Civ 4 getting slow? Help?

[Biohazard]

Hey guys, need to get this sorted as it be ******* up my karma.

Playing Civ 4, its normally fine up until the point where I reveal the whole map - then it grinds to a halt (not quite but you get my drift) and can take a good couple of minutes to process a turn (note, I only play on massive map otherwise whats the fun)

Specs

2.66 @ 2.88 P4 533 (144fsb?)
512Mb PC3200
100Gb ATA 133
Leadtek Geforce 3 64Mb

My question is, which is the weakest link? Personally I doubt its the AGP, with the amount the HDD activity light is blinking I am thinking up the ram to a gig? failing that get a small rapid SCSI for it?

I just want to have the game play smooth when it comes to stealth bombers and nukes!

advice?




oh and a side note, does anyone have a release date on the expansion pack?

 

[Biohazard]

I'd rather upgrade than play little games to be honest, yeah it is the largest map and I tend to go for large land mass so by the end there is some 75 cities - I hate small maps!

What do you think would bring the best benefits for Civ (ram upgrade is already planned);

HT processor
or
SCSI I/O (I have a 10Gb 10K drive only need card)

 

[Biohazard]

I'll have a look in bios tonight although I'm not holding my breath don't think 845i is that advanced lol. I'm sure I can get it touching 3Ghz its never complained to me once after months of 2.88 but to do so I really need better cooling and an abit mobo (soft menu mucho missed)... all in the pipeline.

Yeah its already above that commit charge wise I have been trying to watch what its doing! I know I need 1Gb. I'm suprised that no one recommends SCSI would help loading times and data fetching?!?


PlatinumFX - lol I have my master plan normally from 1200AD onwards

 

[Biohazard]

memory is a given, SCSI is coming after that as last time I used it opposed to IDE the performance increase was noticable. I close as much as I can in task manager

cheers for the advice