Civilization 5 and m17x-r2

Hey all,

If this isn't the most appropriate place to post this please forgive me and feel free to move it. But have been running into some problems with Civilization 5 and DX10. I'm by no means the only one (as there are several threads on other websites discussing similar problems), but my question is a bit more specific. Is anyone running Civilization 5 on their M17x-r2 in DX10 mode successfully? I'm able to run it for about 10 minutes before I get a dreaded (your game has stopped responding). It appears to only be a problem with DX10 as DX9 seems to be running successfully.

My specs are in my signature, but in addition to those I recently updated my graphics card to the dell released 10.8 ATI driver, not sure if that has any bearing or not.

Again I realize lots of people are reporting various problems with DX10, but I'm just curious if anyone here is able to run it successfully and if so what graphic settings are you setting it to (or other items you've done to get around it).

Thanks!!

*Edit* Also being discussed on the 2K Civ 5 Forum page http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...-systems-Civ-5-crashes.&p=1295735#post1295735

*Edit* Also being discussed on the AMD game forum http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=262&threadid=143793&enterthread=y

 

I'm running into it as well on my m11x, I belive the 335m does dx10, right?

 

I was having issues at first, but I updated my drivers and ran the DXSetup from the Steam/steamapps folder in program files and it started working fine.

 

Just played Civ5 Demo from Steam. No really big issues with the demo. Some flickering on some of the tiles which was gone after a few seconds - then the game played perfectly stable - played through the whole demo. Settings on max except AA (even tesslation on max) and game ran smoothly.

My config: M17x-R2 with 2 ATI5870s - NO new vbios or drivers - still running my system with the out of the box configuration and therefore the really old dell drivers.

Well that was very important for me as the main reason I bought this new laptop was Civ5.

 

Thanks guys, I've been scouring the net for anything consistent. I ran the DXSetup from the Steam/steamapps folder which allowed it to run for a bit longer, but still would stop working (usually if I walked away from it and came back to it a few minutes later). I'll keep messing around and see if I can find out anything else. Appreciate the updates!

 

Well, after experimenting with several things, disabling crossfire seems to have at least prevented any further lockups so far...I've been playing now for about 45 minutes which is far longer then before. If anything changes I'll let folks know...I also ran the DXsetup as Lakart suggested but it is definitely the disabling crossfire that has gotten me further.

*edit* Played for over 2 hours before calling it a night and no hangups...so looks like disabling crossfire was the way to go.

 

My copy hasn't arrived yet, probably won't until early October. This does not sound good!

 

Played Civ5 for some time now and wow games good but game needs a lot of hardware. Even the all powerful M17x-r2 gets slow after some time. If world map is completely revealed and a lot of units and events and actions take place my alienware needs the hell of a time for calculating one turn. Hope there will be a patch to increase performance otherwise this is no laptop game.

 

Yeah, I was very surprised by how steep the system requirements were...considering it's not "crysis". I imagine they'll eventually patch it to make it run a bit more optimized but for now it can get very sluggish.

 

what do you think will help? upgrading Ram or processor? both?

 

I've been having the same issues as OP for the past couple days. I also noticed that disabling xfire makes it stable in dx10, but thats not acceptable.

There are people all over the steam and 2k forums with the same issue and some even have a single card setup, 8800 and 5770 etc. Some people claim that the games makes gpu temps hit the roof causing bsod's and crashes.

 

Yeah, I've been following the 2K forums as well (actually opened an account there for this very thing). Right now there are so many bugs that they need to address that it might be worth waiting for those who can. I've been able to play stable with crossfire disabled, but I admit that the gpu temp issue has me concerned (starcraft 2 anyone?). I haven't done much monitoring myself, and when I get the chance I'll report my findings. But looks like the 2K folks have lots of fixes in their near future.

 

I played a little this morning with only one gpu and watched my temps hit +70 within a minute of gameplay. I've decided to hold back on playing until they resolve this issue because I don't want to fry anything...

