Civilization 5 and m17x-r2

Mind letting us know what BIOS and video drivers you're using?

 

Hey guys,

One of the other guys on the 2K forums played around a bit with his ATI Catalyst settings and suggested the following, which enabled him to play with Crossfire enabled.

I don't know if this will apply to both the 5870s and the 4870s although considering the driver is the same it's worth a shot.

and Lord_Zath I'd be curious how your settings compare to the default..maybe we can narrow it down to one specific slider.

So this is what was suggested

In the ATI Catalyst Control Center adjust the following values in the 3D category...and the ALL section:

1) SMOOTHVISION Anti-Aliasing Checked, Level Slider left, Filter Box
2) SMOOTHVISION Anisotropic filtering Checked, Level Slider left
3) Catalyst A.I. Checked, Level Slider right
4) Mipmap Detail Level slider left (High performance)
5) Wait for Vertical Refresh Level slider left (Always Off)
6) Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Checked, left (Performance)
7) Triple Buffering Checked

Let me know how it goes..Lord_Zath if you get a chance, can you compare this to what yours is set to and maybe that is the difference (versus just the driver alone).

*EDIT* So have been able to play 100 turns (about 40 minutes) without a single hangup. But now it's 2AM so I'm off to bed, but looks like
this is definitely another way around it, without disabling crossfire.

Will be curious how it goes for you guys!

 

I just had a 4 hour Civ5 marathon with no issues. Other than AI turns taking forever but eh, I did largest map etc. I dont have a crossfire set up tho...

I was wondering, does anyone know how to disable the opening cinematic? It doesnt let me click thru to the first menu till the cinematic has played thru the first bit and zooms in on the old man's face. Kind of annoying, and yea I'm that impatient. I also tab out and surf while waiting for AI turns to be complete. Thank god for Aero that gives you the little preview of the window on mouse over...I can check to see if its my turn yet that way while surfing.

 

Hi Sefirothe...I know on the 2K forums there is a way to disable the opening Cinematic...but the Cinematic actually hides the load screen (so unfortunately you can't skip past it until it has finished loading...which is about the time it zooms into the old man's face). If you disable it, you'll just get a black screen until about the same point...So I guess it's a matter of preference.

For me..I just leave the Cinematic running and click about that same time to start the game. I know...not very clear, a lot of folks have asked this same question on the 2K forum. Guess it would have been better to have a load screen or a bar or something...but I guess they figured people would rather see the cinematic.

Hope that helps

 

You may want to try creating a Profile for Civilization 5 in [url="http://www.radeonpro.info]RadeonPro[/url] and try various drivers (10.3a and 10.5a are usually rather stable) for compatibility for the game only. Also, you could try various other compatibility settings in the RadeonPro profile.

 

Greywolf - I'll give it a try. I'm at work right now; will check later. I can tell you I just have the main slider on "balanced." I used to have it on "Quality" and I still had no issues at all.

Sef - To disable the video, go to My Documents/My Games/Civilization V. Within there should be a "user settings.ini" file or something of the like (might be in a further folder but I don't think so). Open it in Notepad and look for a line that reads similar to "DisableIntroVideo". Change the value from 0 to 1 and save. Done. This may be important because people have found that the video is STILL loaded even if you ESC out of the video. This means it's taking up RAM and possibly even waiting to continue playback. Not good.

 

Hey guys...ok I "think" I've got it...when I check "Disable Catalyst A.I." it seems to run fine (I'm headed out the door so only got to test it for about 10 minutes). When I leave it unchecked...it freezes and goes to "not responding" almost immediately once the turn starts.

If someone can confirm this that would be great. I don't know how much the other settings matter, but this one does seem to be repeatable.

Thanks!

 

Yup chiefs, When you disable Catalyst AI it is pretty much the same as disabling crossfire. You will then be gaming on one GPU only. I've tried it before in game during gaming and before starting games. Some games will just do the change on the fly while others might crash or not like it so much.

Cheers.

 

Even with the patch and 10.10 ATI drivers, I still can't get at DX11 game going.

 

Hi Reborn! Thanks...I didn't realize it was the same thing. So sounds like disabling crossfire or disabling the AI does the same thing...sigh, so no further then before I guess.

 

Hey Gizmo...awesome, thanks for pointing this out to me I'll try to give it a whirl and see how it goes.

Thanks for the info!

 

I have Catalyst AI enabled on standard.

 

Hi Lord_Zath, I set my Catalyst AI to Standard..and so far so good...although I've only been playing about 10 minutes, I'll let you know if things change. If you have a chance could you switch yours to Advanced and see if it locks up on you?

*EDIT* Started a few games, and ran for about 30 minutes per, and no locks or hangs yet.

