Shipped to Early, definatly needs improvements in system requirements area

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hi Guys

This game, for what graphics it presents, it should run fine on an Athlon XP 1.7 GHz, 512 RAM and GeForce FX5200. I had to reduce antialising from 4x to off. Had to overcloak the video-card and still on gigantic maps with lots of fleets and starbases the game literally creeps. It's an awsome game, and it's a shame for such high system requirements. Definatly should have been improved, graphics are not much of a hard-point comparing to latest games, so it should run fine even on recomended system requirements which my machine meets!!
11,493 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Your video card is down near the minimum requirements and you thought that you should be able to go at 4X anti aliasing on gigantic galaxies?

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually the graphics are very intensive even by today's standards. On gigantic you are talking about a lot of polygons that your videocard just won't be able to handle well. You will probably need to turn off more graphics features than just AA. Also, my understanding is that it can become a bit of a memory hog on big maps. An extra 512mb of RAM would help out there. The game is designed to run on even low end systems (By today's standards you have a low end system). You are going to need to turn off almost all flashy graphics effects (that is a technical term )for large maps to run smoothly on your system.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've got the same vid card and it's smooth as silk.
Granted, I've got a gig of ram, and an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU.
I tend to turn off AA whenever I can in games, anyway.

I still say, that's a fine graphics card. But I agree about getting more system ram. 512 really just isn't enough anymore, and you'd be surprised what more ram will do for you. Don't ditch the card, get more ram.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Where did you gat the idea it meets recommend system requirements? the faq has it listed as a ATI 9800 Pro (or equivalent).That is about 3 times faster than your card?
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Thats prefered RichardLake not minimum. Even a geforce2 will run this game, although not very well. And to be fair, the 5200 is an updated GeForce4 MX440 which is a modified GeForce2.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
On Gigantic maps playing a full house you will run into lag from scratchdisk access if you do not have at least 1gig of ram. My system has peaked at 1128 mb of ram use playing this game on such large maps. If you have 512 try playing only medium maps with 5 races and check what your system peaks at by mid game. I'm guessing this map size should work well for a 512 system. Also be aware that a 5200 is really really bad card. If your strapped for cash you could try buying a 6600. I believe they have dropped in price close to 100$ I think? or less even...havn't check in awhile. New Egg would be a good site to buy hardware on since they have a good return policy.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Mmmmm, that systems is getting near the bad side of obselete, it might be better to just get a new system if you have the cash.

But if you want to upgrade, I would grab an extra 512 (so you have a total of 1 gig RAM) and a decent video card from this generation. You can grab a 6200 for around $50 before shipping, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121542
6600s are around $90 but I dunno if I would spend that much on upgrades if I were you, I mean your CPU is still going to bottleneck and you can't swap that out easily.

Oh and recommended specs means it can run the game at around medium quality, not max settings with large maps. I do remember reading a post from Stardock that eventually the game will have options to tone down the graphics. Only real thing to do now is tone down the resolution (if you can stand playing in 800x600 go for it)
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I can confirm that Geforce 5200 does NOT run this game at ALL.

Why? Because no matter what else you have on your system, the game designers used True Type Fonts in-game and apparently this graphics card does not support them. This card is still available to buy; we're not talking ancient here (older, sure, but still reasonably modern), so I am hugely dissapointed.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
if you can stand playing in 800x600 go for it

Well, the minimum resolution is 1024*768.

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, the 5200 does support TrueType Fonts, people are running this game. I used to have one back in the day, it ran all games, just on the lowest settings.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
TrueType fonts are textures. If your card can display textures, your card can do TrueType. The problem with the 5200 is that it has the functionality of the 5000 series but its slower than the Geforce4 Cards. It just wasn't ever a fast video card. And I would say the massive slow downs from the original poster are coming from the memory limitations on a gigantic map.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
FYI, I'm running a similar system but with a Radeon 9600xt instead. It goes without saying that running any sort of anti-aliasing on this machine is framerate-suicide.

While I had my new A64 3200 machine up (mobo died after a day so I had to RMA it), the game ran silky-smooth with 4xFSAA on--with this very same video card. So the card isn't the problem, the rest of the machine is. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a game this complex with such graphics to boot will crawl on a slow machine when you run at the highest settings. But if you adjust the settings properly (run with AA off, stratecic map always on, tiny/small galaxy), the game is even playable on my old Celeron 667 with 256mb RAM and a 32mb GeForce2 that I still have laying around.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

i'm running a Dell 1.9MHz, 512MB RAM, and an nVidia 5200 Ultra (w 128MB video ram) and the game runs well on my system. I haven't noticed any slowdowns either....
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Just to throw my own two-cents in...

I've got the game running on my 1.3ghz laptop with a paltry 256mb RAM and a TNT-2 video card. Given that, I find these suggestions that the game is unable to run on lower-spec'd systems completely foolish (if a TNT-2 card can run it, surely a ge5200 can).

Cheers!
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
With gigantic maps, it's definitely going to be a RAM issue. I had the same problems with Civ IV a few months ago - I had an XP2000+/512/6600GT, and it was choking at 1024x768, no AA, with normal-sized maps. Added another 512 MB RAM and everything became nice and smooth.

That's probably what you're experiencing here. Your video card isn't great, but it should be adequate (though most likely not with 4xAA!). Spend $40 and get yourself another 512MB of RAM if you can spare the cash. It'll make day-to-day operations on your PC a bit smoother as well... at least if you multitask like I do.