Hitting that glass ceiling?!

[ogreballerina]

Have I hit the max my rig can take?

I've got to the point where I'm getting major skipping! Even on low ..
It's like one harvest everythings fine and then the next spring wham! My guys are strobbing!
And I'm not referring to that slight pause that happpens every planting and harvest!
Even with my view angle on 200 peeps, as they ( farmers) leave the fields my rig barely flickered..now it's skip skip skip

I have 500 homes so even at 2 per that's only a thousand peeps!

So ...do you think I've reached the limit?

Is it my card showing her age?
I can play games like FEAR,DOOM etc and they look and play really good!

Is CoTN that much of a hog?

I even got a drop to reboot..not blue screen of death..A total reboot!! and recovery from serious incident report!

[mouse]

A couple of possible things come to mind. 1. possibly overheating of either the video card or cpu (open the case check that all fans are running and look for dust). Dust bunnies will cause some very strange behavior use compressed air and short puffs to blow dust out of system make sure to hold all fans blades still to keep from ruining the fans.
2. power supply might be getting weak or starting to fail.

[Keith]

Sounds like you may have reached the resource limit of your system.

Your setup is very similar to mine, you have Dimension 8200, I have a Dimension XPS. You have a Radeon 9800XT, I have a Radeon 9800 Pro. We both have 1GB of RAM.

Your SB Live! card is a bit old and the drivers could probably stand updating (yours are dated 2002.)

I have a similar city on my system where the game really bogs down and everything runs in slow motion because I pushed the limit on how big to make the city. You can see it in some of the saves I posted in the "11 Overseers and no one works" thread.

The other games you listed are "oranges" to CotN's "apples". Entirely different game engines and resources required. CotN has much more to keep track of and update than a simple FPS game.

[ogreballerina]

Naw! That's not it...I run a cracked case and am very mindful of dust. I even own a 1/10 HP compressor for exactly that reason.
My rig is very cool..and the video card runs at 60c ( It's a 9800 xt pro which always run a little warm)
Besides I can still run Far Cry, FEAR etc at a brisk rate without a hitch. ( I just checked!)

I also could not restart the save game...said it was invalid,

When I got that crash / reboot the game was stuttering bad..the game was running fine and then skip skip...reboot.

The game ( I loaded a save that was only a season behind) and it runs...but frame rate is plunging with each noble/farmer/whatever.

I had this happen before ...I bought the game about 6 months ago and had also found a limit for city size..... it gets so big and then major lag and slow down.
So I waited to play till I upgraded from a 2.4 to a 3.06 and was hoping to get a bigger city done.


Guess I''ll have to wait until I get my AMD ( I'm saving to build my own...6 more months!...suks!) to really enjoy this game.

So I'm topping out at 1200+ peeps...on low settings


I defrag and scan disc everyday..latest drivers...reinstall windoews every year etc..blah blah..I take care of my baby.


Oh well...later!

[ogreballerina]

Keith...thanks thats the answer I was looking for.
Since I deleted that invalid save and resumed play it's like you said major slowdowns and pauses.

Yeah my sound card is really old...I'm going to have to get a new one for Oblivion.
My sound drivers are up to date..its just not showing up ( I did it 2 months ago..I'll probably have to delete and reinstall them( sound drivers)...thanks for telling me..didn't even notice it read that)

It's like my BIOS which only reads my bus speed as 133 and not 533.

I wish they would print the truth on requirements...

Is Rome going to be also a major rig pig?!!!

I'm sure AI pathing for 1200 + peeps is a major resource cruncher...

I sure hope Rome runs better, I'd hate to miss out on 2 great games!
I didn't even finish my great pyramid!

No...I'm not starting over...I'll wait for my killer rig ( I hate playing games half @ss)


Oh well...Peace

See you in Rome!

[Keith]

It seems that under some circumstances the game will crash while trying to autosave. I've even had a few of those. I just played through the grand campaign three times, once via the easy cities, then again via the moderate cities, and again via the hard cities. During that time my game crashed to the desktop several times without warning, but restarting from a save let me continue on.

One problem could be stuck merchants visiting your city bogging down the game. Look around and see if you can spot some.

The requirements for Caesar IV haven't been settled or published as yet, but they have been suggesting at least a P3 processor with speeds around 2Ghz or better.

[ogreballerina]

WOW!
I went through older posts and have seen I'm not the only one who has had problems ( with similiar rigs) even the crash and reboot thingee.

One thing I did notiice was the lag versus map size..and I was playing Son of Ra ( very large map) and if I remember I got further last time I played ( when I had a 2.4) but I was playing Waset ( medium map)
You need a Cray ( supercomputer) to really play this game.

I really hope Rome is better optimizied!


And I did see a trader and his donkeys stuck in a rut for 2 years!

How did they ever release this?

My city was cool...I had almost 400 prestige..pyramids.....blah blah

[ogreballerina]

I checked and those are the latest drivers for my sound card...using autoupdate at Creative.

I am now going to reinstall my Extigy ( its a external sound card) and it is 24 bit compared to 16 internal.( also has full EAX)

Even turning off sound ( with my 16 bit sound card) made no difference in performance..

I'm thinking it had to do with mainly with the map size ( I've read that it is a common problem especially on very large maps)

And the final tally was 1432 peeps ( I counted)

Oh well...

Nile on!