Yet another Civ4 Vista/nVidia/lag problem

[ikonoklast7]

Hello all!

I was devoted Civ2 play back in the day and always loved the awesome scenarios people contributed to this site.

Never really dug Civ3 all that much...but when I saw the complete Civ4 package on sale at Steam, I bit. And I love it! Except for the stupid lag issues that seem so common!

Seeing how this game came out in 2005 and my laptop was brand-new in late 2008-early 2009, I never would've thought I'd have such trouble getting this game to run smooth.

For the sake of argument, I'll just focus on Civ4 vanilla.

I've read numerous posts here and elsewhere, tried lowering all the settings, tried switching between full-screen and windowed, updated all my nVidia drivers, updated Windows...since it's through Steam and says no updates are available, I'm guessing Civ4 and the expansions are up-to-date as well..........no avail.

But I've only seen one or so other people post my specific problem: the game starts up fine, but after only a few turns, once there's a few units moving around and the map is a little expanded, the lag starts, regardless of map size. It's never bad enough to stop the game or leave it hanging for ages....just slow, choppy, and laggy enough to be extremely irritating and detract from the fun.

So here's a dump of all my computer info...

HP Pavilion dv6810us laptop
Vista SP2
AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 (2.0 GHz)
2GB RAM
Installed and ran via Steam (so no CD)

Video Card:
Chip Type: NVidia GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Adapter String: NVidia GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M
BIOS Info: Version 5.67.32.16.17
Driver Version: 7.15.11.7713

Total Available Graphics Memory: 1071 MB
Dedicated Video Memory: 64 MB
System Video Memory: 0 MB
Shared System Memory: 1007 MB


So is there anything I can do to tweak the NVidia card? Or am I just screwed and need to go upgrade my card before Civ4 will run smooth?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ikonoklast7]

Here's some more info...

I went to cyri.systemrequirementslab.com to see what it said, and here were my results....passed everything. (I was wrong about some of my specs, I have more memory than I originally thought)

CPU
Recommended: Pentium 4/Athlon XP or better
You Have: AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60
PASS

CPU Speed
Recommended: 1.8 GHz
You Have: 2.60 GHz Performance Rated at: 4.16 GHz
PASS

RAM
Recommended: 512 MB
You Have: 2.9 GB
PASS

OS
Recommended: Windows 2000/XP
You Have: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, 32-bit (Build Service Pack 26002)
PASS

Video Card
Recommended: 128MB 3D 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible video card with Hardware T&L and Pixel Shader 2.0 (NVIDIA GeForce 6000 series +)
You Have: GeForce 7150M " nForce 630M
PASS
Features: Recommended attributes of your Video Card
Required You Have
Video RAM 128 MB 1.0 GB
3D Yes Yes
Hardware T&L Yes Yes
Pixel Shader version 2.0 3.0
Vertex Shader version 2.0 3.0


DirectX version
Recommended: DirectX 9.0c (included with product)
You Have: 10.0
PASS

Sound Card
Recommended: Yes
You Have: Bluetooth Hands-free Audio
PASS

Free Disk Space
Recommended: 5.5 GB
You Have: 29.9 GB
PASS

CD-ROM
Recommended: 4X Speed CD/DVD-ROM
You Have: TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-L632N ATA Device
PASS





Additionally, here's the "About This Build" info from vanilla Civ4

Civ Version: 174
Save Version: 103
Build Version: 1.7.4.0
Build Date: Wed May 16 2007
Build: FINAL RELEASE
Mod Name: None

Clicking "Check for Updates" says I'm good.




And attached is the data from running dxdiag

 

[ori]

Welcome to CFC

what version is Beyond the Sword patched to (what version is stated in the about this build screen) - did you update your graphics driver? is the game running with admin rights?

 

[ikonoklast7]

Welcome to CFC

what version is Beyond the Sword patched to (what version is stated in the about this build screen) - did you update your graphics driver? is the game running with admin rights?

Thank you for the response!

I did update my driver to the latest available on HP's website (my NVidia card is apparently one of those exclusive ones just for HP, because NVidia won't give me the drivers for it, their site tells me I have to get them from HP).

I will try running it in admin mode and see if that's makes a difference and also come back with the BtS version number (at work right now, but will do when I get home).



