I have a Pentium Dual Core (E5200 Wolfdale) and some really poor graphics. I know everyone will tell me it's time to upgrade and get a quad-core but I'm cheap and I wonder if my gameplay will still be smooth if I just upgrade my graphics. Has anyone else tried playing Civ5 with a Pentium Dual Core, and how is it?

What are your graphics?

What are your graphics?

Integrated Geforce 7100. Which ran Civ4 beautifully, the only problem it ever had was stuttering during the wonder animations.

Integrated Geforce 7100. Which ran Civ4 beautifully, the only problem it ever had was stuttering during the wonder animations.

In that case it makes more sense to get a better video card. CPU is good enough to play it, but not good enough for maximum graphics settings.
If your board supports this, you could try to overclock the CPU (my E5200 runs at 3.3 GHz), this woud help a lot ;)
I would recommend either a ATI HD5670 or nvidia GTS450. If buying a card specifically for Civ5, you won't need anything more powerful.
If you keep your CPU at default speed, and/or are tight with cash, HD5550/5570 or GT240 are the cheapest new cards that make any sense to buy.

I actually do wonder how low we can go on minimum settings, because I want to recommend the game to a few friends but I don't think it'll run on their computers.

In that case it makes more sense to get a better video card. CPU is good enough to play it, but not good enough for maximum graphics settings.
If your board supports this, you could try to overclock the CPU (my E5200 runs at 3.3 GHz), this woud help a lot ;)
I would recommend either a ATI HD5670 or nvidia GTS450. If buying a card specifically for Civ5, you won't need anything more powerful.
If you keep your CPU at default speed, and/or are tight with cash, HD5550/5570 or GT240 are the cheapest new cards that make any sense to buy.

Thanks! That's the second time someone has recommended the 5670, so I'll probably go with that.

I have an HP Slimline so overclocking would probably cause some heating issues. Hopefully it will run Civ5 fine at 2.5GHz. It is kind of a Core 2 Duo anyway, the difference is just branding really, and 1 MB of L2 cache.

Thanks! That's the second time someone has recommended the 5670, so I'll probably go with that.

I have an HP Slimline so overclocking would probably cause some heating issues. Hopefully it will run Civ5 fine at 2.5GHz. It is kind of a Core 2 Duo anyway, the difference is just branding really, and 1 MB of L2 cache.

Hold it! You might need a low profile card, in that case its 5570 for you, still a very respectable card for Civ5.

Hold it! You might need a low profile card, in that case its 5570 for you, still a very respectable card for Civ5.

Thanks, sorry I wasn't too clear. I'm looking at this thing:

http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_parts.asp?PRID=18460

Apparently this is the only retailer that has it and they want to rape me on the shipping costs but that's okay, as long as I can play Civ5 this weekend.

Here's the other recommendation (http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036211752&postcount=4444), though the guy prefaced himself by saying "This is not a recommendation". He understands the system I'm working with and my desire to minimize heat and noise.

And I understand this is an experiment, since nobody else seems to have used this card yet. Someone has to be the first, right? I'm willing to take the risk with the expensive shipping costs.

You're CPU will be fine indeed. I run on an even older cpu (e2180) and the game runs fine. My graphics card is a somewhat old Geforce 9600GT

I thought I should come back here and report that the HD 5670 works great! I honestly haven't even gotten around to putting the case back on my system so I can't tell you how hot it gets but the game looks fantastic with this thing.