PC Specs for Civ5

[ghoultek]

Hello all,

I recently picked up Civ5 and started playing. My son, has also taken an interest in the game. He is coming up on the end of his 5th grade school season and it looks like the 5th grade is going to be a full school year of first honors. I'm considering getting him Civ5 as one of the gifts for doing well in school but I'm not sure if his PC will be able to handle Civ5. He has the following:

- Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit)
- E7500 3ghz Core2 CPU Intel
- EVGA nforce 680i motherboard
- 6GB ram (DDR2-800)
- Palit GeForce 8400 GS 512mb video card
- at least 300 GB free hard drive space (drive C)
- Gigabit Ethernet on the motherboard

He would be playing the game at 1024x768 (32bit color) resolution full-screen. Would he have trouble running a game:
- large map
- 12 rival Civs
- 15-20 City-States
- Quick speed
- Prince or higher difficulty
- Default video settings

Thanks in advance.

 

[BobDole]

Everything seems pretty nice, except maybe the video card which is somewhat old although I'm guessing it'll work. I upgraded pretty much everything in my computer 2 months ago before Civ V so I can't really comment on the video card in particular (mine's a lot newer than yours, which I think is a few years old), but you got a better processer than me, and more RAM (albeit DDR2, although it probably won't be a big deal). It'll probably run well.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

...and what BobDole said. The graphics card is at the very low end of the specs for Civ5, that will be problematic for the default video settings. Everything else in the machine seems to be fine.

 

[aziantuntija]

It depends on how big maps you are using and how many opponents you are having.

I suppose it should run it (at least somehow) if you are using smallish maps and not so many opponents. I agree with BobDole, the GPU is the most worrying part in that setup.

 

[ghoultek]

Thanks for the update. I will have to look into upgrading the video card before buying the game for my son. We have the same motherboard in both PCs and I'm using an EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS Ultra (got it in 2007 or 2008) on my PC. Do you guys have any recommendations for a video card within the $50 to $110 range or should I be looking to spend above that range? Ideally I would want to play the game 1280x1024 with 32bit color, all high video settings, with a large map, 10-15 Civs, 10-20 City-States. I don't want to spend too much right now as I will most likely custom build new PCs sometime next year (son and Dad fun project).

 

[tokala]

Before starting out and buying a new card, you might want to find out if there are potential compatibility problems with newer cards.
It should not be a problem according to the specs, but some motherboards are designed sloppy. I have one with the "light" version of that chipset, and it didn't work for me

EVGA is supposed to have a very good support, send them an email and ask if there are any problems to be expected with a GTX460 or GTS450 ($75).
The best "cheap" solution would be a HD5670 ($60).
Those are the most sensible cards for Civ5 in your price range. Even the HD5670 should perform good enough for your requirements, though I would consider the 450 more than worth the additional $15.

Additionally, the brand and specs of the power supply could get important for a new card.

 

[ghoultek]

Thanks for the info. I will follow-up with EVGA. I did a quick search at Microcenter and Newegg and the GTX460 cards are in the $140 - $200 priced range. The GTS450 cards are $120 - $140 price range. I'm not sure if the HD5670 Radeon cards will work in a nVidia SLI based motherboard.

 

[tokala]

They are $100 and $75 respectively "after rebate".
ATI/AMD cards are no problem in principle, unless you want to use two of them, and dual video cards are a bad idea anyway

 

[ghoultek]

So I took a little trip down to Microcenter and picked up an ASUS ENGTS450/DI/1GD5 GeForce® GTS450 for $130 US:
- Asus product pg. (http://usa.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/NVIDIA_Series/ENGTS450DI1GD5/)
- Microcenter product pg. (http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0355807)

I installed the card quick and easy, did a clean install of the latest drivers, and loaded up a saved game in DX11 mode. There is a performance improvement with the new card over my older 8800 GTS Ultra. However, the performance difference isn't as dramatic as one might expect. I'm not getting double the performance.

If I use the debug mode to reveal the map and try to scroll or jump around the map the rendering isn't smooth. Clusters, of hexes are filled in with a grey color and then re-rendered in a noticeably choppy fashion. Several video settings in the game are set to medium and low. I haven't performed any tweaking or overclocking of the new card. The real good news is that I'm not experiencing the BLACK screen of death. What can I do to boost the game's performance? Should I post diagnostic info., logs, specs, or stats?

 

[tokala]

There is a performance improvement with the new card over my older 8800 GTS Ultra. However, the performance difference isn't as dramatic as one might expect. I'm not getting double the performance.

8800 Ultra was high end at its time, still a useful card if you do not need DX11. But in Civ5 the difference should have been dramatic. You are probably CPU limited. With the new card you could probably crank up all the seting to the max, without much further degradation of performance.