why paging and laggy?

[kingkano]

I have the same problem as many others with laggy games at differing points depending on the map/number of civs etc..... I found that by alt-tabbing out and back in it worked for a while then became laggy again later, with the frequency of alt-tabbing having to increase until it was unbearable....

I decided to increase my ram to 2 gig thinking that'd help. it has somewhat but not completely. Now I have noticed something.... Civ is using 500mb of memory only, yet its paging.... and I have over a gig free physical memory when its doing it.... what gives?? Is the paging related to the choppiness of the game??

What can I do about it??

pc is athlon 64 3200+ at 2.5ghz, 2 gig of pc4000 memory, sata 200gig HD. Page file is set at min500mb upto 2gig max I think. When I play civ it seems to put the pg file upto 1gig strangely.... like the whole thing is paged out!!

cheers in advance.

 

[Neon Deon]

Patch 1.52 addresses memory issues in the game have you updated to patch 1.52?

 

[kingkano]

Patch 1.52 addresses memory issues in the game have you updated to patch 1.52?

yes - did so today. I am using a massive map I have to say (the realism 18 civs map) but still.... game was only using 500mb and it was paging to my swapfile?? Maybe this isnt the cause of the problem, but I upgraded the ram for this specific reason!!! lol....

Actually it does seem any kinda video causes this - so probably there is a fix already is there?? Ie building a wonder, a religion, or most annoyingly diplomacy video thingy...

cheers in advance

 

[Neon Deon]

Well yuck.

Please post a dxdiag.

 

[kingkano]

here ya go. enjoy

 

[Neon Deon]

Ok is that a diag report of your machine running at idle?

The game aint running in the background is it?

If so, close it and post a new diag.

 

[kingkano]

whoops sorry my bad.

This is now with all programs closed except 2 IE windows.

 

[Neon Deon]

Ok since you have no crashes I would suggest running game by itself with nothing to interfere with it.

Start/run

Type in: msconfig

Under start tab disable all

Under services tab: check the box marked hide all MS services(make sure you have that box checked first or bad things could happen). After you have verified you have hidden MS services disable all apply and reboot.

See if that helps first.

 

[kingkano]

I'll certainly give that a try... it is undoable right??

I still do want to know why it pages and if I can stop it, esp since I usually have around 1 gig of free physical ram at the time!

 

[Neon Deon]

Yes you can turn it back at anytime.

I have a registry tweak that might help but making a mistake with the registry could be fatal which could mean re-install the whole OS thingy.

 

[kingkano]

isnt the registry covered with xp's system restore?? I can always set a restore point before hand...

 

[Neon Deon]

Restore is ify at best.

If it goes FUBAR you have to restart and press f8 while starting.

it will then give you an option to restore to last known good configuration.

If you miss it and it starts up again then you have to rely on restore assuming it will even let you start in safe mode.

Have I scared you yet.)


Anyways here is how you would do it

Type in regedit in the run box

Find it under

'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Sessi

onManager/MemoryManagement/



Change Disable paging executive from 0 to 1

Highlight right click on it and select modify to

change the value.

PS

Still run the game with nothing in the background please

 

[kingkano]

ahhh cheers. yes that has reduced windows pg file usage by around 150mb. its funny coz when idle with my usual start programs up there is like 1.6gig of ram left lol.

Something I did notice just recently when I alt tabbed out. Civ process was reduced to below normal priority. Was this just because I was alt-tabbed out?? Or does it always run at this??

might look round for some more pg file/memory tweaks too. 2 gig seems to be wasted on windows alot Oh must try shutting down lots or processes and trying civ... thanks.

 

[Neon Deon]

ahhh cheers. yes that has reduced windows pg file usage by around 150mb. its funny coz when idle with my usual start programs up there is like 1.6gig of ram left lol.

Something I did notice just recently when I alt tabbed out. Civ process was reduced to below normal priority. Was this just because I was alt-tabbed out?? Or does it always run at this??

might look round for some more pg file/memory tweaks too. 2 gig seems to be wasted on windows alot Oh must try shutting down lots or processes and trying civ... thanks.

Here is a registry tweak file.

Just dont go barebones on me

look for my post the attachment is there on post 18.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=150665

yes priority is set by program to below normal.

You could try putting it to above normal but if you do the registry tweak thing it wont do much anyways.

 

[kingkano]

haha wow look at that lot. cool will have a proper read later. but I wulda thought surely with 2gig of ram I dont need to worry about disabling services etc???

My problem above btw doesnt come and go. once it comes it stays and stutters until I alt-tab out and back in. Then its gone until the next movie/event that causes it

Is there anything in the civ ini file maybe that forces it to use physical memory?? I am almost tempted to even disable my pagefile and see if that stops the problem!! since I installed the 2nd gig I have never used it all, even using photoshop or large maps on civ.... hmmm...

 

[Neon Deon]

haha wow look at that lot. cool will have a proper read later. but I wulda thought surely with 2gig of ram I dont need to worry about disabling services etc???

My problem above btw doesnt come and go. once it comes it stays and stutters until I alt-tab out and back in. Then its gone until the next movie/event that causes it

Is there anything in the civ ini file maybe that forces it to use physical memory?? I am almost tempted to even disable my pagefile and see if that stops the problem!! since I installed the 2nd gig I have never used it all, even using photoshop or large maps on civ.... hmmm...

Well thats just FUBAR!

You have 256MB of video memory I would adjust my appeture size to the same as the ram at 256.

 

[Briareos]

Something I did notice just recently when I alt tabbed out. Civ process was reduced to below normal priority. Was this just because I was alt-tabbed out?? Or does it always run at this??

Civ IV adjusts it's priority down when it loses focus and sets it back to normal when it gets focus again.

Connect a second monitor to your PC, run Process Explorer in it and watch the "Process Priority" column.

np: Klimek - Gymnopedie #1 (Pop Ambient 2006)

 

[kingkano]

yep I did read that in another topic so thats explained. the paging isnt