 

Yup normally its best to set Catalyst AI to advanced. However if you are having problems or performance issues then giving standard a go is the next best step. Worse case scenario would be just to disable Catalyst AI. I've had to do it a few times because certain games just won't run with crossfire. Their performance drops heaps in fact.

Cheers.

 

Cool that sounds good so far chiefs. Hope it hangs on and keeps going lol.

Cheers.

 

Me too Reborn...Me too

 

Well, looks like I might have spoken too soon. I realized I had RadeonPro running (which I thought I had shutdown), and it's still hanging with Standard enabled. So looks like no go with Crossfire enabled. Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up...back to the drawing board

 

ok here's all my settings:

Standard - Balanced
AA - Use Application settings; Box filter
AAA - box NOT checked
AF - Use application settings
AI - box NOT checked; Standard
Mipmap - High Quality

 

Hey guys. I was too lazy to make a Civ 5 and M15x thread, so I'm just gonna use this one. I have some questions, my game lags ever so slightly in between turns, is this normal??!?!? And I'm getting only 40fps ish on everything maxed out on my 5850 @ 825/1000

 

Hi miahsoul,

Yeah I think I know what you are talking about lagging between turns...mine seems to do this as well.

 

I been able to play on my setup. Problem is when I get about 400 to 500 Turns I get a game crash. My system was running in crossfire mode. I am going to try the suggestions and try the game again.

Worlds I play on are HUGE
AI 6 to 22.
City states Always on
Citys Made about 20.

 

Probably due to the worker AI. It's been proven that the more AI's there are (including City-States), the more workers are created, and the longer it takes for all those workers to "decide" what to do.

Have you tried updating to the latest version?

 

Yes I have. But I tend to take over the City states so I have my own workers . So I dont think AI is the issue.

 

I think I'll just leave it run so I have an idea of how long its going to take to load. I agree, the ability to disable the cinematic in the options and a simple load screen with a bar would have been much better however.

Another question. Any idea why some times on load Civ5 disables Windows Aero? It doesnt happen 100% of the time either.

 

Not sure if it windows or the games but they tend to disable the Areo so give the Programs more CPU, GPU power.

 

Been reading on Steam and 2k Website. It seems to be the Game that the issue are on Large Worlds or Huge Worlds running on Marathon. Turn base Issue 6 to 8 countrys. 28 city states.

There a few Morons on there websites going well it your system bla bla bla. But it happening on Desktops, Laptops Core 2, i5, i7, And Athlon chips. Gpus Ati 5870s, 4870s Geforce 8800, 9800, 280, 380, 480s.

I think it a bug. If anyone who has the same system spec. Try the same setup. Grapics it did not matter. Low or high end. Hard drives or SSD drive I had the same issue.

The game ran Great Untel 300+ Turns up to 500+ Turns. Then a Random Crash.

If you can Post What happen just before the Crash. Like did a Unit attack another Unit? Basicly stuff that happen Just before the Crash.

Set the game to Save Every Turn for 5 to 10 turns.

 

yeah there's definitely issues with the game's programming. The slowdown has been prettymuch proven to be worker AI related. People have gone to the extent of editing the globaldefines.xml file and setting a limit on # of workers to something like 1 or 2 for each person. People have also turned off or reduced city states and have reported that helping, too.

 

Hay Lord_Zath. Have you played Civ 5 On the Huge Map running Marathon. Have you had any game Crash? Between 500 to 600 turns?

 

Hey guys, I'll try to give this a try when I get back home at the end of the week and report what I find. I haven't had any problems with Large map running marathon, but haven't tried it with Huge.

 

Yeah and it did crash after more turns than that (1,279). Around 600 I experienced massive slowdown.

Just tried it again after the patch and it doesn't crash anymore! It's also faster, so I might just have to go back in and finish it off.

Are you having issues? If so, what kind? I'm playing in DX10/11 mode with everything maxed (other than AA which is off).

 

Ya Still having problems on Civ 5. The game plays great untel Turn 500+ and the system crashes. Right now I have 3 hard drives With Differnt Ati Drivers. But I really don't think it what causing the issue.

Hay Graywolf Once I make a topic on 2k website can you edit your main page and add this Alienware systems Civ 5 crashes. tread. Mybe some Alienware users can help with some issues on civ 5 problems. Becuse we seem to have Close to the Same systems. Vs the Core 2 and i7 chips. Some geforce 260, 280s, 285 and Ati 4870s and 5870s gpus.

If you can post your Dxdiag if you use the website above.

- Press the "R" and "Windows" key on you keyboard.
- Type the word "dxdiag" (without the ") into the text box and press OK.
- In the bottom right hand side of the screen, click the "Save All Information" button.
- Save the dxdiag.txt file to your desktop
- Then post


Now for Lord Zath

Other then the CPU How are you running directx 10/11. I tend to Crash. I tried with AA off. But still crash on the Frist 3 Turns. What Ati drivers are you useing?

