I'm running the minimum system and started with 2gB of memory. Civ 5 ran ok (on strategy screen) so I wondered what difference another 2gB would make.
BIG difference - the game runs slightly faster but the swapping in/out of the hard disk no longer makes my PC unusable when I close Civ 5. With 2gB it took about five minutes before the computer was usable for other things and I couldn't have Civ 5 running with anything else or the "else" would be too slow to use.
Now Civ 5 closes instantly, or it can be left running while I run other software without any evidence it is resident.
Interestingly, scraping by with this minimum system, I haven't had any crashes. (Athlon dual core, WinXP, ActiveX 9c)
So if you are thinking of getting more memory, do it.
BIG difference - the game runs slightly faster but the swapping in/out of the hard disk no longer makes my PC unusable when I close Civ 5. With 2gB it took about five minutes before the computer was usable for other things and I couldn't have Civ 5 running with anything else or the "else" would be too slow to use.
Now Civ 5 closes instantly, or it can be left running while I run other software without any evidence it is resident.
Interestingly, scraping by with this minimum system, I haven't had any crashes. (Athlon dual core, WinXP, ActiveX 9c)
So if you are thinking of getting more memory, do it.