 

ok so ive been playing for about 3 days now to get a good reference point on the issue.

I have

i7 720
SSD 120gb
CF5870
4gb ram

Updated with all current drivers off of dells website (september)

i have had absolutely no issues with and glitching or studdering freezing ect.. the game has ran as smooth as it gets.

i wonder if its the drivers that is making the difference here.

 

The only other difference is that both Entity X and I are running 4870's and you are running 5870's. Not certain if that would make this type of difference or not, but it's definitely another thing to consider. Also are you running with Crossfire enabled or disabled? I'm able to run without any problems with it disabled, but still get Not Responding while running with it enabled.

Just curious about your findings. Thanks for the update and info

One more question...any idea how hot your GPU's are getting while running? Would be good to get a comparison

 

ill check the temp today while i play. and yes im running with Crossfire enabled

 

Hey Paranormal,

Awesome that you are able to get it to run with Crossfire enabled. Still no joy on my end with Crossfire enabled. Looking at the 2K support forums they say that they don't officially support "SLI type" configurations:

From the 2K official support website:

" I have ____ problem and I have an SLI configuration.

Unfortunately, as it stands Civ V does not cooperate well with SLI systems. Although you can try driver updates, etc, your best bet would be to run a single GPU until a patch."

So guess that would be the generic statement including Crossfire configurations as well. So looks like Crossfire is working for you with 5870's and not working for Entity and I with 4870's.

Nothing like consistency

 

ill also add it might be related to the 4870 Cf as i have put around 10hrs into the game and it runs very smoothly for me, my config is in my sig, the fans do blow a fair bit but temps are very normal for 1hr+ gaming, so far nothing to complain about at all.

 

I agree that it could be related to 4870 xfire but there are many others that are running into what appears to be the same issue with single card setups both mobile and desktop.

I've even seen a couple m11x's that are having the same issues and they are on a completely different chipsets. I think it has to do with heat, maybe the dx 11 code isn't as optimized for the 4000 series as well as it is for 5000 series therefore making it overheat...

What sort of settings are you 5870's guys playing on? Everything maxed? If I turn everything on low and turn off AA the game stays stable a little longer (2-3 turns max) with xfire, but if I turn off vsync the FPS go crazy high and it immediately crashes, sometimes even before loading a map...

 

yeah i have most settings on high, all except for water quality and terrain shadow quality which are both set to medium also i only have the game running 2xMSAA, and native res.

 

Hey guys, are you all running the same driver level? The 10.8 ATI drivers off the Dell website? Just wanting to see if there is any difference between driver levels or whether the ATI reference driver behaves any differently then the dell one. I know currently I'm running the Dell 10.8 driver.

Just trying to see if we can narrow this down even further.

Thanks!

 

Well, I've got r1 of the M17x with the 280M cards, and I'm having occasional freezes in DX10/11 mode, and flickering tiles in DX9 (zooming out makes the flickering go away until I zoom in again). I reverted back to the last pre 200.xx set of drivers off the Dell site, which cleared up the black screens of death when using YouTube that I got with the 200.xx drivers (disabling hybrid mdoe).

I seem to always be on a neverending quest for comaptible drivers with this machine, and I'm ready to throw in the towel and get a laptop that has a more "standard" i5 or i7 based motherboard WITHOUT SLI. Never could run Dragon Age with tons of crashing either. Mass Effect seems to run well, as well as Witcher.

 

yeap im running the latest drivers/vbios/ bios of dells site.....

 

Hey Fezziwig,

Sorry for all the problems you've been having. It's the worst trying to get around some of these issues.

Thanks mtness, that's a good data point, so we at least know that it isn't specific to the Dell driver (could be specific to the Dell Driver and the 4870's I suppose), but helped another guy out on the 2K forums who hit the same issue...system freezing, m17x with dual 4870...had him disable crossfire and it worked for him. So looks like there is definitely something funky going on with the 4870 crossfire configuration and Civ 5.

