Recommended:

2.2 ghz processor or equivalent - my 3800 is supposed to be almost double that, at least in equivalency. Supposedly the AMD is equivalent to it's number, 3.8 ghz in my case, though it registers lower. Mine comes up as 2.4 ghz, which is still higher than recommended

512 RAM - I have 4 times that amount

128 meg Video RAM - again, I have 4 times that

So my system is way beyond what the game is recommending, yet I'm seeing these serious perfomance issues later in the game. It gets very jerky at that point, and as I said, both my processor and RAM are almost maxed out. So there's definitely room for improvement there, if even a much better than recommended system is having issues running the game. Quite a number of people have been reporting that DA is much more of a hog than DL was.

post the top part of your debug.err file and a someone might be able to recommend a solution.

Are you running anything else in the background?

Wouldn't pay too much attention to Task Manager. It's not the most accurate of monitoring tools.

I've seen this file mentioned, where exactly do I find it?

Not really, just my Norton anti-virus. I guess I'll have to get into the habit of turning that off if I play, at least in the latter parts of the game.



Well it's all I have, unless you'd care to recommend something better. But the performance I'm getting in-game seems to confirm what Task Manager is saying.

Dude, I can't even run a Gigantic map! LOL Granted, I'm on a notebook so I don't expect to run stuff on super-bling mode, but I have noticed that it does eat up quite a chunk of memory. I've gotten used to zooming out on the map until everything are little colored sprites and just watching fleet combat in the viewer. Speeds things up, and stops it from crashing with too many ships moving around, mine and the other civs. I especially have a problem with the super dominator corvettes to the point I don't put the drengin in the game to eliminate the problem.

The only thing that bothers me is when it crashes and doesn't release the memory until I reboot. Looking at 1.1GB of memory in use is impressive, but annoying. Either the patch fixed it or only a specific crash will cause it not to release the RAM because I haven't seen it happen recently even through a few crashes.

Norton Anti-virus is notorious for slowing down overall system performance.

But as StBlasius said, you really should tell us details of your graphics card and also your in-game video settings. Remember also it's essential to keep your graphics card driver up-to-date.

Nvidia Geforce 7950GT with 512 VRAM. Resolution at 1680 X 1050, which is rather high I admit, Anti-aliasing at 1. I used to have at 4 but I've been turning it down to try to get rid of the lag. I'll try none next. But I doubt it will make a difference. The graphics card can more than handle this game. The bottleneck is in my RAM and processor. It looks like you need at least 4 meg of RAM to run it well at that resolution, and at least a dual-core processor.

I have an older version of Norton, it won't allow me to be selective. It's all or nothing. I guess I should get myself a newer version one of these days. I've been meaning to, but this still works so I haven't bothered.

Unless I'm playing games online I always cut off my net connection and turn off the anti-virus program. Anti-virus progs have a habit of eating lots of resources. With games the slowdown becomes very obvious as the autoscan (or whatever that's called in the AV program used) scans every file the game reads every time they're read.

But I have to agree that GC2 and DA are quite heavy on the machine. My older computer (AMD3200+, 1Gb, 7900GT) slows down quite a bit with all those Dominator Corvettes and after a long session it takes a while for DA to shut down (it's actually almost as bad as Oblivion was on that regard). But as I mostly play zoomed so far out that I'm only seeing symbols, I rarely get too bothered by the slowdowns (mostly I zoom in just for the battles and some finesse ship maneuvering).

oh come on. 9 major races and 8 minors. in a Gigantic map. Do you have ANY IDEAS how much work is gonna be needed, and how many resources to run that later in the game, with all those ships, all those planets, all the interactions...?

Just admit it, you're pushing the envelope just a tad here.

As has been noted, the recommended specs for this game may not be optimal for having everything set to maximum. And that has always been the case, judging from the many posts on the subject dating back to version 1.0 of DL.

With the quality of the AI and all the number crunching it does, I doubt that any machine under absolute top-of-the-line would handle it very well.

And while the OP's system sounds like a pretty nice one, there is still room for improvement.

Seeing Task Manager maxing all CPU's is actually a good thing. At least it is using what is available, instead of wasting. It would be even slower if it were not multi-threaded.

And it is never a good idea to try to multi-task while gaming. Gaming takes even more horsepower than video editing - which is probably the runner-up in I NEED A POWERFUL MACHINE!
And I know this first hand, as I built custom video editing workstations for nearly 10 years.

Just because the game uses a lot of resources does not make it a pig.
Unless, the efficient use of everything available to it makes it a "pig".
That is, after all, what we all hope for, isn't it; the efficient use of everything available?

Sure, there may be room for improvement in the optimization department. But from what I have seen of this game - and the devs - that is, and always has been, a priority.