Why is this game such a drain?!

[Chee]

I just don't understand it, it shouldn't be so demanding on the system resources looking at it!

I can run games like Just Cause 2 flawlessly but CiV is jerky as hell, especially if you try to scroll whilst the game is processing a turn.

My specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.0ghz
Ram: 4GB ddr2
Video card: Sapphire HD5670 512mg ram

I should be able to run a game like this on max settings but I have to stick to medium to get it playing smoothly.

Is this something that can be patched?

 

[TPQ]

The game is in need of some serious optimization. Hopefully this will happen with patches soon. In the mean time, update your drivers, try de-fragging your HDD/s, close unnecessary background processes, set the civ5 exe to "AboveNormal" or "High" priority and run a few reg cleaners and then de-frag your reg. Some of this might help as, as you say, you should be able to play the game maxed out with your hardware. I suspect there isn't much any of us can do until the game gets patched to run properly...

 

[Chee]

My drivers are completely up to date as I only just installed the card and got them directly from ATI. I have tried defragging my HD and always run with nothing else in the background. I also regularly use a registry cleaner.

How do I set the .exe file to a higher priority?

 

[PieceOfMind]

I think the game is mainly getting bottlenecked by CPUs. It sucks that the game fps drops to near 0 during the inter-turn processing, but it should be ok when the cpu isn't under load during your turn.

Keep in mind that it's very rare for other games (e.g. probably Just Cause 2) to get anywhere near to full CPU utilisation. Most games by design are graphics-hungry more than they are CPU-hungry, so you have to expect they run more smoothly. More niche games like complex turn based or real time strategy games tend to demand more of CPUs due to the AI processes.

 

[Zelig]

Processor: AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.0ghz
Ram: 4GB ddr2
Video card: Sapphire HD5670 512mg ram

These aren't really high-end specs...

The processor is three years old, and is outperformed by a $43 processor (Athlon X2 7850 BE).

The video card is about on par with the Geforce 8 series, which was released four years ago and retails around $80.

I don't think it's fair to expect new games to run on maximum settings on hardware like that... that would make faster hardware pretty pointless.

 

[tokala]

If only it would be running significantly faster on better hardware

And I believe the OP was referring to the mismatch between the quality of the graphics and the hardware level required to display it with an acceptable framerate

 

[Zelig]

If only it would be running significantly faster on better hardware

Well, faster hardware makes a huge difference to the frame rate, I'm guessing he can get around 20fps with that hardware, while high-end hardware will get 60fps solid.

But yeah, pathfinding and turn times seem to be buggered on pretty much any processor...

 

[sbq]

I think the game is mainly getting bottlenecked by CPUs. It sucks that the game fps drops to near 0 during the inter-turn processing, but it should be ok when the cpu isn't under load during your turn.

I'm running an i7 965 Extreme overclocked to 4GHz, with liquid cooling. I've set up perfmon to monitor the overall CPU usage as well as the civ process itself, it's averaging about 23% usage using all 4 cores, with only one of the cores going to 100%. Even with my system (I'm also running a 4870 x2 and 6GB of DDR3 fast RAM on a 64 bit version of Vista) I'm still seeing low fps, even at the start of a game. Funny thing is, right after installing for the first time and playing a long game I was getting really good FPS, but as time goes on the performance gets worse, especially after getting patched (.17 and .20 patches).

I also didn't have the save game bug in that first game, even at year 1965 when I was using GDR's to stomp the remaining civ's my save was 350KB in size.

 

[Chee]

I never claimed to have high end specs. But they certainly should be good enough to be able to play an average looking TBS smoothly on a decent setting!

I can play Starcraft II on my machine maxed out and it runs perfectly, depsite being a much better looking game.

 

[PieceOfMind]

From what I've heard, Blizzard have an above-average ability in producing video games that work smoothly on older hardware. It is part of the reason for the success of WoW.

 

[Zelig]

From what I've heard, Blizzard have an above-average ability in producing video games that work smoothly on older hardware. It is part of the reason for the success of WoW.

Well, WoW came out a year before Civ4.

 

[Esorp]

Civ V refuses to use more than one core on my computer. I'm using an e8500, and it is set to use both cores, but won't. Anyone else having this problem?

 

[tokala]

Most people have, at least temporarily

For me it works most of the time on two cores, but accasonally it gets stuck on one core, can also happen after alt-tabbing. Restarting Civ5 ususlly fixes this, might take a few attempts though.

The AI turn calculations run always primarily on one core, don't think anything can be done about that

 

[VimesUK]

Civ V refuses to use more than one core on my computer. I'm using an e8500, and it is set to use both cores, but won't. Anyone else having this problem?

My E8500 running @ 4Ghz seems to have both cores working when running Civ V....

 

[Huncowboy]

I don't have a tip of the iceberg system but it is a recently built Phenom II X4 955 black 3.2 which is not slow. But I guess the guy above has the same problem with a Core system. AI turns are up to 1 min 20 sec on a max sized map and I am not even near the end of the game. It feels like playing chess via email. It is bad.

I only have 4g DDR3 and a 275 card. Graphics wise I can easily max the game with my mid level card. It is definitely the CPU. They need to bring down AI turns to like 10-20 sec per turn range.

 

[tokala]

Morgan_UK, that load profile shows exactly what we are talking about
Your CPU load is ~65% during your turns, and <50% during the AI turns.

 

[VimesUK]

@tokula - I see

When you posted above mine and write "The AI turn calculations run always primarily on one core, don't think anything can be done about that" does that mean when I see the load split across the two cores you mean that the split is in effect only equivalent to one core running at 100%..?

The long dip on the posted graph is where I was looking at the diplomatic overview screen and other overview information - as sparse as it is.

I ran the game in a window along with the task manager up and running and I often saw when I pressed the "next turn" button both cores going up to 80%+.

You can read these findings here about running on a multi-core CPU...

http://www.techspot.com/review/320-civilization-v-performance/page10.html

Playing this game, in terms of its hardware demands, reminds me of Playing Empire or Napoleon Total War. When I do play NTW I find that the fan on my GPU is running very fast only on the campaign map, when running on the battle map it is much quieter. With Civ V my GPU fan is often running fast.

EDIT: On the STD sized Continent type map that I'm playing I do find that the waiting for the game to calculate its turn is getting longer as I'm in the medieval / renaissance period. Goodness knows how long the turns will take on the larger maps with more Civs and / or much later in the game. That is one reason why I restarted my latest game from using a large map to a STD one. I'm not sure how much optimising could be done to improve that with patching but with a E8500 running at 4Ghz I didn't expect it to be slowed down as much as it is.

 

[tokala]

When you posted above mine and write "The AI turn calculations run always primarily on one core, don't think anything can be done about that" does that mean when I see the load split across the two cores you mean that the split is in effect only equivalent to one core running at 100%..?

Exactly. Two cores hovering around 50% each means that there is sufficient work for one core, but it gets shifted around way faster than the task manager is updating itself, so it displays the load averaged over something like a second.

And the comparison with the Total War games is valid, as it is roughly the same situation. On the battle map the CPU is doing graphics and real time tactics, stuff that can be reasonably well parallelized. Civ during your turn is pretty much only graphics. Total War or Civ AI turns need to sequentially calculate the moves for each faction, which apparently limits the degree of effective parallelization possible.