What are the real minimum system requirements?

[joshofet]

I am running CotN on a PC just meeting the minimal system requirements: 800MHz, 128MB RAM, 32Mb graphics card with T&L (GeForce2), full DX9 support (dxdiag=OK), 3GB free HD, Win98SE, but I can't get any decent gameplay in Bubastis. Tutorials and Nekhen mission went more or less OK, but when I get to playing Bubastis, 80-90% of the time my computer is swapping to hard disk, and won't respond to the controls. Still trying to control the game often results in a PC crash and restart, only by building and moving in pause mode can that be prevented. Hitting pause takes up to 10 seconds for a reaction, an (auto)save takes 30-40 seconds before the game resumes. Not playable. The patch seems to make things worse.

I have consulted the tech forum and set all possible in and out game options, with only marginal effect. It has taken me a lot of time, and I'm almost out of suggestions, other than buy a bigger, cf newer, PC.

Frankly I suspect the minimum system requirements as posted on the game box are not correct. So my question is, is anybody running CotN on a "low end" machine, as defined by the min sys reqs, and are you able to enjoy the game? If so, what are your specs, and if applicable, what particular settings, not generally mentioned, were needed to accomplish that?

[mouse]

Well I'll tell you the same thing here that I told you on HG tech forum. You do not have enough free space on your hard drive. Windows needs at least 20% of the drive space to be free the move files around (operating system files). Hard drive free space is an issue with all earlier city builders as it with CotN. They are very demanding on space not space to install but in some cases even than can be an issue.

[joshofet]

Yes mouse, you may be right, and I will test, but the min sys specs say 1GB free HD space, so I'm 2GB above. My HD is 20GB. Does the game run on a HD of 10GB with 3GB free? In that case repartitioning the HD would be a solution.

What may be important to mention is that I'm running at 1024*760*16, at lower resolutions I can't read the small text in the overseer windows. It seems at 800*600*16 the game can run on a low end machine. I'll try.

[Mayati]

Mine is above requirements but still a low end machine by today's standards... when the city gets large or I start out with a large map I have problems.

I've found what helps me the best is turning off the music. Sad since its such wonderful music but you do what you gotta do till you can upgrade.

[Hans Schroeder]

As far as disk space being a concern. Bubastis is also one of the more demanding scenarios hardware-wise, with its network of rivers. A min spec machine will be pressed to perform well on the most demanding maps. That said, as you experienced in Nubt, the performance should be acceptable for most of the scenarios, and turning down the resolution should also help there.

We did extensive testing to evaluate the performance on the min spec machine and to see what we could do to improve performance on low-end systems. The reccomendations for improving performance can be found at http://www.immortalcities.com/cotn/gameinfo/support.php?id=1009. The suggestions can improve performance quite a bit.

[Vizier]

800MHz, 128MB RAM, 32Mb graphics card with T&L (GeForce2), full DX9 support (dxdiag=OK), 3GB free HD, Win98SE

Hmm your system really is at the low end of the requirements. An inexpensive upgrade might be to add more ram (128mb just isn't enough IMHO).

For reference, here's my specs:
1.3GB Athlon processor
384mb ram
geforce 2 mx 32 MB
Abit KT7A Raid motherboard
40GB hard drive (using IDE Raid); roughly 20GB free space
52x optical drive
DX9.0c
Win98 (first edition)

My system is overclocked to the max. I built it myself and spent a couple of weeks tweaking it. It's 3 1/2 year old now. CotN runs pretty good. But when my city starts to get large, I do notice some stuttering. When I first load a save, it stutters pretty bad at first, then settles down. I run the game at 1152 x 864, 32 bit, all settings to the max.

[joshofet]

We did extensive testing to evaluate the performance on the min spec machine and to see what we could do to improve performance on low-end systems. The reccomendations for improving performance can be found at http://www.immortalcities.com/cotn/gameinfo/support.php?id=1009. The suggestions can improve performance quite a bit.Did all that and more, no effect, swapping remains the main activity. Bubastis is not playable on my min specs machine. Could you play (and enjoy) that scenario at yours?

A new development are (almost) white screens at the empire map and during loading. DxDiag.txt attached if that helps.

BTW My main concern is not to get CotN running on my machine, though it would be nice, but to assess the actual min specs, hence the title.

[sitearm]

Joshofet: Your DxDiag.txt is missing the information on your disk drives. There should be a line like this:
------------------------
Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives
------------------------

Would you rerun DxDiag and be sure to include that information tab? Need to know:

Drive: C:
Free Space: ____ GB
Total Space: ____ GB
File System: ____
Model: _______________

...DxDiag.txt attached if that helps...

[mouse]

Sitearm his statement is that he has 4gbs free space of 20 gbs on his C drive :( He's running Win98 SE I believe. At least that's the information he provided on HG CB tech support site :D

[joshofet]

Mouse is correct indeed, the actual numbers are 3.73Gb free on a 19.8Gb disk, only one disk installed, single partition, FAT32. System is Windows 98SE. Need more?

I'm aware my sound drivers are prehistoric, but I have sound off. Still it seems some sound gets through, could that be a problem?

I tried other missions, now running Asyut. Resolution 800*600*16 is OK now, sound off as stated. Only one crash when I had the game on pause for a prolongued period. Slow but feasible. Still white screens in the game load and empire map. I do have the cities and the text though, so I manage.

