Game ridiculously slow

[cindichaos]

Hello,

I was playing just fine in the Daughter of Isis sandbox for many, many hours. Once I finished off all the locales on the world map and was maybe 30% into my final pyramid (Grand Pyramid), the game slowed down ridiculously. The walker would maybe move a tiny bit every few seconds and and attempts to interact with the interface took forever. I tried installing the older drivers recommended for CoTN but during the install it said there was some problem with Microsoft Logo testing and the install messed up my system. So I am back on the drivers released yesterday. I also have the latest CoTN patch. Any recommendations?

Thanks for any advice.

[Keith]

I'm not sure what problem you had installing the older drivers. Did you uninstall your previous drivers before attempting to install the older ones? Did they finally officially release 71.84? The last time I checked on it it was still a beta release.

You system should be fast enough to run the game fine. The problem may be in your city itself while playing the game.

Are there a large number of people or characters stuck on the map somewhere?

This will often bog down the system if this problem occurs.

Other than that, what else do you have runnig the background? I see you have hyperthreading enabled so you should be able to run the game and a some other things at the same time unless that other item is eating up all your CPU clock cycles.

[cindichaos]

Thanks for the quick reply. I did uninstall the other driver first. The new one was released March 11, 2005 - it's not marked as beta.

I cannot tell if I have lots of characters stuck because I can't move around the map anymore but yes there are a lot of people. I can't give you specifics because the interface isn't responding either. Is there a limit on the number of walkers?

I turned off everything else that is usually running, lowered the resolution and graphics options in the game to see if that would help but it did not. I was almost done with the map anyways - just wanted to see the final pyramid but I guess I can just live without it.

[Keith]

Since this is a sandbox mission and you say there are a lot of people in your city I guess you may have reached the operational limit of your system.

If the game is lagging badly, you may be able to move about the map my putting it on pause before you do so.

[cindichaos]

Thanks again. My husband was able to load the game on his system. IT's still really slow but he's getting a slightly better response. Under the tab that lists how many of each type of citizen you have, I have 447 assigned to all the categories. That doesn't seem excessive so maybe I just need more RAM.

[MAX-1]

~Turn off any background programs running.
~ Max out swap file.

[Amenirdis]

And defrag your harddisk before playing. I always have to do that to improve performance a bit before playing The Sims2.

[cindichaos]

Thanks Max-1 and Amenirdis! I have done all of those things and it helps just a little but it's still not really playable. I think Keith is right and I have just maxed out my system.

[MAX-1]

Oooooh, here's a tidbit for easier play.

Get rid of any decoritive sprites that are placed into the map. Ya know, trees, swamp plants, bushes, etc. For some reason this helps.

Turn down resolutions and limit sounds also helps the CPU process smother and faster.

[Amenirdis]

and limit sounds also helps the CPU process smother and faster.
Definitely, yes! I had to lower the amount of sounds myself otherwise it lagged just too much for me. And I turned off the shadows.
I haven't played Daughters of Isis yet, but maybe it's just too big a scenario to run for your computer, cindichaos, even though you seem to have a great machine. Mine's by far 'weaker'... I wonder if I can play that scenario at all... :(

[RomeoInc]

I find that as my city gets bigger the game seems to slow. Obviously its jus cos ur comps got more work to do. (im not too good at the tekkie stuff! :D )

This is a little solution i had that worked on my pc. I quit the game and restart my pc then re launch the game. This seemed to speed the back up to the normal speed.

Also, before i did restart i did turn all the sounds and graphics down to "Best Perfomance" and this didnt seem to make much difference at all for some reason. May jus be my pc i dunno. :confused:

[Nellie]

I find that placing Pyramids really hits the system performance, up until then it runs fine.

On the plus side it is justification for slapping a new CPU and some more memory in the system (sad when a city builder rather than CS:S is your justification for an upgrade, especially when CS:S runs fine :D)