One question though...I'm not sure how different it is downloading and playing through Steam vs. the CD version. Steam gives me four different programs: vanilla Civ4, just Warlords, just BtS, and just Colonization. With the CD is it possible to play Civ4 with the changes/additions of both Warlords and BtS going on simultaneously or are they all seperate in the CD version like with Steam?

 

[ori]

they are all separate - however Warlords and BtS each require Civ4 to be present and BtS includes all the Warlords content (with some tweaks and except the scenarios that come with Warlords) so you can play everything combined by playing BtS.

 

[ikonoklast7]

OK, I tried running it in admin mode. Seemed a little bit better, but still got laggy and slow once there were more than three or four units on the same screen or the map was opened up. Seems like my NVidia card has a problem rendering multiple animated characters.

Here's the build info from my BtS
Civ Version: 319
Save Version: 302
Build Version: 3.1.9.0 (128100)
Build Date: Thu May 14 2009
Build: FINAL RELEASE
Mod Name: None



I read somewhere about HP laptops from around the time I bought mine having problems with faulty NVidia cards. Maybe that's the issue, but seems strange that I've never noticed any problems with it before. Although, Civ4 is probably the most graphic-intensive thing I've ever run on this laptop.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Hi ikonoklast7.

My laptop has the exact same processor as yours does, it runs Vista 32 (SP2), and it purrs while playing Civ at max settings. It is, however, not an HP.

There is no reason that I can think of why Civ won't run just fine for you, EXCEPT for the (crummy) graphics card. If you can replace it, it might be a good idea to replace it with one with more graphics memory and more shaders. Make sure the card is Vista compatible.

You might be right about your HP having some issues with bad graphics cards. My old HP laptop had so many problems (that I got tired of fixing... ), I dropped it off of the roof of the hospital I work at. Kind of a David Letterman thing...

It sure made a good splat.

 

[ikonoklast7]

Today, I just upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Unfortunately, exact same problem, so I'm guessing my issue is the NVidia card.

I don't know a lot about graphics cards. It says my NVidia is integrated into the motherboard, does that still make it possible to buy a newer one and have the old one replaced?

 

[ikonoklast7]

OK, new developments...



I upgraded last week to Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Interestingly, HP didn't have drivers for my NVidia card for Windows 7 (trying the older Vista drivers just gave me a "wrong OS" error), but going into the Device Manager and telling it to look for new drivers was successful and it recognized it as the right Nvidia card/chipset.

So with these new drivers, I tried again, running vanilla Civ4 as an administrator and with the all graphics options turned down all the way to "Low." To test out, I tried playing it in single player and with the packaged American Revolution scenario.

This is a good size map with lots of revealed cities and lots of units...and it actually worked really well! I played it for about 20 or so minutes...the lag suddenly started while I was in the city view and fooling around with production squares.

I saved the game and didn't pick it up until today. I loaded from my save point and played out the rest of the scenario until the end and it never once started lagging on me!

Hmmm...maybe there's hope yet!

Also of note, both with Vista and Win7, anytime I minimize Civ4 and fool around with Windows, the OS is fast and smooth as ever, so that led me to believe it wasn't a RAM problem, but likely an NVidia problem.

Is it possible there might be a "memory leak" that could be sucking up the NVidia GPU's memory after several minutes of play?

Thanks for all the advice so far, guys. I'll keep playing and fooling around and see what other results I get.

 

[madrading]

I had the same issue on vista and finally managed to fix it by updating my drivers. Presently I have windows 7 and the problem has returned. After fiddling with various settings I ended up downloading the nvidia system monitor. It turns out that as the gpu reaches a temperature of 90 C the clock switches to 100 MHz. If you alt+tab to the desktop and let the processor cool to below 80 C the game will resume at the regular fps. I am not sure how, but in vista this did not occur, albeit the gpu was running at around 96 C... I was able to play at 1440x960 with AA 2 and high detail.
I'm using an HP dv2845se, 4gb ram and a Geforce 7150M.
If anyone has a solution that would force the gpu to stay at 425 MHz regardless of the temperature please let me know. Tweaking the nvidia control panel does not accomplish this as the os seems to override those settings.
Any other solutions would also be welcome