Ive seen a lot of posts about the excessive time time that the AI takes it's turn. I've experianced this problem too, when I can step outside a smoke a cig while I wait for my next turn. I wonder just how much less time I would have to wait If I had a better Computer/Memory/Vidcard?
Well, Ive desided to put together a Benchmark for CivIII. It's a save file that will be used to Benchmark your computer (and report the results) for all to see.
The Criteria for Running the Benchmark are:
All non-essential tasks/system tray items have to be turned off
Audio Preferences:
All Sounds--ON
Music--OFF
Sound Effects--ON
Game Preferences (all ON Except for):
Animate our Manual Moves--OFF
Animate our Automatic Moves--OFF
Animate Friend Moves--OFF
Animate Enemy Moves--OFF
Tutorial Mode--OFF
Always Start Building Previous Built Unit--OFF
Show Civilopedia Book Cursor--OFF
Capital Govenor is Default for New Cities--OFF
Color Blind Help--OFF
If you want to submit a game file for Benchmarking, Please make sure of the following:
That no Units/Improvements will be finished while running the Benchmark.
The AI does not contact you during their turn.
Please Include a discription with the submitted file.
The First Benchmark is a 256x256, Contenents, 70% Ocean, 4 Billion Years, Temparate Map. There are 16 Civ's, in the Late Middle Ages (3 Civ's haven't been 'found' yet, so I don't know if any have been eliminated).
The Information that I'd like to Get from you is:
The Processor Type/Speed/Bus Clock; Motherboard type (if OEM, just state it); Memory Size/type/settings; Vidio Card w/Memory Size, Driver Info; Sound Card Type w/Driver Info; Hard Drive Size/type with OS Virtual Swapfile Memory Settings; Current OS and anything else that might use up System Overhead (Like NIC's, Multimedia Cards, etc.). I'll fairly regularly post a compiled list of this information and the benches.
My Computer:
Dell PII 400Mhz w/OEM MB, Running at 66Mhz Bus; 256 Meg 100Mhz SRAM, Regular timings (can't tweek it
), Using the Latest Legacy Bios; Diamond Fire GL1000 Pro AGP 8 Meg Vid Card (OEM) w/ 4.10.01.2356 Driver; Turtle Beach Montego A3D 64 Voice PCI Sound Card w/ Driver; HD#1-Maxtor 12Gig EIDE on channel 1, HD#2-Western Digital 1.2Gig EIDE on Channel 2 with the OS set for 375 Meg Minimum Swapfile Size (768 for Max) on this drive; Win 98SE; ADSL NIC Card (not connected during benchmark run); 10/100 Full Duplex NIC (connected to the Local Net during Benchmark run).
The Benchmark Times that we want are: Savefile load time and AI Turn Time. If your patiant enough, you can do this three time and average the results.
My Times for this computer are:
Load -- 1 min, 29 sec
AI turn - 4 min, 34 sec
E_T
P.S. I just tried to upload the Zipped Save file and it's 519,040. Marko, could I send it to you or something, so we can start the benchmarking....