Thanks again guys, If I get any updates on this I'll pass em along.

 

I had to revert back to the older 197.84 drivers for my M17x-R1 system with SLI'd 280M's. I get the typical long pauses during the animations of talking to state leaders as well as over time (usually 1-2 hours) the game starts taking longer and longer to calculate turns. Typically saving the game, exiting to the main menu, then going back into the game fixes that.

Running it with DX10/11 with most settings on High to Medium, 4XAA.

With the 2xx.xx drivers (any versions) I was having the typical black screens of death in most games, and Civ5 wouldn't even start...going back to the older drivers things are much more stable...

 

Well I still run my M17x-R2 with 5870CF with the out-of-box config and old drivers and have no issues with the game except I set the Tesslation Level to LOW - than the textures are broken.
The main issue I have with the game is that there is no PC out there (desktop or laptop) on which this game runs smoothly - the hardware (CPU Power not Graphic Cards Power) this game needs is ridiculous. On a huge map with 8 CPU Players and 24 minor states and babarians the game needs 3 minutes to calculate one turn - if a lot of units are visible and active even more. This experience was made by a lot of my friends an various systems -some of them real desktop power horses that run Crysis on 2560x1900 with 60 frames and fail on Civ5.
The problems some might have with Civ5 is not the fault of our AWs - its really bad and buggy programming of Civ5 (Firaxis / EA).

Greets

 

Well, last night I was able to run the game fine for the 1 1/2 hours I played. I have the Steam version of the game and I did run the verification routine on the files and it updated something. We'll see.

Following up on what Mith said above (as I also have a r1 with 280M cards), I also had to revert to pre-200.xx drivers. I had all sorts of black screen issues with version 200 drivers and higher. However, with the current drivers I'm using, I don't seem to be able to run LOTRO on DirectX 10, as I get all sorts of weird flickering. Why is 10 so problematic for many set-ups?

 

I agree, and I think that is shared with a lot of folks on the 2K board as well. I still believe that they will have to patch it so that it runs more optimized. When I think of games that require super high end systems to run, Civilization has never (and probably shouldn't) be on that list.

 

I'm standing alone here. I finally got it, and the game runs smooth. It does take slow between turns (heck that's when multitasking comes in handy), but I can play for hours (so far), and no glitches or crashes.

 

Greywolf - I'm running Civ V for hours without a problem in DX10/11 mode. I'm using 10.3 drivers. See specs in sig - an R1 with 4870's in crossfire. The only crashes I get are when I alt-tab out of the game. Played in max settings, even 8xAA.

Yesterday tried DX9 mode and noticed some differences. Landscape looked more bland, but I actually saw smoke from a pillaged trading post. I don't remember seeing the smoke in 10/11 mode. I also tried OCing my T9600 today to 1333/1333 FSB/RAM and saw a slight increase in performance, but nothing to write home about.

Currently playing on HUGE with max AI's/standard city-states, turn 600 or so. Turns take a good 30-45 seconds to process.

I did download the latest DELL drivers (via BatBoy's thread), but I'm worried now that they'll break game performance.

Try reverting to 10.3 and see if that helps.

 

Hey,

I have an m17x-r2 with Xfire5870, i7-720QM and 8gb of ram, after i play fire about 200/250 turns it gets slower and slower to get to the next turn..

also i notices that when i'm playing, if i minimize and check with a program like GPU-Z, one card has quite a high temperature (sometimes near 70-80) while the other is around 50

is this normal? and also.. what are normal ''high'' temps for that card, i don't want to fry anything..


Edit: I also have the september drivers from Dell website, and i ran it on dX10

also: when i check in GPU-Z, the hotter card runs at 700mhz core clock and 1000mhz memory clock while the colder one is at 100mhz and 150mhz respectively... is that a problem?

