Your Civ Environment

I play on a laptop, so I can bring it along with me on long car trips. Otherwise I don't really play at one spot.

Mine is like this:



Its wher all my gaming happens.

I must say, that's an impressive setup. I really like the collection of heat sink/fans to the left.

Nice looking computer case, too, but your keyboard lights should be blue to match it. Just sayin'.

Most of the time, just sitting at my laptop at a table next to the window where I can look up to see a slice of our quirky little Austin neighborhood. If the weather's nice I'll let a little breeze in. A beer or glass of wine is occasionally to be found within reach, though more often it's coffee. I'm usually the first one up on weekends and it's nice to start the day with some leisurely empire building.

At my desk with snack wrappers and empty Coke cans scattered everywhere.

A one inch pressure relieving cushion and a hot cup of tea

My setup/environment in my old apartment.


After moving (and getting a bit more space ) I now use a 3 x 22'' monitor setup, which is excellent for my other game Arma (eyefinity on a 100$ AMD 7790 is surprisingly good)
Also useful when watching TV while playing game while browsing the net OR
when Modding : 1 for game, 1 for editor and 1 for resources (net, folders etc) OR
when Daytrading : 1 for net, 1 for stockcharts and 1 for tradescreen.

Thats the setup, the environment on the other hand....
1 (almost) 3 year old son running around, constantly interrupting with curious questions or requests that I join on the floor and play. Has birthday on Wednesday.
1 (almost) 9 month pregnant wife, constantly asking for help, as her stomach is in the way. Is due on 23 of september.
Near Future...
1 (almost born) little babygirl, screaming for food, diperchange, milk etc.

Not much modding is being done here now...

edit. well, I have made a little bit CIV VIP related lately

My PC is red lighted actually, its just that the graphics cards came with annoying blue leds built in.

I've got a few I'm accustomed to, including my bedroom with my new(ish) desktop, although I would say that the ideal environment is on a coffee table in the afternoon or night with a glass of nice ice water nearby and nobody else around.

vincentz said:

My setup/environment in my old apartment.

Spoiler :

After moving (and getting a bit more space ) I now use a 3 x 22'' monitor setup, which is excellent for my other game Arma (eyefinity on a 100$ AMD 7790 is surprisingly good)
Also useful when watching TV while playing game while browsing the net OR
when Modding : 1 for game, 1 for editor and 1 for resources (net, folders etc) OR
when Daytrading : 1 for net, 1 for stockcharts and 1 for tradescreen.

Click to expand...

You're a daytrader? Cool!

I once worked at a brokerage. Not as a trader, just the IT Superguy. But the traders (mostly) knew Who Takes Care Of Them™.

And that's when I first purchased Civ IV via Steam

Aanyways, I'm saving up to build a new gaming rig. Playing graphics-heavy games on laptops simply sucks.

Here's my planned setup:

• 16 GB of RAM
• 240 GB SSD just for OS
• 500 GB HD for Steam & stuff
• Windows 7 x64
• A Good Enough™ VGA card -- I gravitate to AMD's Radeon series
• AMD-based mobo

The only thing I haven't made up my mind yet: Whether I go with dual 19" monitors or single 32" monitor (BenQ's BL3200PT has Tom's Hardware gushing with praise)

pepoluan said:

Here's my planned setup:

• 16 GB of RAM - Overkill
• 240 GB SSD just for OS - Samsung EVO
• 500 GB HD for Steam & stuff - 1 TB - they're cheap these days
• Windows 7 x64 - Fantastic idea
• A Good Enough™ VGA card -- I gravitate to AMD's Radeon series - Another fantastic idea
• AMD-based mobo - Yet another fantastic idea

The only thing I haven't made up my mind yet: Whether I go with dual 19" monitors or single 32" monitor (BenQ's BL3200PT has Tom's Hardware gushing with praise)

Click to expand...

19" monitors will limit you. If you have the desk space, a pair of 23" or 24" ones would be a nice addition to your environment. I use 24" monitors, and they're great.

A good choice for a graphics card is the Sapphire R9 280X. Yummy.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with Lemon Merchant's advice. With the price difference between a 500 GB and a 1 TB hard drive being so little, and it being a pain to transfer hard drives, it's silly to go with 500 GB these days. 25% more gets you double the storage.

