Hardware recommendation

[Patchmaster]

I'm considering building a new computer. Civ is the only game I play with any regularity. I'm unlikely to ever get into first person shooter games. Aside from Civ, I mostly do web stuff, rarely some video things and graphic editing.

Without going utterly crazy on the budget, what would I need to make Civ 6 not make me want to scratch my eyes out waiting for it in the late game on a large map? I currently have a i7-6700k overclocked to 4.5GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1060TI GPU. I have a 4k monitor and would want to run at that resolution, preferably with most of the graphic bells and whistles. (If I'm paying a lot of money for this, I want it to wow me.) I should also add that I'm running Linux and do not want to get back into the Microsoft world. I'm not married to Intel or Nvidia.

I guess what I'm looking for is some guidance on the dividing line between money well spent on hardware and spending money on capability I'll never use. I've never noticed Civ 6 using all of the available CPU time on the CPU I currently have so I'm skeptical that a 12-core Ryzen would provide a night and day difference. The GTX 1060TI GPU was a compromise at a time when money was tight. It's not quite so tight anymore but I also don't want to be spending $1000 on a GPU just for Civ. At least not unless I know it's going to make a phenomenal difference. Then I might be persuaded.

Thoughts?

 

[Ownsya]

I suggest you have a look at the benchmark post: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/post-your-ai-benchmark-score.628767/page-6#post-15548782
Compare your specs to those posted there to get an idea of how it will run.

 

[Patchmaster]

That's very depressing. It would seem the primary culprit here is whatever Steam is doing to allow Civ 6 to run on Linux. I found one post from someone with hardware slightly better than mine but that should have been roughly comparable. My times are about 20 times worse. The graphics frame times are ridiculous.

Clearly, as far as Civ 6 performance, the best thing I can do is sell my soul to Microsoft. Otherwise I'm going to be throwing vast sums of money at this and still getting horrible performance. Perhaps I'll just stick with small worlds.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Dont sell your soul to microsoft too expsensively, just buy a 10$ keycode online

It's legal, and it works well.

 

[leif erikson]

You can also have a look at the logical increments site.

Good advice from Wacken and do not be afraid to check out AMD Ryzen. Just built two systems with them and they rock!

 

[Patchmaster]

After a bit of online searching I found somebody complaining about performance under Linux who said turning off vertical sync fixed his issues. I know I had turned it on not long after getting Civ 6 on Linux because I had some screen tearing issues. That was a while ago so I tried turning it off. No tearing and GS graphics benchmark performance doubled. Still very poor, but only half as poor as before. I didn't re-run the AI benchmark because I've already spent way too much time waiting for that to finish already today.

I know late during larger games I can improve the turn to turn speed by switching to strategic view. I just can't get used to playing that way but late in the game it makes enough difference in performance to switch to it, hit next turn, then switch back when it's my turn to act. This gives me some hope that perhaps a better GPU would make a significant difference. I did also see some points during the benchmarks where multiple threads were using 100% or more CPU core time. That suggests that maybe that 12-core Ryzen would actually help. Now it's just a matter of deciding if I want to spend that much money to make Civ 6 run faster.

As to Windows, it's not the cost that's the issue. It's that Microsoft wants to take control of the computer. I suppose Civ 6 still runs under Win 7 so that would be an option.

I just built a computer for a friend using a lower end Ryzen CPU. Saved her a ton of money and she was thrilled with the performance. Looking at the Intel and AMD offerings toward the upper end of barely reasonable, it does look like AMD has the edge. Intel has better raw performance per core, but 12 cores with hyperthreading vs 8 cores with no hyperthreading makes the Ryzen look a whole lot better. If I knew all those cores would actually make a difference I'd be more inclined to go that way.

 

[BTSeven7]

Your current specs should be pretty good. I am on an 8700k and 1080ti. 4K all settings maxed and speed is fantastic on mostly large maps.

Why not simply have your computer dual boot? I have a work OS and a gaming OS if you will. Keeps me more productive when I need to be working. You can easily buy an OEM key for $15 or so.

 

[tetley]

You can buy a Raspberry Pi 4 for $45 and get an entirely separate Linux box for work altogether.

 

[Patchmaster]

You can buy a Raspberry Pi 4 for $45 and get an entirely separate Linux box for work altogether.

A separate box isn't the issue. I have an unused Raspberry Pi 3B loaded with Raspbian sitting two feet away. I don't want to run Windows. If I have to live with inferior performance in Civ 6 as a result of that, I'll do it. But I want to make it as least inferior as I reasonably can.

 

[tetley]

Big difference between a Pi 3 and a Pi 4.

 

[Patchmaster]

I played around with graphic settings. First I changed from windowed to full screen. No significant impact. Then I changed from 4k to 1920x1080. To my great surprise this had no significant effect, and was actually slower than the result I got yesterday in 4k windowed after turning off vertical sync. Then I switched everything to low quality. At some points in the benchmark I got higher frame rates, but overall the results were not significantly better. Certainly not so much better that I'd be willing to live with the clearly much worse graphics.

An interesting, if obvious, side note, in 4k there is a LOT more detail in the graphics. The displayed area of the map stays the same, so you do get much better resolution on all the objects displayed.

The only conclusion I can reach from all this is that the Linux port leaves much to be desired when it comes to speed. There's something fundamental that's holding things back such that the settings affect performance just a small amount. I could throw much more expensive hardware at it and maybe I'd see a large relative speed improvement, but performance is still going to be vastly less than the Windows version. So it seems I have to decide if better performance in Civ 6 is worth letting Microsoft on my system. I'm thinking I'll live with it as it is.

 

[mmenphis]

The best solution is buy a some cheap SSD disk, on it install Windows and use them in dual boot configuration.Myself I did it same.Beside to worse performance of Civ most patches and DLCs for Linux version was released with a delay.

... or NOW you can buy on an console .