What laptop/graphics card to buy for Civ V?

The Garibaldi

Chieftain
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Mar 19, 2012
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Seattle
I am currently thinking about getting a new laptop with the top priority being cost and the secondary being its ability to play Civ V. I have clocked in nearly 1000 hours on Civ V on my current computer, but all of these have been on Strategic mode because of my abominable Intel graphics card. Needless to say, strategic mode can become monotonous after the 700th hour, and I am now looking for a CHEAP laptop that could let me transition to the celestial world of 3D graphics.

So what cheap laptop or graphics card should I look for to handle Civ V efficiently?

Thanks in advance!
 
Wish I could tell you what's best now. I had used a 20" HP HDX 9494 NR that had an Nvidia 8800 processor on it and that could handle all but the largest, huge Earth maps without too much trouble. So you need at least that much equivalent power from a more modern laptop GPU. But speaking for myself, I'll not again buy such a laptop...too pricey to keep up to date and parts get hard to find. My nephew has a 17" laptop with dual graphics cards that is only a year old and its graphics fairly scream, but he prefers to play on the 20" screen on my old HP. Good luck but remember the sayings Old Engineers like to repeat: "Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick two." :)
 
Well, it seems the game is not compatible with modern gaming laptops (graphics glitch). It probably won't work on a cheap laptop then.
 
I have a Samsung Series 3 laptop with Intel B950 @ 2.10 GHz, 4 GB RAM and NVIDIA GT520 MX Graphics card - It plays fine but does also get hot...
 
Wish I could tell you what's best now. I had used a 20" HP HDX 9494 NR that had an Nvidia 8800 processor on it and that could handle all but the largest, huge Earth maps without too much trouble. So you need at least that much equivalent power from a more modern laptop GPU. But speaking for myself, I'll not again buy such a laptop...too pricey to keep up to date and parts get hard to find. My nephew has a 17" laptop with dual graphics cards that is only a year old and its graphics fairly scream, but he prefers to play on the 20" screen on my old HP. Good luck but remember the sayings Old Engineers like to repeat: "Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick two." :)

Can't you just hook up your laptop to a larger monitor?
 
I've been looking up laptops for the past week as I'm starting college in September. First priority for me... Civ5. :D

Looking over the charts at notebookcheck it looks like at minimum you'll want:
AMD Radeon HD 8570M
Intel Iris Pro 5100
NVIDIA GT 730M
or better
if you plan on playing low, 1366x768 res. Those cards should give you about 40FPS though I don't know if they're testing late game/early or what map size they use. On the other hand if you're tolerant of low FPS, there are a ton of people playing on Intel HD4000s and they did add touchscreen functionality(not many 'gaming' laptops that use this, mainly integrated chip Ultrabooks) so YMMV. I'd be looking somewhere in the $450 range absolute minimum, I've seen a few 'steals' with the AMD chip I mentioned above over at Newegg. The Intel/AMD graphics chips I've mentioned are just coming onto the market now, the NVIDIAs are already here though laptops using them may have last-gen Intel CPUs. Personally I'm going to hold off for a month or two.
Links: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Mobile/440
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comput...&memorybus=0&directx=0&technology=0&daysold=0

As for CPU, I'm hoping someone else will chime in. I've got no clue. No one has really tested turntimes that I've seen, and in game the GPU will generally bottleneck you before the processor does.

Laptop with 8570M: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314181
Ultrabook with Iris Pro 5200: http://www.mythlogic.com/configure.php?id=146
 
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