What would be the best to upgrade?

Chee

Warlord
Joined
Aug 7, 2010
Messages
118
Location
U.K.
My specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 6000+
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD5670 512mb
RAM: 4GB DDR2

I can afford to upgrade one aspect of my machine. The game runs reasonably well on medium settings (though it defaults to high) although pretty sluggish between turns, especially when things get busy.

Am I right in thinking that the best upgrade for CiV would be to change my processor for a quad core?
 
A CPU upgrade is always nice, but in your case you'll not notice any difference neither in CiV nor in the majority of other games, as hardly any of them takes advantage of a quad core. And your dual core is already pretty good/decent considering your socket limitation.
More RAM won't do anything.

Your graphics card however is actually really poor - there are passively cooled versions of it^^
What's your display resolution? 1280x1024? If it's higher any game might be really painful already with that. However, upgrading the GPU mainly makes things prettier - it definitely won't decrease the turn times for CiV.

Summary:
If you must upgrade something, then the GPU it is. I don't recommend upgrading that PC though, but saving for a fully new rig instead. Especially if you're mainly concerned about CiV, then upgrading here is a waste of money.
 
Thanks for the advice man!

My display resolution is as you said. The game is certainly playable, it's mainly the turn times that is the issue.

I think you might be right, getting a new rig would be better than upgrading for me.

Thanks again! :goodjob:
 
CiV actually benefits the most from CPU, and scales linearly with increased clock speed and number of cores on Intel CPUs, as well as getting improved performance from hyperthreading (one of very few games that does).

It also definitely uses up more than 4 Gb ram, together with caching my system ram usage goes up to 7.6 Gb while playing CiV.

Best upgrades for this game in order of importance are:

An Intel quad core overclocked to 4 Ghz, ideally a minimum ok a 2500k
8 Gb ram
Decent DX11 graphics card around the ATI 5850, or Geforce GTX 460 at least (currently a 7770-7850 should be enough).
Loading the game from an SSD.

That's if you want to gain the absolute best possible performance with the game maxed out. CiV remains one of, if not the most demanding PC game to run at max settings. Graphics cards don't make as much impact as CPU does to performance in this game.
 
CiV actually benefits the most from CPU, and scales linearly with increased clock speed and number of cores on Intel CPUs, as well as getting improved performance from hyperthreading (one of very few games that does).

It also definitely uses up more than 4 Gb ram, together with caching my system ram usage goes up to 7.6 Gb while playing CiV.

Best upgrades for this game in order of importance are:

An Intel quad core overclocked to 4 Ghz, ideally a minimum ok a 2500k
8 Gb ram
Decent DX11 graphics card around the ATI 5850, or Geforce GTX 460 at least (currently a 7770-7850 should be enough).
Loading the game from an SSD.

That's if you want to gain the absolute best possible performance with the game maxed out. CiV remains one of, if not the most demanding PC game to run at max settings. Graphics cards don't make as much impact as CPU does to performance in this game.

What he said. I would like to point out that the GPU does make a difference. Unless one likes to watch the grey turn to blurry graphics and then with a final scan finally one can see the full resolution. If one still could find one, a Geforce GT 430 will work as long as it has 1Gig DDR3 memory. Although it may be hard to find, since it is several years old technology now. People are still complaining about the GT 560, so you may want to avoid that one.

Also I have gone the cheap route and I am using a Sandisk 16 Gig thumb drive. It does as well as a more expensive SSD drive, as long as you have a good motherboard with a great chipset. Depending on how many games you have in steam, you need to use a SSD or thumb drive at least twice as big as your steam folder. You definetly want to stay below 3/4 full. Having a "full" drive may be causing some of the issues like crashing.

The only thing that I have noticed different from DX9 to DX11 is one can see (not only) the shadow of aircraft, but one can see the "colored" reflection of the aircraft or ship sails in the water. If one turns off combat, it is a mute point any way.
 
I have found a potential new machine. How would this set up run CiV?

CPU: Intel Core i5 2400
RAM: 4GB DDR3 1333mhz
GFX: AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB
 
Have decided to go for:

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500k
GFX: AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1333mhz

Hoping to see nice improvements in CiV (and other games).
 
Hi,

let me put my question also here:

I play on tiny/small map at quick/normal speed.
Can 2GB RAM be enough?

I have i5 760 / Radeon 5770 combo
 
Hi,

let me put my question also here:

I play on tiny/small map at quick/normal speed.
Can 2GB RAM be enough?

I have i5 760 / Radeon 5770 combo

If you try the demo, and it works for you, then a small map at normal should work just fine. From the games that I have played, it is after about the 60th city (including AI) things start to bog down. Going for the highest city and population count will definetly slow down a 2 Gig machine, unless you have a second hard drive due to the huge swap file needed by Windows to compensate for the lack of actual memory.
 
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