Question regarding animation lag between turns

[JeffZero]

Howdy folks. Obviously I'm new here but I promise to do my best not to come across as a complete moron. I'm a polite, easygoing guy on the net so let's all be civil even if I fail at that.

I recently bought a new computer. Actually, it's literally the first PC I've ever owned. Always been going with economy-grade laptops. Have a friend who's majoring in Computer Science so he helped me build it. I'll give you the specs in a sec.

Question: Do animations always lag in-between turns? I'm aware that there's a hell of a lot being processed while the AI is taking its turns; I've been playing Civ since the second game so I realize just how much is being calculated and all that. I'm just new to the world of gaming rigs and I was sort of half-expecting that to go away. The birds will stutter, the workers will stutter and so forth. It's not a game-breaker, not by a long, long shot. Not at all. I just wanna make sure it's normal.

Anyway, here are the specs:

i7 2600-k
GeForce GTX 560 Ti
16GB DDR3 RAM
120 GB SSD and 1TB HDD
Windows 7 Home Edition

[oblio]

Doesn't sound normal. Sometimes units will stick and appear to be running on the spot but its rare. Most of the time the game is very smooth with turn to turn time needed but rendering is straight forward. You have a great setup, overkill for this game. May want to check connections or cabling. What monitor?

[JeffZero]

Hmm, perhaps my monitor has everything to do with it, come to think. I have a Samsung 32" 720p TV as my monitor for the time being; spent a lot of dough on the rig itself so I'm doubling my TV as a monitor.

Do you think that might have something to do with it?

[AeEsBii]

Is your PC connected to the TV by HDMI? What resolution do you run the game at?

[JeffZero]

Yep, HDMI. And native -- 1366x768.

[AeEsBii]

Do you have any tools for monitoring your GPU temperature while you game?

Also, have you tried setting shadows and tessellation down one quality setting?

[oblio]

Hmm, perhaps my monitor has everything to do with it, come to think. I have a Samsung 32" 720p TV as my monitor for the time being; spent a lot of dough on the rig itself so I'm doubling my TV as a monitor.

Do you think that might have something to do with it?

Seem to recall from a prior thread that a 720p TV was not ideal and maybe not fully compatible with the game. Can you hook up a regular "computer" monitor to see if the issue goes away?

[AeEsBii]

It's not necessarily 720p that's the issue, but 1280x720 resolution screens. I play on a 720p TV but it has a 1360x768 native resolution. Civ V needs a minimum of height of 768, which is the resolution the OP is running at.

I'm suspecting that he's got everything turned up to 11, and Civ V has some settings that are kind of overly ambitious for a game, even at this resolution and a card like the GTX 560 Ti. If knocking shadows and tessellation down a notch doesn't help then it might be hyper-threading, although Civ V doesn't seem to be one of the games that has a bad interaction with HT. Then again, a lot of people with rigs like this run at 1920x1080 or similar resolutions, which has more load on the GPU than the CPU. It could be that with HT there are periodic drops to, picking a number, 30 FPS. If you're chugging along at 60 FPS at 1360x768 and drop to 30 for a moment, you'll see that. If you're averaging 35 FPS at 1920x1080 and drop to 30 for a moment, you're less likely to notice.

This is all speculation until the OP tries some stuff and gets back to us, of course.

[PostConsumerWat]

I run into a lot of laggy animations between turns as well. My frames per second drop to zero at the end of the turn from 60, until the AI, or whatever, takes its time... and it doesn't really seem to ever stress my cpu all that much. People in other threads have mentioned the problem, but it is often difficult to find people talking about it.

I have contacted support about the issue. Who knows, maybe there is something that could be tweaked. And if there is nothing wrong with our systems, at least it contributes to a larger sample for the team at 2K to work with.

[compwiz1202]

Most of the time, if GPU usage is much higher than CPU usage, the GPU is very obsolete compared to the CPU. Graphic settings need to be toned down, or a GPU upgrade is in order. I know my GPU is pretty much always like 98%-100% usage, but I think my CPU is around 50% or more during AI turns. I will have to check that for sure tonight. I also get around 28 FPS, and I think it drops later in the game during AI turns or if I try to scroll fast. I will probably turn down shadows and tesselation since I don't usually notice a quality difference definitely notice an FPS and performance difference. I could probably live with anything turned down except the lower leader and fog of war settings, and possibly the ones that affect the water.

Does anyone not have GPU around 100% all the time, and if so, what kind of GPU? Thanks.

[donald23]

My GPU only goes above 60% when loading a leaderscreen, and then very shortly. Most of the time it stays between 25% and 50%

I use a MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II/OC (this one: http://us.msi.com/product/vga/N560GT...ozr-II-OC.html)

[codekiddy]

For GPU is normal to go to high temperatures while gaming, sometimes even to 120 C.

[oblio]

For GPU is normal to go to high temperatures while gaming, sometimes even to 120 C.

Maybe you should start your own thread but no, you have a cooling problem. Maybe your GPU fan is not working properly, maybe its bad case cooling. What are your CPU and case temps? Running at high temps may damage your GPU.