The way Civ V runs on my PC (specs included)

E

Emperor Giulio

King
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
658
Location
California
Hi everyone,

When I play Civ V on my PC it runs fairly decent. However, I can’t tell you how annoyed I get when the game unexpectedly crashes and I lose over an hour of progress. Also, there is a lag when I move to a new part of the map, the tiles look blurry and it take a few seconds for it to look the way it should. Below are my PC specs, could someone tell me why this is so, and what I can do to improve the quality of my gaming experience?

Thanks in advance!

-------------------------------

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ 2.30 Ghz

Memory (RAM) 4.00GB (Upgraded 12/23/10)

313 of 455 GBs free on C drive; 6.08 of 9.99 GB free on D drive

500w Rocket Fish gaming Power supply with a 600w peak

PNY Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1024 MB GDDR5

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bits (Upgraded 12/29/10)
 
There's nothing what you really could do. The crashes are due to programming bugs, and only Firaxis can fix them. Tomorrow there'll probably somewhen come a hotfix which will fix some of them, maybe that will help you enough.

Emperor Giulio said:
so I play it through steam.
Click to expand...

Everyone does, it's a steamworks game :/.
 
I actually kind of feel guilty for not doing my homework enough on my purchase for the graphic card and power supply. I had finally gotten the urge to upgrade my pc, so I used some extra money I had to splurge in Best Buy. That’s another thing, I should had ordered it from the internet to find a better deal too. But it was a fair price nonetheless.
 
You should be able to get 4 gigs of RAM (two 2Gig sticks) for like $50-60 or around there off Newegg or NCIX or whatever site gives you the best price and is convenient. Maybe even amazon though I've never checked them.
 
Unfortunately even if you're running 64 bit Windows and you have tons of memory the problem is that most 32-bit executables (which Civ V is) can only address about 2GB.
See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#memory_limits

There is a flag that can be set when compiling the program that would raise this to 4GB on 64-bit Windows. I understand there are utilities that can modify the compiled .exe to do this, but I haven't tried them.

The "proper" thing would be for Firaxis to make a 64-bit version of Civ V. After some searching I can't find any indication this will ever happen.
 
I had went down to staples and picked up the 2 extra GBs of RAM, now I am running on 4 GBs. I have to say, the PC runs much smoother and so does Civ V. Nevertheless as another poster said, it still has issues, but I have to say, I am really enjoying the upgrade in RAM.

Merry Saturnalia!
 
Emperor Giulio said:
Is there a way to upgrade to a 64-bit system from a 32? or would that entail having to buy a whole new motherboard and/or processor?
Click to expand...

You will have to buy a 64 bit version of Windows 7, try to find one on sale somewhere, maybe Newegg.com or something. You shouldn't need any new hardware but you will have to wipe your hard drive when you install Windows 7 (just make sure you back up game saves, photos, music, bookmarks etc, you'll want fresh installs of your programs afterwards too) but you'll really appreciate Windows 7 more than Vista, its the best windows yet and has a huge number of improvements.
 
PrinceScamp said:
You will have to buy a 64 bit version of Windows 7, try to find one on sale somewhere, maybe Newegg.com or something. You shouldn't need any new hardware but you will have to wipe your hard drive when you install Windows 7 (just make sure you back up game saves, photos, music, bookmarks etc, you'll want fresh installs of your programs afterwards too) but you'll really appreciate Windows 7 more than Vista, its the best windows yet and has a huge number of improvements.
Click to expand...

I have downloaded Civ V to my hard drive, from Direct2Download; will i be able to recover the program or back it up before I wipe it clean?
 
Civilization is not tied to a machine, it's tied to your Steam account. As long as you don't lose access to your account, you can just install Steam everywhere you want and download it again.
But yes, you can just copy the whole steam folder over to an external HDD (or whatever you have), and copy it afterwards back, and Steam should after starting do all the necessary things (and there should also be somewhere a backup option, but i think PrinceScamp can be more precise about it).

And it's Direct2Drive ;).
 
Excellent, I am very excited to be upgrading my PC again. I feel as though I deserve it since I accomplished everything I set out to do in 2010. Thanks to everyone for all of the helpful advice!:D
 
Yeah there is a back-up option, I've never tried but I assume it works fine. However, I don't know if the way the game is installed on a 32-bit system is compatible with a 64-bit system, or if it works fine, I have no idea. You'll be able to download and install it through Steam just fine.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-YPHV-2033
 
Unfortunately even if you're running 64 bit Windows and you have tons of memory the problem is that most 32-bit executables (which Civ V is) can only address about 2GB.
Click to expand...
Civ5 is large address aware but my last large map game didn't go over 2GBs.
Is there a way to upgrade to a 64-bit system from a 32?
Click to expand...
The cdkey is good for either version. You can get a DVD from MS or ...
 
Today i bought a external hard drive and backed up all of my videos, music files, etc and installed windows 7 64 bit version over my 32-bit vista. I had to do it by wiping my hard drive clean, and am currently restoring all of it so far everything is going successfully. I cannot wait to play Civ V on Direct X 11. I did this all for civ, to get the optimal experiance. My computer got a hardcore upgrade in this past month! I love it! :D
 
If you play on Direct X 11, you can only do so through the start of the Industrial Era at best. Every game I have played to that point started crashing thus forcing me to go to the Direct X 9 version. Oh, also watch out when moving the Helicopter Gunships over long distances as that often crashes the game.

I will point out that no matter what your stats are, this game is horribly bugged and crashes at random times. I highly recommend you set the auto saving to every turn. Of course, that doesn't help when you get into some situation where the game will crash for no reason.
 
Other than the random crashing, Civ 5 has been running beautifully since this massive upgrade. The graphics are beautiful; the forests and oceans are marvelous. For anyone on the fence about upgrading to improve their playing experience, I recommend it!

This story has a happy ending, thank you to all who have guided me!
 
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