thanks

 

[Cantankerous]

No joy.

I changed the settings on the virtual memory as per the instructions and I am having crashes to desktop constantly. I can't seem to play more than 2 or 3 turns until the game crashes to a halt.

I'm not saying that changing the virtual memory is CAUSING additional crashes. I'm only saying that I simply can't play the game at this time because I can't keep it from crashing.

What is so INCREDIBLY frustrating is that I was enjoying the gameplay and thought I was going to enjoy Civ4 as much or more than Civ3, but until it can be figured out what the serious issue here is I simply can't play the game.

 

[Cantankerous]

If you set it to a minimum of (say) 1000 and a maximum of 1000, and then see if it helps.

Ainwood are you saying that a setting of 1000 is a good setting to use or are you just "throwing a number out there"?

I tried using the 1000 min and max limit like you suggested and it seems to have made no difference.

Is there just something inherently "wrong" with the Nvidia graphics card just not wanting to cooperate with the game? It just seems that nothing that I have tried so far has worked with any long-term success.

The game simply can't be played in 2 or 3 turn intervals with a CTD inbetween each session. I'm at my wit's end here!

 

[ainwood]

Ainwood are you saying that a setting of 1000 is a good setting to use or are you just "throwing a number out there"?

I tried using the 1000 min and max limit like you suggested and it seems to have made no difference.

Is there just something inherently "wrong" with the Nvidia graphics card just not wanting to cooperate with the game? It just seems that nothing that I have tried so far has worked with any long-term success.

The game simply can't be played in 2 or 3 turn intervals with a CTD inbetween each session. I'm at my wit's end here!

It was just a number - but as I said, I wasn't sure whether it would work or not. A good "rule of thumb" is to set it to 1.5 times whatever your RAM is - if you have 1 GB, then set it to (say) 1500.

As a side note - what kind of soundcard do you have? Have you tried updating the drivers for it?

 

[Cantankerous]

It was just a number - but as I said, I wasn't sure whether it would work or not. A good "rule of thumb" is to set it to 1.5 times whatever your RAM is - if you have 1 GB, then set it to (say) 1500.

As a side note - what kind of soundcard do you have? Have you tried updating the drivers for it?

Thanks for the clarification. Since I have 1 GB of RAM I'll set it for 1500.

My sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS.

I will download the latest driver and install it and see if that does any good.

Thanks for the advice!