I've been searching for a common thread but its difficult.  I did overclock my CPU and it gave a modest increase in frame not where it should be running at.  I overclocked a Intel Core 2 quad from 2.8 ghz to 3.4ghz.  Funny thing is that there was very little increase in heat. I monitored Cpu usage and i got the first one at 60% max, the second at 20% and the last two in single digits.  Another funny thing is that I can play a movie on my second monitor with no lose in performance.  Its very odd to have a game that chugs but can still watch a movie.  By the way I also have a radeon 5850.  Somehow, this Elemental is just not taking advantage of the computing power. Using resource manager it uses 26% average cpu and 35 threads.

I'm on a 2ghz core2duo, nvidia 8600mgt, 2 gb ram, vista 32bit. Latest drivers.

The start of the game runs great, but i experience the same problem as you all once it gets rolling. Almost unplayable after a few cities are introduced.

- Othello

Here's my list if it helps:

System Idle Process            0 Console                 0        28 kt

SYSTEM                         4 Console                 0       104 kt

smss.exe                     728 Console                 0       160 kt

csrss.exe                    788 Console                 0     2ÿ300 kt

winlogon.exe                 824 Console                 0     1ÿ736 kt

services.exe                 872 Console                 0     1ÿ564 kt

lsass.exe                    884 Console                 0     2ÿ392 kt

ati2evxx.exe                1056 Console                 0       496 kt

svchost.exe                 1072 Console                 0     1ÿ932 kt

svchost.exe                 1152 Console                 0     1ÿ504 kt

svchost.exe                 1348 Console                 0    27ÿ428 kt

svchost.exe                 1388 Console                 0       436 kt

svchost.exe                 1444 Console                 0     1ÿ808 kt

svchost.exe                 1652 Console                 0       492 kt

ati2evxx.exe                1784 Console                 0       712 kt

spoolsv.exe                 1920 Console                 0     1ÿ244 kt

CTAudSvc.exe                1964 Console                 0       236 kt

explorer.exe                 376 Console                 0    64ÿ716 kt

Ctxfihlp.exe                 636 Console                 0       676 kt

VolPanlu.exe                 656 Console                 0     1ÿ712 kt

BJMYPRT.EXE                  672 Console                 0       300 kt

FSM32.EXE                    680 Console                 0     2ÿ908 kt

CTxfispi.exe                 748 Console                 0       576 kt

jusched.exe                  964 Console                 0       300 kt

MOM.exe                      888 Console                 0     3ÿ052 kt

ctfmon.exe                  1092 Console                 0     1ÿ464 kt

msmsgs.exe                  1128 Console                 0     2ÿ084 kt

svchost.exe                 1464 Console                 0       368 kt

CTSVCCDA.EXE                1488 Console                 0       380 kt

dgdersvc.exe                1504 Console                 0       360 kt

fsgk32st.exe                1992 Console                 0       376 kt

FSMA32.EXE                  2012 Console                 0       956 kt

fsgk32.exe                  1516 Console                 0       908 kt

FsUsbExService.Exe           164 Console                 0       260 kt

FSHDLL32.EXE                 928 Console                 0     3ÿ392 kt

hamachi-2.exe                348 Console                 0     1ÿ156 kt

iviRegMgr.exe               1084 Console                 0       464 kt

jqs.exe                     1316 Console                 0     1ÿ396 kt

NBService.exe               2004 Console                 0     1ÿ168 kt

NMSAccessU.exe              2464 Console                 0       180 kt

CCC.exe                     2472 Console                 0     3ÿ868 kt

PnkBstrA.exe                2488 Console                 0       320 kt

PnkBstrB.exe                2504 Console                 0       408 kt

svchost.exe                 2672 Console                 0       692 kt

ULCDRSvr.exe                2732 Console                 0       348 kt

CALMAIN.exe                 2796 Console                 0       460 kt

fsorsp.exe                  3416 Console                 0       856 kt

FNRB32.exe                  3460 Console                 0       380 kt

fssm32.exe                  3512 Console                 0    50ÿ248 kt

fsdfwd.exe                  3552 Console                 0     1ÿ528 kt

FIH32.exe                   3580 Console                 0       288 kt

wmiprvse.exe                3628 Console                 0     2ÿ812 kt

wmiapsrv.exe                4008 Console                 0     1ÿ180 kt

alg.exe                     1276 Console                 0       556 kt

fsav32.exe                  1528 Console                 0     2ÿ124 kt

fraps.exe                    944 Console                 0     6ÿ116 kt

Elemental.exe               2236 Console                 0   682ÿ928 kt

cmd.exe                      776 Console                 0    20ÿ944 kt

wmiprvse.exe                 324 Console                 0    30ÿ360 kt

tasklist.exe                3704 Console                 0     4ÿ808 kt

Btw, game uses GPU in tactical battles for me

Some have. Didn't help.

Has anyone tried redownloading and reinstalling because I'm giving that a try right now.  Maybe it had something to do with the earlier patches doing...something.

No, and as noted I'm not using an Ev- ..an Intel CPU either.  Still on XP sp2 and ancient video drivers too, but that doesn't seem to be the issue

Going to try 1.05 later today and run without many other background processes, and document GPU and CPU usage. I might even update some pieces of software.

I was in the beta. Reinstalled the game when the "gold" version was released, but since then I've just updated it.

Anyone run into this on a clean install of windows?

Just installed Win7 last night and updated everything etc.

Still getting crashes,low memory,and sub par performance on this setup

i7 860

Asus Evo P55D

ATI 5870HD

Intel SSD 80GB

Hello everyone

Same problem as you all have, runing the game on :

Intel Core 2 Duo (like everyone else here, INTEL) 2.20GHz E4500

Nvdia GeForce 9600 GT 1 GB GDDR3

win xp pro sp3

Frame rates normally are around 50-70 but when i look at a 3d object, lets say a city , they go down to 5-15 fps , as lots have posted above, lowering res doesnt help nor lowering other details doesnt help.

Playing the game with "cloth map only" enabled

I am going to try the game on my other computer, this time on a AMD Phenom 2 CPU and ati HD5770 1GB GDDR5 and see how it goes, cu with an update in about 30 min

I tried several things, cutting the antivirus, anything that could take CPU, but nothing works. When I check the other processes, nothing is really hogging the CPU time, only elemental really uses it.

It seems to happen on multicore cpus, but the rest is different for everyone. It's not ATI or NVidia related, it's not system related. From what I see from the different list of processes, and what I tried, nothing in common on these lists is causing the issue.

So far, the only thing which changed performances was the trick given by thebigJ_A, to change the affinity of the Elemental process, so that it runs only on one core. It seems to improve the performances, which should be the other way around, so maybe there is something to look into.

I will keep editing the original post with new details we find.

Yeah, my affinity trick helps, but now that I'm getting bigger cities and stuff, it's not enough. Currently the slow-down is merely very annoying, but I can tell that it'll be damn near unplayable once my towns get a little bigger.  I was really hoping the 0-day patch would help, but it didn't.

And playing on the cloth map is no solution. I'm no graphics whore or anything, but I didn't pay 50 bucks to look at a drawing. I do have faith in SD. Their all-nighter to get the archer hotfix out at like 4AM,(I think 3AM their time) shows they care. I just hope it doesn't take too long!

Is there a way to disable bug logging? Just curious how big impact it has on the performance....