I'm running windows 2000 with AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Socket 939 San Diego.

I am getting to mid game in civ4/warloads and the load times are tremendous.

I was looking at new cpus, but they all seem to be multi-core these days.


Question:

Is it worth buying a multi core cpu, or are you paying for performance only achievable if the o/s and the game designers specifically code for it?

Is civ coded for it?

I'm running windows 2000 with AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Socket 939 San Diego.
Your choices are quite limited with socket 939

Is it worth buying a multi core cpu
Let's put it this way: there's no reason to buy a single-core processor anymore

or are you paying for performance only achievable if the o/s and the game designers specifically code for it?. Is civ coded for it?
Civ4 isn't coded for it. You should still get a performance increase, simply because newer processors are faster than older ones

although like GVBN said civ 4 isn't coded for it you will see a bigger improvment over all not only because newer cpu's run faster and are designed better but those that have tested civ4 for a while have noticed and logged a 5 - 15% speed increase within the game and thats just civ4 your whole pc will run faster.. just bare in mind what your motherboard can support when upgrading,,,, lol

I think its very doubtful the problem you're having is due to you're AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Single-Core Processor. And its its even more doubtful the problem would be solved by running a dual core system which would have very little effect playing Civ IV. There are a lot of issues which cause poor performance in CPU heavy applications and most of them go away with a little cleaning up of the system (eg defragmentation, deleting temp folders, disc scan), and keeping an eye on what programmes are running in the background when you're playing the game. I'm running a AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4GHz single core with little or no slow downs.

I think its very doubtful the problem you're having is due to you're AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Single-Core Processor. And its its even more doubtful the problem would be solved by running a dual core system which would have very little effect playing Civ IV. There are a lot of issues which cause poor performance in CPU heavy applications and most of them go away with a little cleaning up of the system (eg defragmentation, deleting temp folders, disc scan), and keeping an eye on what programmes are running in the background when you're playing the game. I'm running a AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4GHz single core with little or no slow downs.

Thanks for the input.

I am pretty much covered on the cleaning up issues you referenced.

However I have noticed as the games go on, the load times increase steadily.

On one game, a huge pangaea, 10 tribes left, 1750 ad and the load time is up to about 3-4 minutes.