My question remains, can you play Bubastis one your min specs machine?

[grevensher]

Min requirements in a game ususaly means it will play, but not pretty. Until I updated my machine from a 900 Mhz to a 2.0 Ghz, Most of my games would play at 3-4 FPS even though I surpassed the requirments in many. If you invest 40 Dollars, or 35 Euros on an extra 128 Mb of Memory you will see a notable difference, especially since these days 256MB of memory is the bare minimum for normal system operation.

[joshofet]

For WindowsXP you definitely need 256Mb, Win98 should run with 128Mb. Still I guess you are correct here, and an update in RAM would be the simplest way to solve the problem. IMHO then that should be the min sys req, I'm aware I cannot expect the game to run smoothly even then, but now it is simply not playable at all under current low end reqs, at least not in Bubastis.

[Vizier]

For WindowsXP you definitely need 256Mb, Win98 should run with 128Mb. Still I guess you are correct here, and an update in RAM would be the simplest way to solve the problem. IMHO than that should be the min sys req, I'm aware I cannot expect the game to run smoothly even then, but now it is simply not playable at all under current low end reqs, at least not in Bubastis.

joshofet,

My son has a computer pretty close to your spec's. I bought him a copy of CotN but he has not installed it yet (he's too busy with Doom 3 on his other computer). I will try to talk him into loading up CotN. I have my final Bubastis save he can load. We'll see how it runs. It may be a few days. I will get back to you when/if it happens.

Vizier

[Vizier]

joshofet, I just had another thought. Have you checked your system for spyware/adware/virii, etc? That can wreak havoc on a machine.

Viz

[joshofet]

I did, it's a stand-alone machine, which never has been connected to any network, except walknet, even that very sparsely. Still, you never know. No virus that I could detect. I also copied several executables to a machine that has recent virus data updates, and they all were clean. Other games/missions run fine, just Bubastis in CotN is giving troubles. You can tell your son CotN is great game, he certainly should try it! :D

[Vizier]

I did, it's a stand-alone machine, which never has been connected to any network, except walknet, even that very sparsely. Still, you never know. No virus that I could detect. I also copied several executables to a machine that has recent virus data updates, and they all were clean. Other games/missions run fine, just Bubastis in CotN is giving troubles. You can tell your son CotN is great game, he certainly should try it! :D

Sounds like your system is clean. Believe me I have been trying to get him to play CotN. He will, he just wants to finish D3. He played Pharaoh. Ive shown him CotN on my machine and he was impressed.

Viz

[Vizier]

joshofet,

Well as it turns out, my son does not run Windows on the computer I spoke of. He's using linux, so no CotN on that machine :(

Viz

[joshofet]

Pity. At least he knows what he's missing.

I looked whether I could organise some extra memory, but of all the five 128MB RAM machines I have at home, this is the only one with 133MHz, so I can't combine. Maybe I can dig some up elsewhere.

I played Asyut and Abu without problems, Djedu seems to run fine, but Men-nefer runs into trouble when the flood rises high, and several dry channels fill up. That seems to agree with the remark of Hans Schroeder, my low end PC apparantly won't stand water. If only CotN would allow me to build dams, or change hippo's into beavers, I could solve the problem without having to adjust the hardware.

I keep having the problem with the background picture in the loading screen and the Empire map not appearing, but I guess I will have to post elsewhere to have reactions. Apparantly not many players with a real min specs machine decided to buy the game, a wise decision, I keep hoping to find somebody who does.

Fortunately I can play some missions, and thus partake in the design and testing of contest maps that are planned for the near future. Moreover, to turn a disavantage into a benefit, I can tell whether they can be done on a min specs machine! I'll keep you posted if there are any developments.

[Hans Schroeder]

Try this solution. (http://www.immortalcities.com/cotn/gameinfo/support.php?id=1004) If it doesn't solve your problems, let us know.

[Raccoon_TOF]

Unfortunately, while using 32-bit color will fix the background issues, it will also cause more performance issues on a low-end-video system...

[Hans Schroeder]

The performance difference between 800x600x16 and 800x600x32 are minimal. Having tested both on the min sys I can say that the performance loss due to 32 bit color is slight compared with the other factors involved.

[Raccoon_TOF]

Discovered another potentially huge performance hit which I didn't notice on my system till I hit about 3k population...plazas. Apparantly workers still check plazas placed under buildings to see if they are valid path options...at least that is my guess. I do know that the same city layout with all of the plazas under buildings removed runs SIGNIFICANTLY faster with a large population than with the plazas in place...unfortunately it isn't as visually appealing to me personally. However, this may help you run larger cities on a lower end system...

[joshofet]

I managed to get rid of the white screens. I did a driver update and changed to 800x600x32, to no avail. What did help was a suggestion by Max1, in a private message in another thread, to set the screen resolution in the desktop to the same settings as the one in the game. When setting both the desktop and the CotN graphics settings to 800x600x32 I got the background images, at 800x600x16 background was white.

Max1 reported he was running the game on a PC just below specs, CPU of 670MHz, other specs same as mine, same video card. He can run the larger missions, while I still have problems with game crashes, also after following his suggestion above.