Civilization 4

[TungstenE2]

Hey all,
Been fighting with this one for a bit now trying to get it to run smoothly. It bogs reeeeally bad even at start-up when the Firaxis Game symbol comes up.
I have an Asus P4V533-MX Mother board, with 512 MB Ram, 2.4GHz Celeron Processor, A-bit Radeon 9200SE-DT Graphics Card (128 MB), Soundblaster Live Sound Card, 80GB Hard Drive, running Win2000. The system requirements on the box state:

Recommended Requirements:
1.8 GHz processor- check
512 MB RAM- check
128MB Video Card/ DirectX 8 support (pixel and vertex shaders)- check
DirectX7 compatible sound card- check
CD-ROM Drive- check
1.7 GB of free hard drive space- check
DirectX9.0c (included)- check

Minimum Requirements:
1.2 GHz Processor
256MB RAM
CD-ROM Drive
64MB Video Card
DirectX7 compatible sound card
1.7GB of free hard drive space
DirectX9.0c (included)

As far as I can tell I have everything needed to run this game smoothly but even on the low graphics settings and tiny world, it lags tremendously. I've downloaded all the patches from Civ 4 website and updated all my drivers (even went as far as formatting my hard drive to clean that up too). I called the support number on the box and they said it should work....duh. Then said they'd have it "looked at" and get back to me.....week's gone by, nothing.
Any help or suggestions would be fantastic and thank you for taking the time to read this novel!! lol

[liam858]

Hi and Welcome to Virtual Dr.

Although that graphics card is under par, it should at least run at low spec, so i would check system resources, assuming you're running XP check the processes tab, and watch for fluctuations in memory usage, also check Start|Run|msconfig and the Startup tab, untick anything that isn't needed from windows startup.

Do you have anything running in the background when in-game? And have the latest catalyst drivers?

Liam

[TungstenE2]

Thanks for the quick reply
I've got the catalyst drivers, and the only thing running at game time is my soundcard.
I'm running Windows 2000, tried msconfig and got an error message saying it couldn't find the file. What graphic card should i be getting?

[liam858]

Well, i'm not sure what card you would need for that game, but your current card would only just scrape in i think, i would recommend a switch to Nvidia is your wallet can handle it, a nice mid-level card such as a 6600GT would be good for that game and a few more, and the last time i checked it was around £95.


Liam

[TungstenE2]

Right on, thanks Liam, I'll let you know how it works out

[photolady]

Windows 2000 doesn't have msconfig built in. You need a download before you can use msconfig in that windows.