Alas, I most likely have to save up for a new computer to play Beta 5 and on. The game literally CRAWLS now for me. I tried playing yesterday and I had to stop it was so bad. Beta 4 and before ran pretty okay but now early game turns (like under 10 turns) take like 3 minutes to process and when I rotate the camera (at all) or zoom in or out (at all) it can take up to two minutes before I can do anything and sometime this can happen in segments right after one another.
I used msconfig and did a clean boot, adjusted the computer's visuals for better performance and cut the anti-aliasing to none but nothing works. I even tried playing on a medium map (whereas I could play the largest Beta 4 map before).
I know the solution is to get more memory but in truth do I want to sink money for ram into this computer or should I just save up for a new computer entirely. This machine was cutting edge when I first got it and it has lasted me nearly a decade but I think time has finally caught up with it.
I copied some info from dxdiag... My operating system is Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.150202-1526), motherboard is Gigabyte P35-DS3R, Processoris Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.7GHz, Memory is 4094MB RAM (Available OS Memory: 4094MB RAM), Page Fileis 2553MB used, 9085MB available, DirectX Version: DirectX 11, Video Card is AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series with (Display Memory: 2806 MB/Dedicated Memory: 1015 MB/Shared Memory: 1791 MB) and Sound Card is Creative SB X-Fi Music.
How cheap would memory be for this older setup?
Also my Main Hard disk is 881 GB and I only have 49 GB free - could this be the culprit?
I wanna play Beta 5 so badly any advice would be VERY much appreciated!
What size map are you playing on and how many species? I think the culprit is your memory. The game was kind of slow for me and I have 6 gigs of ram. I haven't had a chance to try beta 5.
AuraBoy,
I've also noticed beta 5 crawling for me, however using 20 AI players and all minor races, this could be how it handles the AI or the other races moves at this point, most turns for me have been taking 20-30 seconds after I finish my turn for my next turn to start.
I haven't played though with few AI players, hopefully they are still working on speeding this up as of right now this would make a 100 player game take forever and not because of your game play but just waiting for the AI players to go.
I'm sitting right now on the insane map with that number of players using around 8 gb of memory (16 available) however, it's gradually increasing as the turns go by, and I'm only at turn 50 right now.
Hopefully they get the memory reduced further and speed up the turn process
As far as OP i believe it is the 4gb of ram and the fact that system due to its age is just going to be all around bottlenecked compared to newer systems.
Beta 4 was slow and crappy until the latest updates which made it run great. Now first run of Beta 5 is about as crappy and slow as early beta 4 was. So maybe there is some hope on Beta 5 getting better but who knows.
So I broke down and ordered 4 more GB of ram... Do you think a total of 8 GB of ram will improve the game significantly?
Yes, being that on insane maps I'm sitting between 6-7gb of ram good luck
4 gigs of ram and a processor @ 2.66 gigs. Both are slowing down your system. Cheapest upgrade? Get double the ram and bump page file to 12 gigs.
Sorry to say, but you'll still have issues playing on insane maps. I have an Intel i7 2600 @ 3.4 GHz (Quad core) with 8GB running Win 7 64 with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 7560 Ti, and a few turns after loading a saved game the hesitations and hangups start again. They happen whenever you move the cursor, point to a location on the minimap, or simply click on idle ship/shipyard. The screen jumps to several locations before the computer locates the right one. Not sure if this is one of Stardocks infamous memory leaks (which they always have done a very good job tracking down before final release) or some other issue.
BTW - if the Devs need a game save I'd be happy to send one in.
well I turn off grid and have performance on low this help me run the game better.
I'm sure that's a good solution, but part of being in on the BETA is we're supposed to push the game. Actually try to cause it to break. That way Stardock can fix things before release. Not saying you can't play the game anyway that makes it enjoyable for you, but the Dev's need feedback about what isn't working up to snuff.
How do I increase the page file? I haven't tried that one yet.
Having low memory will limit greatly what you can do. Thats something they are working to improve, but even at 8Gb thats still not ideal. Though having 8 vs having 4.. yes that will help a lot. Also Have you updated to the opt in beta yet? I noticed improvements in turn speed from beta 5 when I updated to the 5.1 update. Playing an insane map with max opponents, is going to have far stiffer needs then playing a tiny with a few. When you get the additional 4 Gb in, I would test out some map sizes and find the "sweet spot" where you can play without to much delay. Keep in mind that as the map fills up that will have an impact as well.
I am running an AMD FX 9370 4.4 Ghz (Not overclocked) 8 Core CPU with 16 GB memory and 2 GB Radeon 270x GPU with little problems running the game on max.
