Win 7 beta+ BtS= Graphics Issues

[jlindy]

I managed to get Civ4 & BtS installed without problems, but I'm having a few issues running the game sometimes the screen goes like this after a few minutes of play:

This carries over to windows when I leave the game a restart clears the problem.Sometimes the game will minimize to the tray, the disk will thrash for a few minutes. When the disk is done thrashing I can maximize it and all is well. I've also had it blue screen with a stuttering sound coming from the speakers. And last but not least the game will run just fine for as long as I want to play.
Dxdiag shows no problems. My system is a homebuilt AMD64 x2 5200+, 4gig ram, Nvidia 8600 graphics card w/512mb memory. I'm currently running the game in Windows 7 beta 64. DirectX is the latest greatest.
Civ4 is patched to 1.61 BtS is patched to 3.13.

 

[ori]

try the 3.17 patch if possible - and are you sure about civ4? the bts installer does patch to 1.74 automatically...

 

[jlindy]

Yea, my bad BtS is patched to 3.17. When I was trying to install the games patching Civ 4 to 1.74 before installing BtS would cause BtS to not run. Patching it to 1.61 then letting BtS patch it 1.74 worked just fine (exept for the graphics glitches).

 

[ori]

did you play around with the graphics settings in the civilizationIV.ini?
the memsaver and all those with bik/bink in their name come to mind

 

[jlindy]

No everything in the Civ4 .ini is at it's default value...

 

[ori]

try changing the following lines - I would recommend one at a time - or all and if it works try to go back on one at a time:

; Dont show the game background during movies - may speed up movie playing
HideMovieBackground = 0

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

; Use managed interface textures (may be safer but shouldn't be needed, uses more memory)
GUIManagedTextures = 0

; Disable PAK memory mapping (May affect performance)
DisablePAKMemoryMapping = 0

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 1

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 1

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 0

set those from 0 to 1 and vice versa - I show the default settings.

you could also force a specific max frame rate if you want - but that might screw things up more:

; Set max frame rate clamp (0 means none)
SetMaxFrameRate = 0

 

[jlindy]

Okay I'll give it a go and see what happens...