I agree with going with AMD since you mentioned saving up, and that will save you some money. Cutting the RAM back to 8 GB will also save some money. RAM is fairly expensive currently, and that's easy to add later if need be. The Crucial MX series is another good choice for SSD. I don't know if it or the Samsung EVO will be less expensive in Jakarta.

You ought to be able to install a few programs on the SSD in addition to the OS. I'd install Steam itself on the SSD, since it starts considerably more quickly on an SSD, and then you can install games to either the SSD or hard drive as space allows (it's easy to install Steam games on a secondary drive nowadays).

I'd be inclined to go with one bigger monitor for gaming, all else being equal. Two smaller ones is probably better for multi-tasking though. So it depends on your priorities.

Thanks for the suggestions! The 500 GB HD is actually a spare drive I have, so I don't actually have to buy a hard drive. That's why I splurge on the RAM

As to monitors, unfortunately I don't have the space for two 24" monitors... that's why the options are only 2 x 19" or a single 32". Any larger and I'll get dirty looks from the homemaker (read: wife).

PS: Unfortunately, can't seem to find Samsung EVO or Crucial MX drives easily... either Kingston HyperX 3K ($203) or SanDisk Extreme II ($251)


.

There is no such thing like "too much RAM" Get 16 GB - it might sound like overkill now but in a few years this might even be sub-standard

I wish I could afford a setup like You guys have All I got is 17'' monitor, some basic speakers, 250 GB HDD, 2GB RAM, 512 MB VRAM, AMD Dual Core x64 and all this on a small, rather clutered desk with lots of coffee mugs and stuff on it xD ehhh... one day .... !! xD Well Your set-ups put me to shame but Im not ashamed of what I got - This comp has been with me through thick and thin and I love my little "beast" xD Still can squeeze enough juice from the little guy to play Oblivion with ENB and Realism Invictus on a world map with the /3GB switch trick

btw. I wonder - what are You guys using dual and even triple monitors for ? Sounds to me like ekstravagance Unless of course there's a reason for this like working on one and gaming on the second or working on 2 or 3 ?

Dual monitor is for your neck health. That's it. When you have to turn your head to see stuffs on the other end of the other screen, you are less likely get neck problem by fixing your head position in one place for a long time w/o noticing.

AdamCrock said:

btw. I wonder - what are You guys using dual and even triple monitors for ? Sounds to me like ekstravagance Unless of course there's a reason for this like working on one and gaming on the second or working on 2 or 3 ?

Click to expand...

I love two monitors because I can code/work on one while opening a pair of reference on the other.

However, the 32" monitor is big enough to do all that in one monitor: a half-screen for work, and 2 quarter-screens for references.

And gaming on a 32" screen is simply awesome

pepoluan said:

I love two monitors because I can code/work on one while opening a pair of reference on the other.

However, the 32" monitor is big enough to do all that in one monitor: a half-screen for work, and 2 quarter-screens for references.

And gaming on a 32" screen is simply awesome

Click to expand...

Well I have to agree to that Not to mention watching movies ! ^^

Might as well go with the 500 GB if you've already got it! I'm not familiar with the HyperX 3K. AnandTech indicates it uses SandForce controllers, which are generally the low end these days... but I'm not sure how much that actually mattered. Five years ago, low-end controllers in SSDs could mean that sometimes they'd grind to a halt and be slower than hard drives. Nowadays... I'm not sure the difference is really noticeable. The SanDisk is a pretty high end drive, so it's no wonder it's a fair amount more expensive. Assuming they're both 240/256 GB, neither one is a great bargain.

I don't think now is the right time for no-such-thing-as-too-much-RAM. While historically it was the case, nowadays 8 GB is plenty for most tasks, including most if not all games. And RAM is fairly expensive right now, close to 3x what it was per GB 2-3 years ago. Admittedly, my work laptop did benefit from going from 8 to 12 GB. But for a gaming rig, I'd recommend starting at 8.

