opticaljim
Warlord
I was having a lot of problems with the game. Most of them have been mentioned numerous times. The driver crashed, the introductory video skips, there is darkness in terrain that has already been explored, the game warns me that my system is below the recomended specifications, etc.
I talked to a friend who is way smarter than me when it comes to these things, he fixes and upgrades PC's for the military.
The bottom line is this. My video card is a 64MB, DirectX 9.0c-compatible. It satisfies the minimum requirments but it's not going to be good enough if I want the full quality of the product.
The driver, which is the "engine" that operates my video card is a nVidia GeForce MX 420. The card is hardware, the driver is software. I could try to upgrade the driver all day with free downloads and it's not going to help a whole lot. The only way to get the full quality is to go out and purchase a 128MB video card with DirectX 8 capability and have it installed. We are talking about anywhere from $100-150 total depending on the cost of installation.
My friend does not like ATI. He recomended a nVidia AGP 128MB DDR graphics card. It comes with a GeForce MX 4000 driver program.
The bottom line is this. Civilization IV represents the "next generation" of PC gameware and it's only natural that it is going to be made compatible with the "next generation" of PC. We are talking about a serious investment by the software company, Firafax, and I'm sure they plan on some expansion packs over the next several years. It wouldn't do to have their "flagship" product become outdated during the next rollout of PC's.
I'm not an expert but it seems to me that if you are having some of the typical problems you should first suspect that you have a 64MB video card or less. You must then decide if it is worth it to go out and upgrade your video card. I got mine at Best Buy. You can find out which driver and video capacity you have by hitting the start button, hit search, type in "dxdiag" and hit the tab titled "display".
There may be some counterexamples out there and that's okay. if you can qualify your findings then any and all help is appreciated.
Good luck, everyone.
I talked to a friend who is way smarter than me when it comes to these things, he fixes and upgrades PC's for the military.
The bottom line is this. My video card is a 64MB, DirectX 9.0c-compatible. It satisfies the minimum requirments but it's not going to be good enough if I want the full quality of the product.
The driver, which is the "engine" that operates my video card is a nVidia GeForce MX 420. The card is hardware, the driver is software. I could try to upgrade the driver all day with free downloads and it's not going to help a whole lot. The only way to get the full quality is to go out and purchase a 128MB video card with DirectX 8 capability and have it installed. We are talking about anywhere from $100-150 total depending on the cost of installation.
My friend does not like ATI. He recomended a nVidia AGP 128MB DDR graphics card. It comes with a GeForce MX 4000 driver program.
The bottom line is this. Civilization IV represents the "next generation" of PC gameware and it's only natural that it is going to be made compatible with the "next generation" of PC. We are talking about a serious investment by the software company, Firafax, and I'm sure they plan on some expansion packs over the next several years. It wouldn't do to have their "flagship" product become outdated during the next rollout of PC's.
I'm not an expert but it seems to me that if you are having some of the typical problems you should first suspect that you have a 64MB video card or less. You must then decide if it is worth it to go out and upgrade your video card. I got mine at Best Buy. You can find out which driver and video capacity you have by hitting the start button, hit search, type in "dxdiag" and hit the tab titled "display".
There may be some counterexamples out there and that's okay. if you can qualify your findings then any and all help is appreciated.
Good luck, everyone.