 

Lord_Zath

Thanks for the tip, I'll try reverting back to the 10.3 drivers and see if I get similar results. That at least gives me some hope that it's something with the ATI driver itself and not specific to either the game or the 4870's.

And so far it sounds like the 5870's are running it great...

Thanks all for the feedback!

 

No problem. Please do let me know if that fixes it - if so, then I'll stay at 10.3 - I almost updated to the ones you had, but on a hunch came on here to see what people were saying. Glad I did!

 

I have the same issue, crossfire doesnt work in Civ5. i have the 09 bios, latest vbios and latest non beta drivers. I can confirm that crossfire works with other games and is turned on. One GPU is maxed, the other is not in use

this is running in DX10 mode

 

I ran this game on MAX settings (including 8x AA) and I played a LARGE game (24 teams or whatever the max is).. and I got to say, it lagged my M17x. Just when you clicked to play next turn, it started lagging. Which surprised me.. DX11 game i'm pretty sure.

 

Hi Betc...interesting as you're the first 5870 xfire user that I've seen report this issue (correct me if I missed anyone). Are the other 5870 crossfire folks using the same driver levels? Would be interesting to note. I still need to downgrade to 10.3 to test...just haven't had the time yet unfortunately

 

Have you tried 10.3 yet?

Also, AMD has come out with new crossfire profiles - one of which is devoted to optimizing Civ V. Try it out - I noticed a much faster texture load time as well as the ability to alt-tab out without crashing. You'll need to go to the desktop drivers section and will find it lower on the list of drivers.

 

Hi Lord_Zath

Unfortunately still on my to-do list. I did however try the new crossfire profile, but alas it still hangs with crossfire enabled. Was hoping that we'd see a new ATI driver past 10.8 (did try 10.10 modified, but still have the same issue) that might address it. But still planning on 10.3 when I have a moment.

 

After reading this thread, there doesn't seem to be much progress. I recently got this game and found that DX11 mode crashes after I start a game. Switching to DX9 mode allows me to complete any marathon game. However, like everyone says, the turns late in the game take a while to process.

My setup is in my sig. I'm running the latest Dell Video drivers.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I just finished my 1st marathon game on large map with no city-states. Be sure to reduce CS's by 50-100%. Seems the problem is in worker AI and CS workers take just as long to complete their commands as full AI workers.

A tip for all who play DX10/11 - turn off Anti-Aliasing. Having it on will prevent some of the animations from loading, namely burning/smoking pillaged tiles and Gulf-of-Mexico spill style oil on water tiles. I also found that it significantly sped up "camera flying" speeds.

 

I have Civ V on default settings, mostly high (the first few entries) and the rest on medium iirc. Resolution at 1920x1200. Plays fairly well for me. Around 30-40 fps.

It drops a little later in the game when you have tons of units on the map and when you have multiple opponents (standard or more), but if you mainly play duels or on maps ranging from duel to small, there shouldn't be any issues at all. Smooth as butter.

I have the latest BIOS (A09), VBIOS and video drivers. No crashes so far. The only gripe I have is the occasional black texture glitch in the terrain. Nothing to worry about though, only happened twice in like 20 hours of Civ V. xD

 

Hi guys!

Lord_Zath thanks for the tips and updates..appreciated as always.

Wanted to let everyone know that a huge patch was just released today...details are here for those who are interested:

Patch Notes - 2K Forums

Still hangs with crossfire enabled running 10.8 -> 10.10 (beta) drivers...so have inquired about that again. But otherwise there are a lot of changes.

 

Patch did nothing for me. It still crashes when I try to play the game in DX11. I'm still able to play it in DX9 mode. I have Dell's 10.8 ATI drivers.

 

Wow, I'm not sure how I got fortunate, but I've played Civ V for hours on end, with 5870 CF, graphic settings maxed, and didn't encounter any glitches or hangups. The worst I can say it does take a little longer between turns than I saw in Civ IV. Still, its tolerable, and long enough to get other things done in between.

I'm quite happy with the game and how it runs on my machine.