Attention Firaxis: System Requirment Change

[Crosby 87]

Some of you guys act like this is the first pc game you ever bought. I for one can't blame Firaxis for doing what every other SW company does and lowballing their specs a bit. After all they want to make some dough and they know not every one out there have brand new $4000 rig to play on.
That and the fact the computer industry is evolving in a very fast rate makes the SW companies job challenging when you consider the average game takes 2-3 years to develop and the top of the line video card, processor you buy today will be near obsolete 8-12 months down the road. This makes buying a pc game a gamble for the consumer.

 

[tristangreer]

At least you admit that they intentionally lowballed the specs to make money.

 

[tristangreer]

The point is, we were told before the release of the game that the minimum requirements were 256MB RAM. I figured I was safe since I was over the minimum specs. It turns out after the release of the game, which I pre-ordered, that I only meet the minimum, and now people on these forums blame my PC for not playing the game correctly. Do you see the flawed logic there?

 

[Crosby 87]

At least you admit that they intentionally lowballed the specs to make money.

As does everybody else. Did you read the minimum specs for HL2? With a machine like that you would be be staring at a slide show at 800x400 resolution.
Besides I thought it was common knowledge amongst PC gamers

 

[Crosby 87]

The point is, we were told before the release of the game that the minimum requirements were 256MB RAM. I figured I was safe since I was over the minimum specs. It turns out after the release of the game, which I pre-ordered, that I only meet the minimum, and now people on these forums blame my PC for not playing the game correctly. Do you see the flawed logic there?

Listen to what you're saying; you knew before the release the MINIMUM RAM was 256MB. Then you say after you got it you found out that you only met the MINIMUM requirement.
I think minimum means minimum before and after you buy the game, don't you agree?

 

[Leuf]

Someone who knows a bit about these things says its really about the graphics cards these days, not memory or processor speed. Just a thought!

I have 256 ram, 9800 pro, amd 2400+. It gets unplayable at the industrial era on a normal map. The fans in the machine are temperature controlled, so I can say neither the cpu or video card are getting stressed. Actually running civ3 for an extended period sometimes gets the fans to speed up, so far not with civ4. My hdd activity light is going to get worn out though. I do have XP in classic/win98 mode.

Since I have 2 out of 3 well above the minimum and the other I *thought* at the minimum I thought I was ok. You can see where I'd be annoyed. 256 is enough for me otherwise running everything else I use regularly, photoshop, etc..

There's really no reason for it either. Yeah there's more stuff to keep track of in the later part of the game, but if you compare the size of the save games they go up by maybe 200 kb. It shouldn't be using 200 mb more memory.

 

[Willem]

The point is, we were told before the release of the game that the minimum requirements were 256MB RAM. I figured I was safe since I was over the minimum specs. It turns out after the release of the game, which I pre-ordered, that I only meet the minimum, and now people on these forums blame my PC for not playing the game correctly. Do you see the flawed logic there?

Maybe you should spend some time educating yourself about computer systems these days. Anyone who thinks that 256 RAM is good enough for any computer game these days if they're trying to run them on an XP machine is simply uneducated. Instead of thinking that 256 is all you need period, you should think of it as needing 256 on top of what Windows already requires. That would make the 512 listing just about right, maybe just a little bit low in fact.

 

[tristangreer]

I have 512MB RAM, before the release, I was led to believe I exceeded the minimum requirements, which is what you all say should be done, considering the min. req. was 256. After release, the min. specs. were raised to 512, placing me at the min. req.

Before the release I thought I had twice as much RAM as was needed. Should I therefore assume that my PC should always have 4 times as much RAM as what the minimum specs. are? (going from 256MB-1GB)

 

[Mercade]

Listen to what you're saying; you knew before the release the MINIMUM RAM was 256MB. Then you say after you got it you found out that you only met the MINIMUM requirement.
I think minimum means minimum before and after you buy the game, don't you agree?

Actually TristanGreer is saying that his 512 on XP was previously listed as recommended (minimum: 256, recommended: 512) and now the specs have been further refined to say (minimum Win2K: 256, minimum WinXP: 512) so indeed there will be many people with WinXP 512MB who now have the minimum RAM.

And this goes for me too. My four year old Dell 4300 is equipped with a P4 1.6GHz, 512MB RAM, GeForce 3Ti200 and a CD player. The civiv.com lists CD player as minimum, but we all know that in Europe it's DVD.

So yes, TristanGreer, the requirements have been made public only after the game was offered for pre-order and further refined after the game went public.
And yes, we're sorry for you and all others who have a system that now only barely matches the requirements. We're deeply sorry for any inconvenience this causes.
It's expected that the first patch will make the game more stable and running more smoothly on more systems due to some enhances made after the release.
But the bottom line is that like every other game released in 2005, the system requirements are going up due to better graphics, more detail, smarter AI, and on-the-fly compilation of Python code.

 

[Goombaz]

Other games I've had had worked with min requirements.

I'd have to go out on a limb and say that me and you would not agree on the definition of "works", given my experiences with meeting the min requirements of various games.

Still, if there really was misleading going on then it was wrong. However, RAM is the easiest and most painless type of upgrading to do most times.

 

[Willem]

256 is enough for me otherwise running everything else I use regularly, photoshop, etc..

No 256 is not enough. No matter what you do, you're going to be using Virtual Memory. That's never a good thing for any application. I did a check on my system and with just 2 Internet Explorer windows open, it was using 300 meg of RAM. Even if I only had 512, there wouldn't be alot left over for any applications.

