Civilization IV

Barker

New Member
In CivIV (Only the Demo) My System lags, even though I meet the system requirements by a long shot. (see specs below, only thing different is the ram is currently only 512MB... Long story; ESD sucks.) Any Ideas why it would be lagging so badly?
 
Upgrade your graphics card and you should be fine. That's a pretty outdated card, and even when it was new, it was fairly low-end. Shouldn't have to invest too much in it, but it should solve your problems. Do you have AGP or PCI-Express for that computer? (I'm thinking about a $50 card should do the trick, maybe $75...)
 
It shouldn't matter. The graphics card is 256MB and the requirement is 64MB. It's really above it, correct? (I just bought this card, and can't afford another at the moment.. nor can I really afford a high-end one at all)
 
Well, the amount of RAM on board is nice, but that has a lot less to do with it than the graphics chip itself. (and some other factors as well...) And those are bare minimum specs for it to run, much less run properly. Heck XP had 128 MB of system RAM listed as the recommended, which was waaaay too low.

What speed is your processor? Yours is probably fine, it's more than likely an issue with the graphics card. Turn down/off a lot of the animations in battle, and a lot of the detail, and you should be ok. Not great, but ok. And when the time comes that you have the money for a new card, I'd go with something like this at minimum:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121336

Just so you know what you're looking at/dealing with. Consult here before you buy though, there are a lot of brands to stay away from...
 
=) Point taken. My Processor is 2.8GHz, And tends to stay around that area when running. How's PNY In the way of a graphics card? By the way: No PCI-E Slot on my PC. 3x PCI 1xAGP
 
Yeah, your processor and RAM are plenty good enough. Here's some good options, maybe a little higher than you were hoping for, but anything else just isn't worth spending the money on to replace the one you have...:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150433
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143069

Do you have a DVI monitor, or just a 15-pin D-Sub? If you don't have the DVI, you'll want to go with the second one; if you do, I'd go with the first one. The more RAM on board isn't a huge deal, but the first one is DirectX 10 compatible, which will be nice if you ever wanted to put Windows 7 on there...

If you can't afford either of those, I'd just stick it out with what you have until you can replace it since, like I said before, it just wouldn't be worth spending the money on any other "upgrade" for anything less...
 
Yeah, your processor and RAM are plenty good enough. Here's some good options, maybe a little higher than you were hoping for, but anything else just isn't worth spending the money on to replace the one you have...:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150433
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143069

Do you have a DVI monitor, or just a 15-pin D-Sub? If you don't have the DVI, you'll want to go with the second one; if you do, I'd go with the first one. The more RAM on board isn't a huge deal, but the first one is DirectX 10 compatible, which will be nice if you ever wanted to put Windows 7 on there...

If you can't afford either of those, I'd just stick it out with what you have until you can replace it since, like I said before, it just wouldn't be worth spending the money on any other "upgrade" for anything less...

Thanks for all your help :) I really appreciate you taking the time. I wasn't even aware that people actually used DVI. :eek: I'll get the second one as soon as I get my job back :rolleyes: lol
 
does anyone else get extremely agitated by this game :D i'm often left scratching my head at how my strong units get killed by FAR inferior units..
 
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