PC Show and Tell - How fast can C2C run for Everyone?

[rightfuture]

PC Show and Tell
How fast can C2C run?

This is a thread to help get C2C running faster on people's computers.

It was inspired by a conversation that I was having with StrategyOnly, so that
people can troubleshoot speed, and vastly improve their experience.

Please explain this to me a little more in detail, you have me very very intrigued here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12158317&postcount=5

I want everyone would know how 4gb ram extra and a SSD radically improved my C2C performance. (and a slightly upgraded graphics card when necess)

Here it is verbatim:

Always willing to help and clarify.
SSD's -Solid State Drives are absolutely the best bang for my buck that I ever spent.
I stumbled across using one once I read an article on the internet.

I own a OCZ Agility 4 -256gb that I bought for $149 in mid November and just started porting over from my OCZ Agility 3-128gb that I bought in May.
I just gave away my OCZ Agility 2-60gb that I bought before that to a friend.

My system is:
Dell 420XPS Desktop - bought in 2008
Core2 Quad Q6600 2.39 ghz
8gb Ram

I first added 4gb of ram in 2010 or so. Made a major improvement in program speed, not boot. More than enough that more is not necess at this time.

Win7 (dual booted with Win8) - on
OCZ Agility 4 - 256gb (1st one I didn't feel cramped on)
with all programs, including CIV IV(complete version) stored on it.

I store all my -non-working files on my original drive. and have 3-4 external storage drives (almost full) and a NAS with just information (not much media) on them.

To make the move, I simply installed my old os on the new drive, blank, and did a fresh install (with the old one unplugged.)

I unplugged and swaped my old SSD -Agility 2-128gb to continue to port things over until move is complete, so that I have a working old boot drive. (I plug it in to use it for programs, I have not moved.) I have my working files on my original hard drive, during the move, and I leave it and the storage drives connected as I am porting.
If you do this, Don't forget to unplug all drives except the new boot drives as you are initially installing the OS, so that there are no possible conflicts or overwrites.

My boot time went from about a minute:25 to 25 seconds on my 1st SSD,
With a lot more programs installed on my 2nd it dropped to about 15.
Now with my 3rd, WIN is about 5sec with lot's installed, and WIN8 is almost instant.

This is with my 5 year old pc.
New SSD kept it viable and not frustrating, health costs kept me from not upgrading this year.
Programs and data run so much faster on the SSD that it feels almost effortless.
It was an adjustment to keep most files(pics, emails, pdf's, docs, programs and app backups, etc.) on the original hard drive, but it gives me a second backup for the most impt files, and keeps the main drive(SSD) faster and with room.

I would recommend that you aim for at least ~256gb if you are a power user (~500gb was what I wanted), ~128gb if you can stand a lessor app load, and 60gb if price is an absolute must.
Don't feel bad about getting last years models and upgradng into them year to year as you can afford it. Each years is noticeable better, but still a vast improvement.
I would advise planning on replacing it every year if you can, since the capacity and speed is worth it each year, and the price is dropping so fast. If you have to start with a 60gb, but 128gb and 256gb give room for programs and having more working room. If 2 drives are a year apart, I would focus on having a comfortable size in gb more than worrying about yearly speed differences. Don't waste you money on one you can fit everything on, if you can use your original for working storage. This has been my experience. I would rather have had a slightly bigger one, than an incremental faster one until I hit my comfort spot. Try not to get 1 that is 2 years old because you are probably wasting your money since price and speed are improving so much.


"also
Not every SSD has the same read/write and I/O times so pick carefully, and each year's generation seems to be about 5-10 secs faster depending on the model.
"

With prices dropping so quickly,
If you want to play C2C quicker, an SSD seems to help tremendously!

"SSD's -Solid State Drives can make a huge difference,
it is hands down the most amazing thing I have done for a pc to speed it up,
even beating buying a 5 year new pc.

If you have a desktop especially, or have enough room,
get the right SSD and you won't be disappointed.