Now there are a few hang ups here or there which I believe are still bugs in the game and them working out issues, such as jumpy ship movement on the main map, and a few game freezes here or there but, things are greatly improving and think the game will be ready for gold release very soon
On W7, start->control panel->advanced system settings->settings button in the performance rectangle->change button in Virtual Memory rectangle ->click custom button and set the desired sizes. Then click OK and Apply. Reboot. Then check that the settings are now correct.
I have 16GB of memory and the game was working great on insane with all major and minor races. abundant star rare habitual planet and rare harsh planets. At about turn 150 the program started crashing to desktop. I uploaded the latest video card driver for my GTX 980 and it seem to be going okay. Now at turn 200 not seeing any lag yet. Then I haven't meet all the races yet. I love how big the insane map is.
I do think if you are going to be playing with all the races and custom races on insane maps 4 to 8gb is not going to cut it. With the prices on memory you should be able to get to +10gb. Most people issue with this game is trying to play on the biggest size map with all the races with rigs that are over 5 to 6 year old with only 2 to 4 gb of memory. This is beta and the game still needs a lot of polish and memory bug fixes. Hopefully, by release the game will be stable to the point you can play on insane with all races with 8gb memory. If your one of them gamer (like me) that want to play with100 races as the devs are saying then make sure you go out there and get memory. I thinking of getting 4gb to get to 20gb on my rig. I think that the limit on my current motherboard which is 2 years old.
Same here love the large galaxy sizes, playing with 25 (approx) races currently plus all minors.
I keep creating new custom races daily, goal to get into the 30's or 40's this week My cap is 32 and if I had the $$ I'd upgrade, waiting for windows 10 to upgrade to an SSD and memory though I think, maybe GPU too... just because...
Cool thanks. When I go into set it up it there are two boxes - one for initial size and on for max size... Should I put 16384 in both boxes?
I think my motherboard wont go over 8gb at least that's what I thought I read on the gigbyte website.
You have a similar computer setup like I had. I upped the RAM to 8 Gb and dropped in a Q9650 and have great gameplay now.
Yes, but be sure to update your "virtual memory" settings as Bamford described. With 8GB, MicroSoft recommends a setting of min=8192MB and max=24576.
Also, there are some caveats about heat generation, map size, resolution, display settings, galaxy settings, and number of opponents, but you will have to try them out to see what will work for you.
that as it may!.... Those of us that don`t have 16 to 32 GB of ram and 4 to 8 cores CPU and a totally ridiculousness Video card has to do what they can to get the game to run,..... Having to wait anywhere from a minute to several minutes for each click to get done.... Does not help with debugging the game. We all ready know that 8GB of ram is min. But I don`t have that either I have 5GB. So if running the game on low and with the GRID OFF helps the game run a litter better so be it. As far as debugging the game I`ve file my share of bugs and crashes. When you have put in over 1850 hours into the game then come talk to me on whether the grid should be turn off or not. OP I understand your pain I go through it each time I play the game. The smaller maps play OK the larger Maps,... I don`t have enough resources to play right. Upgrading our PC would be the move needed to help with the game,...But those like me that not possible.
A couple suggestions not mentioned in the post. Besides anialising there are other graphics lIke textures you could turn down, or off. By default windows uses balaned power options. You need to change that to high performance. If go into power options you can tweak this more. update drivers.
Have you checked disk, defragged, and cleaned your windows lately. Sometimes the computer comes with other option you have graphics control software. I would at least change my graphics settings from my processor to my gpu. For some reason manufacturers don't do this even when you buy a graphics card. Sometimes they will tun a media player instead.
Change this back to gpu. Why use ram, and processor for a media player when graphics ram, rom, and gpu can do this instead. You can tweak several graphics settings to make this better in your graphics card control software. in one of your settings I forgot about you have three options run windows controlled by windows, quality, or performance. Choose performsnce whenever you can.
Run your game, and windows at the lowest resolution possible. It may be possIble to switch plug and play from windows to rom bIos If possIble this would free up resources. Ram vs rom. Remember only if you switch plug and play from windows to bios shut off plug and play in windows. don't run other programs at the same time you play the game.
You probably.have programs you don't want to run right at bootup running in thr registry. If you know what you are doing you can shut off some processes in the task manager. If you are using a desktop you could relatively easily upgrade your processor. You could upgrade your windows. Here ate a few suggestions to work with you have that they have not suggested.
Thereis raidIng hard drives, and overcloxking. Some processors let you turn hyperthreading on or off in the rom bios.
While I am all for helping people try to improve the game performance, there's a lot of bad/useless advice being given here. And a lot of people that don't seem to be reading the details in the original post. Before I start addressing that, OP, I will say that if you are seeing noticeably poorer performance than you did with a previous build, I would make sure the devs are aware of that. I also have to point out for the record that your computer is sitting at the MINIMUM system requirements and Beta's typically are not completely optimized. I'm not saying you shouldn't even try to play it, but based on that alone, I wouldn't expect it to run WELL, especially not with larger maps and/or higher AI player counts.