My commiserations on the older setup, AdamCrock. Reminds me of when I first started playing Civ4, on a Pentium 4 2.66 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. Naturally, I wanted to play on Huge maps, and naturally they performed very poorly indeed. Upgrading to 1 GB helped a fair amount, but it wasn't really until I got a newer computer with 2 GB that Civ4 was happy. I am curious though, does the /3 GB switch actually work with 2 GB of RAM? I suppose it would with virtual memory, but I know from past experience how slow Civ4 can get when hundreds of megabytes of virtual memory are in use.

I only have one monitor, a 24", at home. I have a fairly small desk, so two 24" monitors would leave little space for anything else. On occasion I have put an old 16" CRT next to it, but that's really just for programming or multitasking, not for gaming (unless it's a racing game where the higher refresh rate helps, then I might play on the CRT instead).

Quintillus said:

My commiserations on the older setup, AdamCrock. Reminds me of when I first started playing Civ4, on a Pentium 4 2.66 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. Naturally, I wanted to play on Huge maps, and naturally they performed very poorly indeed. Upgrading to 1 GB helped a fair amount, but it wasn't really until I got a newer computer with 2 GB that Civ4 was happy. I am curious though, does the /3 GB switch actually work with 2 GB of RAM? I suppose it would with virtual memory, but I know from past experience how slow Civ4 can get when hundreds of megabytes of virtual memory are in use.

Click to expand...

Yeah the /3GB switch really works wonders with Realism Invictus It works on my Win XP home 32 bit !! And yes it works with virtual memory wtih only 2GB RAM of physical - so the disk write/read speed really does makes a difference. I have "Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3320613AS" and it has performed admirably imho. It works on somewhat outdated SATA II , has ~100MB/s average read/write speed (most benchmarks indicate). The origianl world map provided worked rather smoothly up until the industrial era with the whole world map and all of the civs discovered. The momory still can be overloaded. I ocasionaly got MAFs after 2-3 hours of playing that map. On a standard map however I didn't have any MAFs and finished via space ship so it really works I must confess however Im affraid to play world map after industrial because I fear I might damage my comp components - especially the graphics card - got some anomalies as well as monitor screen turning all black - not good , maybe the danger is that after running out of memory civ tries to adress the GPU memory o.O - that would be horrible :O

Quintillus said:

I only have one monitor, a 24", at home. I have a fairly small desk, so two 24" monitors would leave little space for anything else. On occasion I have put an old 16" CRT next to it, but that's really just for programming or multitasking, not for gaming (unless it's a racing game where the higher refresh rate helps, then I might play on the CRT instead)

Click to expand...

I still have my old 16" CRT too ! ^^ Nostalgia would not let me get rid of it and even still I don't have nearly enough space to put him on my desk, let alone as a second monitor

edit: Would it be any good if I bought additional RAM and upgrade to 64-bit system liek Win 7 ? I am asking because my motherboard is up to ddr2 and there are faster standards today than that . Come to think of it what is ddr standard these days ? ddr 3 ? ddr 4 !? :O I feel like I've been out of the loop for so long

pepoluan said:

Aanyways, I'm saving up to build a new gaming rig. Playing graphics-heavy games on laptops simply sucks.

Here's my planned setup:

• 16 GB of RAM
• 240 GB SSD just for OS
• 500 GB HD for Steam & stuff
• Windows 7 x64
• A Good Enough™ VGA card -- I gravitate to AMD's Radeon series
• AMD-based mobo

Click to expand...

Well, I usually prefer Intel, but looking at prices and benchmarks, AMD certainly started to sound interesting

A quick build :

• CPU : Socket AM3+ FX-8350 4.0 GHz
• MOBO : Socket AM3+ Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P
• RAM : 2x4096MB DDR3 1600 MHz CL9 (Crucial)
• HD : 1 TB Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003
• SSD : 250 GB Samsung 840 EVO
• PSU : 500 Watt Cooler Master G500
• CASE : Cooler Master Elite 344
• OS : Windows 7 x64 (Already have)
• GPU : AMD Radeon HD 7790 1 GB (Already have)

Which totals to kr 4140,- (720$) and can all be purchased from the same danish vendor....
Not bad for a beast of a computer.... looking at bank account... looking at pregnant wife...

edit : though 32bit is def better at 4770K (price is higher on 4770K though, but annual power consumption is lower too, so after a couple of years that would have aligned the prices)
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4770K-vs-AMD-FX-8350