Studder in other 3D applications after Playing Gal Civ II

from GalCiv2 Forums
Forgive me if this is not a real BUG,it may just be coincidence.However 2 times I've noticed after playing Gal Civ II when I played Flight Sim 2002 from microsoft or Battlefeild 2,there is a noticable consistant studder in framerate approximatly every 2 seconds.The only way I found to fix this is to reinstall my display drivers for my ATI X850 Xt Platinum card.

My question is,is it possible that your software is doing something to my display driver to cause this?If I never use the frame rate throttle would this help?

By the way,GREAT game.The Torians are still too overpowering in Beta 2.The other races don't seem to have a chance.
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Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd leave the frame throttle on. I believe it keeps your framerate from going to high and crashing the game due to video card overheating.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The frame rate throttle keeps newer cards from overheating - it has nothing to do with rendering. You should not mess with it if you have a newer card.

The game software cannot 'do something' to the actual driver software files. They may not play together well, but that is different. ATI Display Settings could be changed, but you should be able to check on that in the ATI Control Center before and after. You may have to change things like anti-aliasing for each game. Each game may require certain settings to run optimally; that is why ATI made the Control Center so it was easier to adjust on a game by game basis.

It could also be that the Binks software that runs the video is not acting right if those games use Bink also to run the videos. That is another place to check.

I have sometimes found it is convenient to make a separate Windows Profile for each game I want to play at times - that way I adjust the settings in that profile to maxiize for that game. I do a switch user or log out and back in to that profile for playing the game.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the info.I did check my Control Center and everything seemed to be on the proper setting.

I don't care if video studders so much, it is the actual consistant Game studders that bother me.

Something weird is happening.I did try turning off certain features to see if that would help,but the only thing that helped was reinstalling the drivers.Thanks again.If anyone else has info I'd appreciate it,if not maybe it is just coincidence.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
one possible thing that could be happening is that GalCiv (or more likely the video driver) is not clearing out the video memory that GalCiv has been using, so when your new app is loading it isn't getting the full memory on the graphics card to work with, all at once.

so what it may be doing is loading as much as it can, when you start your new app, and leaving the rest in system memory, or on disk. and then when something is required by the app that wasn't lucky enough to have made it onto the card, there would be a stutter as the GalCiv content is evicted from the video memory and the new apps content is loaded.

but you say only a full driver re-install would help?

a complete shutdown and cold boot (rather than just a warm restart) didn't help? that would take care of it, if it was a memory allocation problem... so if that didn't help, then never mind...
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks pedexing,but I did try that.I would try to reinstall the driver unless I exausted the other obvious possibilities.Because i thought about that too.