Very slow and choppy..

[Dwarkyzidez]

I just got this game today, installed it, and started playing. The game was very slow. Took a long time to start the actual game (when you play, not setting up). Then while playing, it was slow. Animations were choppy, took several seconds to start the next turn, and it lead me to stop playing. Got off, started again. It was EXTREMELY slow that time. Screen went berserk with different colored pixelds, took like 5 minutes before the main screen of the game to show up. Again, slow there. Got off, and my computer was also slow. Lead me to manually shutting down the computer.

This has NEVER happened when I played any other games, including FFXI. Anyone know why this is happening, or how to fix it? I'll post my computer specs:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp.050622-1524)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Dell DM051
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A05
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 510MB RAM
Page File: 343MB used, 902MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode
Graphics Card: RADEON X300 SE 128MB HyperMemory

 

[crunch]

Well. I am not sure how good your graphics card is. It looks like the memory is the bottleneck for your system. What you should try:
- shut down all unnecessary applications before launching civ (including antivirus, peer2peer software, instant messengers, etc)
- under graphics options, turn details to low and nice stuff to off
- turn off videos, sound
- play a small map

 

[Zanmato]

The video card is pretty decent if it can handle FFXI without too much hassle. Looking at the spec, I think it is a good card. Although, why it produces wierd pixels is strange. Are the video drivers up to date? I would consider doubling up the system RAM first, it's a cheap option and then see how it goes. Do follow crunch's advice, with the extra RAM you might find a happy medium with the graphics and game processing speed. But for now, just run a min settings. Extra memory makes all the difference with Civ4.

 

[Dwarkyzidez]

Well, it works now. I think I played on too large a map. Thanks guys.

 

[Catcher]

Didn't see this mentioned yet but have you patched the game yet? The earliest version was really stressful on hardware but performance has generally improved up to the 1.61 (current) patch. If you really want to work with larger maps, the video card may be the problem. The ATI Hypercache cards use the system's main memory to make a generally slow (and thus cheap card; that's why it's in a Dell ) faster. CIV is already known to be memory hungry even with the most current patches.