1) Page File/Virtual Memory. Several people suggested increasing that and I wish they would stop doing that. Based off the sysinfo you posted, your page file is currently roughly 12Gb and you have 4Gb of system RAM. Microsoft recommends 1.5x-3.0x your system RAM. You're already at the high end of that. In addition this isn't a magical fix, you can't just keep increasing the page file size and make all your problems go away. While that MAY prevent some things from actually crashing, the page file is SLOW. Your hard drive, realistically, is probably transferring data at around 80-100MB/s. DDR3-1066 is rated for 8,500MB/s. I'm not even going to touch the latency difference. Page file doesn't eliminate the need for more RAM. If you're exhausting a 12Gb Page File, you are simply trying to do too much with your computer.
2) Upgrading your hardware. Ryat mentioned the upgrade he did on his system and as far as what you can do with your current system, that is about the best you can do. More memory and more cores. There is the risk though that the BIOS version on your motherboard may not support a newer Core 2 Quad without an update (specifically you need revision F13 on your board for a newer processor). That's something you'd want to check before buying a newer processor. However, your system is 5 generations old at this point. I would strongly recommend against dumping any money into upgrading a system of that age, it's simply a bad economic choice. Even a low end new system (or a used but more recent higher end system) is going to out perform that, use less power, and generate less heat. If this is an option and you are willing to post a budget, I would be happy to provide advice in that regards. For example NewEgg has a bundle right now for $290 (plus OS) that would blow your system out of the water. Alternatively, keep an eye out on eBay and your local Craigslist for a bargain on a X58 based motherboard combo. The boards are running a bit of a premium right now, but you can get hex cores for them for dirt cheap.
3) Power settings, Raiding hard drives, overclocking, hyperthreading, upgrading Windows. No. Just no. It's a desktop computer. There's nothing you're going to do in power settings that will make the computer faster. Raid? Ignoring the technical risks and requirements in running Raid0 (which is the only "raid" that flat out improves performance so I assume that's what was meant), unless you're saturating your drive's throughput it's going to make little to no noticeable real world performance difference. Sure, load times may improve slightly, but that's pretty much it. An SSD even on SATAII would make a far larger difference. Overclocking? A system of that age? Without knowing any details like CPU cooler, power supply, etc? That's a good recommendation to get somebody to fry their system. Hyperthreading? Yeah, totally not a thing on Core 2 Duo's. Upgrading Windows? I don't even know where we are going with that.
The first step in improving performance is to figure out what's limiting your performance. If a program is GPU limited, all the CPU overclocking in the world isn't going to help. GalCiv is a bit outside the norm in that regards. Most AAA titles are shooters and are much heavier on the GPU requirements. GalCiv is exceptionally CPU intensive. It's also pretty thirsty for RAM in it's current state, although that should improve some as time goes on. But it's always going to be CPU intensive, that's the nature of the game. Eliminating background tasks can help with this but that will only do so much. You also have to be careful not to disable programs you actually need.
Before you launch GalCiv, bring up task manager. How many processes do you have running and how much of your RAM is being used? That will give is a rough idea on where to start.
I have similar issues with slowness of the game. I believe it's memory related too. My system is older and I have 4GB of RAM. I get so much disk thrash that I wait very long times to move around the map, even playing on a Small map with all options set to minimum. Exposing a new star causes lots of disk thrash and creates a pause. As the game goes just clicking another section of the minmap causes thrash and a very long wait time. It seems to get worse as the game goes on.
I've logged a support ticket.
If 4GB RAM is minimum, as a customer I expect that I can at least play smoothly on a small map if not medium. I can play other strategy games like Civ BE and Endless Legend without issue on my machine.
I sincerely hope the developers do improve the game so I can play it with some kind of reasonable settings on a 4GB RAM machine. I bought the game in good faith.
This may just be me, but maybe the expectations are the problem? I would love to get Stardocks input on this, but when I see the word minimum used in this context, here's how I read it.
Minimum System requirements: The absolute bare minimum you need to get the game to run at all.
I mean if my car breaks down and I take it to the shop and tell them to do the absolute bare minimum to get it running, I'm not going to expect a smooth running, reliable vehicle to get handed back to me. Obviously, that's just my opinion and maybe Stardock's line of thought is more along the lines of yours.
Plus, most of the time people when people are sitting on the edge of minimum requirements, it's usually not just in one area. Like the OP, he's not just at the minimum RAM requirements, he's at the minimum CPU requirements too.
I guess I just don't understand the mindset of buying a game knowing you're at or near the MINIMUM system requirements and then expecting the game to run well on anything more than the absolute lowest settings. And I'm not just talking map size here. Map density, number of players, graphics settings, etc.
Also, how Civ BE and Endless Legend run means absolutely nothing.
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