 

Hey Atol,

I edited the main page with a link to your post on the 2K Forum page. I'll also post my dxdiag when I get back in town (out of town this week). Thanks for doing this, hopefully it'll help to narrow down the issues even further.

Also, one other note...Directx 10/11 should run just fine as long as you disable crossfire...Lord_Zath has been able to get it to run on older drivers (10.3) with crossfire enabled, but I haven't had any luck with it running from 10.7 and up with Crossfire Enabled.

Lord_Zath if I mis-spoke on any of the above please correct me.

Thanks!

 

Greywolf - you're right - 10.3 drivers are working fine.

Note I did also install the updated Crossfire profiles from the current driver set, which yielded a noticeable improvement.

 

Well I think 2k doing there troubleshooting as too wide of variable. Mybe trying to use our systems to solve the system. We can point them to the right direction.

I am going to run in all tread and see if there any useful tips that can help like the 10.3 drivers. If there a way that can be sent to me I would like to try them out.

Right now I have 2 640gb hard drives on standby for Differnt drivers and differnt tests setups.

 

Hi Atol, I think it would be very interesting if you also can get things working with the 10.3 drivers, then at least we'll know that the 10.3 drivers are working for a few people and potentially something in the later drivers is contributing to this.

 

Ok If you know where I can download the older Ati drivers or know someone that has the ati 10.3. Let me know. I will use my current setup and try it out.

I going to disable my crossfire mode and see how far I can get in Civ 5 Huge world Marathon and see when civ 5 crash.

 

Lord_Zath or anyone else....can someone provide Atol a link a to where he might get 10.3? If I could get it as well I'll give it a go too.

Thanks again!

 

I'm not sure, though I do have the actual install file. It's 68megs!

edit - try this link. http://downloads.guru3d.com/ATI-Catalyst-10.3-Windows-7-|-Vista-(64-bit)-download-2508.html It's annoying, but you need to scroll down to "select download location" then click Europe (only option). Next, click "I agree". Download should start then.

 

Thanks Lord_Zath...downloaded it and will give it an install this weekend. Atol, let us know how your testing goes with 10.3.

 

I have 10.11

i have played around 2 hours without a crash with crossfire enabled.

before it used to crash at 20-ish turn

the only things i changed is I right clicked on the game .exe (the one with Dx 11) and i went to the compatibility mode and selected "Windows XP SP3" and i ticked "disable desktop composition" as i found this to cause some problems some times

will have to continue playing later.


maybe its just a fluke, would be worth it if someone tried it

cheers

 

What I am wondering irkan is dose Windows XP SP3 for directx 11. I know it dose support directx 10.

 

Also, an interesting side note as I think others have said that they've been able to run in crossfire mode with the 5870's but not with the 4870s...although can't say I've seen enough to confirm this.

Irkan, definitely sounds like something easy enough to try...I can give that a shot when I get home before I downgrade the drivers to see if I have any luck as well.

 

Working on installing the older drivers. What slowing me down is the Catatyst

 

I'm CF 4870 and no problem.

Also - try disabling the intro video. Some people have reported that the video "lingers" even if you exit out of it while it's playing.

 

I tried disabling intro.

Tonight what I will do is Format one of my 640gb hard drives and install the ati 10.3 drivers. I will only have Steam, Windows, updates and ati drivers. Basicly bear Bones of updates. Then try Civ 5.

 

Hi Lord_Zath

You make an interesting point and something I hadn't tried regarding the intro video. When it crashes on me and it exits out, part of the opening video is displayed (even though it doesn't actually crash until after starting the game). It's almost as if it's treating the two video cards separately or some how the video is "stuck".

Not sure if that makes any sense or not, but it always crashed immediately after starting the game or in some cases 1 or 2 turns in while I have crossfire enabled on the newer drivers and when it exits it always shows part of the opening video..which I found odd.

Thanks Atol, I'm very interested to see your results on both of the above.

 

yeah some people are speculating that the video remains open and essentially paused - sucking up resources and potentially contributing to a memory error...

 

Have one small problem. When I frist tried installing ati drivers 10.3 It seid I had newer drivers. So I use ccleaner and such and deleted all the Ati drivers and software. It would not install the catatyst. So I did a Full format and windows install and basic windows Drivers so it was no big deal. Tried again and there was some type of error so catatyst did not fully install. So I have no way of controling the Crossfire or any other Features of Catatyst.

Any suggestions.

 

Before I installed 10.3, I installed the original Dell release drivers. I then installed 10.3 on top of it. If I installed 10.3 on its own, I didn't get certain drivers (such as HDMI audio).

 

you are right, but i dont believe the "compatibly mode" means that its the exact same environment with its restriction, I guess its just the basic functions on how its being handled, i guess ...

anyways i will try to continue playing with XP compatibility mode see if that gets me any where.