1.0.1.511 update and performance on OSXs

vari

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 25, 2012
Messages
3
I had to give up playing Civ V on my mac partition because it was too slow under OSX (OSX10.6.8 2.4Ghz Core2Duo, 3GB, ATI,RadeonHD2600). Lately dual booting has been really problematic for me (well, technically for the wife) so I was looking to see if the major lag time problems with larger games have been improved at all by update 1.0.1.511.

I'd love to upgrade the computer, but it's only a 2008 model and runs pretty much everything else beautifully.
 
I find that running the game in a window smaller than my Mac's native resolution works wonders. I have a 2006 2.66 Mac Pro with a dual-quad processor upgrade and a Radeon 5770, so I have a bit more grunt than you but the principle should still hold true. My display is 1920x1200, so I play in 1920x1080 or 1600x1000 for particularly demanding maps.

The game still lags while the computer calculates the other players's moves but it does this in Windows under Bootcamp too. However, I can now play on a huge map all the way into the future era with medium-ish graphics settings. If I try to play such a game full-screen, I get bitten by the red and white checkerboards somewhere in the industrial era.

Incidentally, I've just accepted reality and upgraded moved to Lion. It doesn't seem to have affected how the game runs one way or the other.
 
I play mostly multiplayer lately, so it's hard for me to say.. but I have effectively the same computer you have (with 4GB RAM instead of 3). I've noticed with the last patch that the multiplayer connection/syncing issues are effectively gone, even cross-platform. It was nice to have a complete game with only 1 time my opponent being kicked out and having to rejoin - and that was because Steam crashed on his PC.

UI lag is still there for me, especially as more of the map is uncovered; sometimes a unit will take 90-120 seconds to respond to a command. I also still need to run in minimum settings. Both of these problems should be alleviated in (hopefully) the next couple of weeks when Apple allows me to buy a 27" Ivy Bridge iMac with an AMD 7970m.
 
Yep, I'm just waiting for one more generation of Apple to pass so I can justify upgrading. My last upgrade was to be able to run Sims3 stably, I've been chafing at having to do it again so soon

I actually found CivV to be reasonably playable on my bootcamp partition but beyond the simplest, lowest res of games CivV is buggy and painfully slow on my mac partition.

The sad part for me is that Civ's legacy of being a cross platform game is what allowed me to finally abandon PCs entirely at home. Now the lack of support for OSX is making me long for the old days when I could play any game on my beige box.

Anyway, I really appreciate the feedback. I'm going to dl a copy for my mac partition tonight. Going to buy GotY because I'm a sucker for having the newest, most updated version with absolutely every expansion!
 
Yep, I'm just waiting for one more generation of Apple to pass so I can justify upgrading.

Just so you know, your model is actually considered the 2007. The 2008's switched to Nvidia instead of AMD (and had lots of driver problems as a result), and came out about 35 days after I bought mine in March '08.
 
You are totally correct. I bought my iMac refurbished at the end of 2008, I just think of it as an 08. Well, 5 years seems like a plenty long run :)

BTW, so far small games on low graphics (FoW turned up a bit) are running VERY well compared to my last foray into CivV. I wasn't using a steam d/l but a store bought DVD. I haven't gotten into late game yet, where I'm expecting problems, but the performance in this version is much more stable (no crashes, no screen artifacts, and no glacial slowdowns for simple animations which pretty much defined the game for me last year.
 
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