Oh yea,
I want to give everyone an idea on how it feels in C2C.
Now I haven't played a lot of different games lately, but I have continuously with time,
Experiences may vary greatly, but the current SVN with GEM 50civs I get about 20 secs between turns that would normally have not even loaded originally, would have taken 10 minutes on SSD 1,and 5-7 on SSD 2 on snail.
I imagine a marathon game with the normal >12-16 civs would be almost instant-10 secs until the slowdown wall, and still be <2minutes until late game. Will have to test one to be sure.

@Everyone -Please post your specs so people can see how your pc plays for you, with and without new hardware, so everyone can make improvements.

 

[rightfuture]

Just is case you are not convinced that you should probably get a SSD,
Here's a major article I stumbled across that was written yesterday, after I wrote the above.

Whoa. I should have upgraded to an SSD last year
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57565647-1/whoa-i-should-have-upgraded-to-an-ssd-last-year/

'... 4.6x benchmark boost
When I installed my SSD on my Dell Studio XPS 16, I decided to measure the improvement, testing it before and after with PassMark's suite of benchmarks. Of course, processor and graphics and memory performance didn't change, but the Disk Mark score jumped from 544 to 2,506 -- a 4.6x improvement

I didn't measure my boot time, in part because it's hard: Before, Windows would get to a usable interface from which I could start using software, but it would still be dragging in performance as it loaded this or that into memory. It was a long process though -- well over a minute and closer to two the last time I clocked it. It was slow enough that I'd turn it on, go away and do something productive, then come back when it was done.

After the SSD upgrade, I did clock it: 16 seconds to the Windows 8 log-in screen, and 22 seconds to usable, including me typing my password. Tremendous. "

Please share your experiences!
If you want a faster pc without buying a new pc, my 5 yr pc runs faster than my friend's new I7 with a new ssd.
I'm trying to plan out my purchase 500gbSSD for this next year, and still keep ahead of needing to have a new machine.
C2C is a dream on it, even bigger games.

Don't just take my word for it, find out how much performance you can get for your best spent money!
and please let everyone know.

 

[sp00n]

While I do agree that buying an SSD was one of my best decisions regarding my computer in my whole life so far (even better than switching from a 17" to a 24" monitor), I've found that it does absolutely nothing for playing Civ4 / C2C.

I've timed the duration it takes to start up C2C for 3 scenarios:
- installed on SSD (Samsung 830)
- installed on pretty slow/normal HDD (~50 MB/s)
- installed on a RAM-drive (I have 16GB of RAM, so I was able to create a RAM drive which is large enough to keep the entire game in store)

The result was ... nothing, as there was no difference at all.
The times to load up the game stayed exactly the same throughout all three scenarios, 80 seconds for a "first time" start up and 30 seconds for every following re-start of the game (if it was closed "properly", i.e. not killed via the task manager).
There may be changes when loading save games, but I didn't test for this.

One thing that did made a difference was raw CPU power. Overclocking my (quad core i5) CPU from 3.4 GHz to 4.0 GHz reduced the loading times to 68/27 seconds.

Which interestingly is a 1:1 perfect match for the overclocking in place.
68/80 === 3.4/4, meaning a 15% increase in CPU clock directly resulted in 15% faster loading time.

Normally overclocking a CPU doesn't show such good results. Which even more suggests that Civ4/C2C is just very CPU dependent.

 

[ls612]

Which interestingly is a 1:1 perfect match for the overclocking in place.
68/80 === 3.4/4, meaning a 15% increase in CPU clock directly resulted in 15% faster loading time.

Normally overclocking a CPU doesn't show such good results. Which even more suggests that Civ4/C2C is just very CPU dependent.

That is entirely correct, Civ 4 will be entirely limited by the speed you can get from 1 processor core for the most part. Your graphics card can be an issue if it isn't that good, but aside from that the CPU is the central thing. THat is why when I upgraded my comp I focused first on getting the best CPU (i7 Ivy Bridge) and other things were secondary.