Everyone should do themselves a favour and put 1 gig of memory in thier machines, they'll be amazed at how much better it performs. And RAM really isn't very expensive these days, you can get a 512 stick for $50 to $100, depending on where you live.

 

[Mercade]

Before the release I thought I had twice as much RAM as was needed. Should I therefore assume that my PC should always have 4 times as much RAM as what the minimum specs. are? (going from 256MB-1GB)

The assumption that you should have at least 4 times the minimum specified at any point is a bit over the top. Whether purposely or not, the requirements on WinXP appear to be a little understated due to the fact that no reference to the OS was made when the requirements were initially published.

Since they now list a minimum of 256 for Win2K and Win2K itself has a minimum requirement of 64M, you can conclude the game has a minimum of 192. Added to the minimum of 128 for XP, it would be fair to state that

requires at least 320MB. But since 320 or 384 aren't considered nice round numbers for memory, they had to go with the next power of 2, which is 512.

It's all a matter of interpreting the information correctly, naturally. If they say the minimal requirements of the game are 256MB, it could be read as 256MB for the game. Heck, if I run my video processing software in the background, 1GB and a P4-3.4GHz. might not be enough to run the game.

Either way, experience with PC's over the last decade has always been: more RAM is good. It's most common bottleneck on PC's that I come across and generally the easiest bottleneck to fix.

Disclaimer: YES, it's most inconvenient the system requirements weren't clear when the pre-order version was put up for sale, and unpleasant the minimum specs were adjusted after the release.

 

[Willem]

Before the release I thought I had twice as much RAM as was needed. Should I therefore assume that my PC should always have 4 times as much RAM as what the minimum specs. are? (going from 256MB-1GB)

Yes. IMO 1 gig should be considered a minimum if you want smooth performance all around.

 

[tristangreer]

At least firaxis was nice enough to mention this prior to the release of the game.

 

[AER]

Here is the solution for folks with low RAM:

Go to http://www.crucial.com, and click "Memory upgrades".

Walk through the questions to find out what kind of RAM you need for your system.

Next, search http://www.newegg.com to find the cheapest Kingston, Mushkin, Corsair, Micron, Samsung or Crucial RAM with those specs.

For example:
512 MB SDRAM for $80
512 MB DDR SDRAM (Most common) for $40
512 MB RDRAM (highly unlikely) for $210
512 MB DDR2 SDRAM for $45

Finally, Google for "how to install RAM" and get a nice, illustrated guide like this one from PCWorld.

As you can see, if you can install your own lightbulbs, you can buy and swap your own RAM, usually for under $50.

If you can't afford $50 to drastically improve your computing experience, then take up console gaming.

 

[tristangreer]

I'll check it out, but from what I've read, even people with up to 2GB RAM are experiencing a similar slowdown problem.

 

[Mercade]

I'll check it out, but from what I've read, even people with up to 2GB RAM are experiencing a similar slowdown problem.

RAM obviously isn't the only factor in making the game run smoothly on any system, and if you're running just windows and the game, 1GB should be perfect (and 786MB quite enough).

I don't think you mentioned your actual system requirements at all, TristanGreer, so perhaps you can list those so we can give a recommendation. Also, it's not entirely clear from your posts whether you have actually installed and played the game, or whether you are just worried based on other posts you have read here.

 

[Leuf]

No 256 is not enough. No matter what you do, you're going to be using Virtual Memory. That's never a good thing for any application. I did a check on my system and with just 2 Internet Explorer windows open, it was using 300 meg of RAM. Even if I only had 512, there wouldn't be alot left over for any applications.

I regularly have 4-5 tabs in firefox plus other stuff without problem. Believe it or not using virtual memory does not cause your applications to burst into flames either. I can live with waiting 3 extra seconds a couple times a week if I get crazy opening too many windows and switching around too much.

Everyone should do themselves a favour and put 1 gig of memory in thier machines, they'll be amazed at how much better it performs. And RAM really isn't very expensive these days, you can get a 512 stick for $50 to $100, depending on where you live.

So when should I expect your check for $50-100? You seem to have no problem spending my money for me, so I'd be happy to return the favor

It's for the best anyway. I just got slammed with a ton of work and having a fully functional civ4 sitting here would probably not be the best thing...

 

[Willem]

At least firaxis was nice enough to mention this prior to the release of the game.

This should be common knowledge to anyone who runs an XP system. You can't expect a game developer to teach you everything you need to know about your system, that's your responsibilty.

 

[Willem]

I regularly have 4-5 tabs in firefox plus other stuff without problem. Believe it or not using virtual memory does not cause your applications to burst into flames either. I can live with waiting 3 extra seconds a couple times a week if I get crazy opening too many windows and switching around too much.

Sure things will run, that's why Virtual Memory is there. But it's a very slow and inefficient way of doing things. Your machine will always perform better if you provide it with enough physical RAM that it doesn't have to access your hard drive for more.

So when should I expect your check for $50-100? You seem to have no problem spending my money for me, so I'd be happy to return the favor

Sorry, but I have a hard enough time paying for my own upgrades. I just spent a couple of hundred this summer adding the RAM for my new motherboard. Not to mention a new video card and hard drive. The bottom line is if you own a computer, you have to be prepared to shell out some dough once in awhile to keep it up to date.

It's for the best anyway. I just got slammed with a ton of work and having a fully functional civ4 sitting here would probably not be the best thing...

Well then, count your blessings.