This is so depressing

[Freedom]

I just got the game after spending a 1 hour ride back and forth from the mall, and of course anticipated it for weeks and.....

it plays so choppy I can't even play it. This sucks. I just got my computer a year and a half ago and it's already outdated... Does anyone know what I can do...?

 

[icecool]

Have you checked your PC spec against the recommened system?.

This website works real well at testing for you

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com

 

[Freedom]

Well I tried it against the Civilization reqs and this is what I failed :

Video Card
Recommended: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (Radeon 9800+ / GeForce 5600+)
You Have: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (GeForce FX 5200)

System RAM
Recommended: 512 MB
You Have: 255.0 MB

Which one of these (or both) would be the reason for the choppiness and how can I fix it?

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Well spend the 50 bucs for vid card with at least 128 megs of ram. and upgrade that Ram man. 256 megs of ram is so 80's. you can get Ram elcheapo right now. check Fry's either local or thier online order.however the chopiness sounds like your Vid card to me. so if you are short on cash go get a cheap 50 buc 128 meg Radeon or Nividia. bot are avaible at fry's also.


Good luck.

 

[alva848]

You have hardly enough memory to run XP, let alone games. Spend some cash on extra memory and things should be a lot better.

 

[PrimeAPE]

Well I tried it against the Civilization reqs and this is what I failed :

Video Card
Recommended: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (Radeon 9800+ / GeForce 5600+)
You Have: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (GeForce FX 5200)

System RAM
Recommended: 512 MB
You Have: 255.0 MB

Which one of these (or both) would be the reason for the choppiness and how can I fix it?

As a former owner of a GeForce FX5200 I can only recommend that you remove that card and smash it into a million little peices.

 

[icecool]

Memory - I'd get 1G if you can, and you can get a new Graphics cards for around $60

 

[smellymummy]

i have the same card, more ram though.. cheapest thing you can do is lower the details to low. it still looks fine

 

[baboon]

I agree with the posters above me.

The biggest problem is your video card. I'd say get Geforce 6600 or 6600GT or 6800 for about 100-200$. I'm not mentioning ATI just because they seem to have problems atm. ATI is ofcourse just as good as Nvidia. And I don't know the ATI models

RAM upgrade might help also (just add 1gb or at least 512mb) but I think the video card is more important.

edit : I thought you had 512, you have 256. that's bad Fix that first and test if you need a new video card.

 

[Freedom]

Memory? Which one if the memory? sorry i dont know much about computers...

can anyone find the cheapest video chip thing that will run Civ decently? I have no idea what I'm looking for....

 

[NinjaCool]

his lack of ram is really a killer in this case... I highly recommend you buy atlest a 256MB ram stick or even better a 512MB Ram stick. This is als a cheaper upgrade then buying a new gfx card but GeForce FX 5200 is not a good card by standards though.... hopefully its the ram thats making big slowdowns because we have users who ordered GeForce FX 5200 because of their old geforce2 cards, lol.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Freedome read the specs on your motherboard, not sure which ram you can handle. Vid card just fin a decent one with 128 megs of ram. i sugest the Radeon 8500 for a cheap card that will play this game as well as others. als the. Not real sure on the nividia side, as i am a die hard ATI phan. the 9800 Radeon 256 is down to 179 dollars. if you can afford it

 

[baboon]

Memory? Which one if the memory? sorry i dont know much about computers...

can anyone find the cheapest video chip thing that will run Civ decently? I have no idea what I'm looking for....

We are talking about your system RAM. Add an extra 512 mb or 1 gb. 1gb is probably the best (100$)

If you want the game to run smooth, i'd buy a geforce 6600 or 6600GT or 6800, they should be between 100-200$. Video card memory is not important, contrary to what many people think. Most cards have just the memory they need. It's the chip on it (the GPU) that's important. The memory is mostly fine. Those 6600 and 6800 thingies I talked about are the GPU's that you looking for.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Yes well i thought on the Ram, however the fact that 256 is the min, would suggest that they have tested the game and not had the chopiness he is having. well i would like to hope they did, or why even post the min specs? while i agree more ram is always better, in his case i would one of my copies of SWG that it his indeed the vid card. if not than Friaxis needs to redo the min specs of the ram needed to run this game.

 

[Eyemaze]

think of it like this you have 255 mb of ram
Winxp is using over 100 of that so you have around 100 mb free

If you had 512 mb of ram you would have 400 mb free.
If you got a gig of ram you would have 900 mb free.

This is computer ram, you of course need to know what kind of ram your MB takes. There are lots of types of computer ram.

 

[baboon]

Freedome read the specs on your motherboard, not sure which ram you can handle. Vid card just fin a decent one with 128 megs of ram. i sugest the Radeon 8500 for a cheap card that will play this game as well as others. als the. Not real sure on the nividia side, as i am a die hard ATI phan. the 9800 Radeon 256 is down to 179 dollars. if you can afford it

Thats pretty expensive for a radeon 9800, because it has 256 it's a lot more expensive. I sold my radeon 128 for 60 euro's lately.

I'd get a geforce 6600 or 6600gt or 6800 or something from ATI, like the X800, but not a Radeon 9800 for that money. If you can get a radeon for like 60 euro's, 70 dollars , that's a nice buy, but here in the netherlands most shops don't even have it anymore. The extra 128 makes cards way too expensive, I think (just look up the tests)a faster chip is more important than extra memory.

 

[Karnak]

Your computer was outdated for games a year and a half ago when you bought it. Sorry.

What I'd recommend is increasing the memory first. You have 256mb and should have, at a bare minimum, 512mb. 1gb would be better. If you are not knowlegable enough it would be better to ask the place where you bought it what kind of memory you need to buy and how to install it.

If that doesn't fix the problem (it probably will) then you need to think about a new video card.

 

[Freedom]

Hi,

well I was looking for RAM, how do I know which ones my computer can take?

 

[baboon]

Yes well i thought on the Ram, however the fact that 256 is the min, would suggest that they have tested the game and not had the chopiness he is having. well i would like to hope they did, or why even post the min specs? while i agree more ram is always better, in his case i would one of my copies of SWG that it his indeed the vid card. if not than Friaxis needs to redo the min specs of the ram needed to run this game.

It's generally a bad idea to look at the requirments, if you want to play it you'll want the recommended specs. They are not high-end. The requirements usually allow you to play, and that's it. You can play it, but we won't tell you how slow it is and how ugly. If you get recommended, it's ok. If you want the highest visual settings, you need a lot more than the recommended settings. It's always like that, I generally ignore required and look at recommended as if it is required.

WinXP for example, has 64MB as required and 128MB are recommended. It's both crappy. 64MB is impossible and 128 is pretty awful. SO IMHO WinXP has a requirement of 128MB and recommended 256MB. For a game company, they just want you to buy it, so they set the requirement pretty low.

 

[Hiccup]

Have you tried going into the "Options" menu and changing all of the graphics options from high to low? Or maybe lowering the resolution to the smallest setting? Even that may not be enough, but it would certainly help somewhat...