Attention Firaxis: System Requirment Change

[tristangreer]

I have a 128MB ATI Radeon 9200. I never had the renderer error and was able to play the game. No graphical problems, but the slowdown is a major problem. I'll try it out and see how it works.

 

[Willem]

But that doesn't matter now, since I only meet the minimum and can't play the game past 40 turns without so much slowdown that it's impossible to do anything.

That may not have anything to do with the amount of RAM you have, there have been reports on some systems of a memory leak. Yes a bug! Rather than complain about though, you might want to explore it further to see if that actually is happening and leave a post in Bug Reports if it is. That way Firaxis can fix it in a patch for you. Simply *****ing isn't going to help anything.

 

[Bulwark]

Although the min system requirements may have been stated wrong at first, some people here are really making a huge deal out of it. Let's be honest, the minimum RAM required to run XP is 128. I don't know anyone who runs Windows with the minimum requirements. Even the most economical system by todays standards comes with no less than 512 Ram. If you're still running 256, you might want to think about an upgrade, another 256 cost as low as $30.

 

[Bast]

Although the min system requirements may have been stated wrong at first, some people here are really making a huge deal out of it. Let's be honest, the minimum RAM required to run XP is 128. I don't know anyone who runs Windows with the minimum requirements. Even the most economical system by todays standards comes with no less than 512 Ram. If you're still running 256, you might want to think about an upgrade, another 256 cost as low as $30.

I used to run XP with 128 MB Ram.

 

[Willem]

Let's be honest, the minimum RAM required to run XP is 128.

It's a lot more than that. Just with 2 Internet Explorer windows running, my system is using up about 300 meg of physical RAM. You can get away with just 128, but you'll be needing Virtual Memory most the time.

 

[Panzer Ace]

I have XP and 512MB of RAM and I'm having every problem you could think of that has to do with RAM. When I saw it was 256 for the min, I thought I'd be fine with 512 but NOOOOOOOOOOO.......... If I had money, I'd go and buy more RAM but I DON'T. Been upgrading my vid and sound cards. So........:shakehead:shakehead

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, as Willem has already stated, I do agree that they dropped the ball on this particular issue-and should have really jumped in quicker to rectify the problem. The only suggestion I can personally make for those running 512MB systems is-change your Windows interface to Win98 mode and play the game in windowed mode. I am not making any guarantees, but it MIGHT help!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Willem]

Well, as Willem has already stated, I do agree that they dropped the ball on this particular issue-and should have really jumped in quicker to rectify the problem. The only suggestion I can personally make for those running 512MB systems is-change your Windows interface to Win98 mode and play the game in windowed mode. I am not making any guarantees, but it MIGHT help!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I've read that people who play in windowed mode can run the game with minimal lag. It also solved the problems they had with stutter in the Wonder movies.

 

[tristangreer]

I will try this out as well, can you tell me how to run it in windows98 mode? I'm inexperienced with doing this. Do you just go to display properties to change it?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I think its in the Display section of the Control Panel. Don't be too aggro with me for not giving you more detail than that , I only found out yesterday that you can do this, and so haven't managed to figure it out myself yet. I think I may need to, because Doom3 is causing me major hassles in the opening screen !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Kaene]

Open up your Civilization IV folder. (for me, it is C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4)
Then open the _Civ4Config shortcut and go to the line where it says FullScreen and change that to ask. It should look like this:

; Specify whether to play in fullscreen mode 0/1/ask
FullScreen = ask

After that, the game always asks if you want to play in fullscreen or windowed mode.
OR if you are sure that you won't play in fullscreen mode, just change the value of FullScreen to 0.

Hope that helps.

 

[CurtSibling]

Oh that's news to me!

So I suppose they could've just put min requirements as Pentium 400, 16MB Ram and any Windows compatible video card or something. Yeah you'll be fine!

I think you are missing the point, just a little.

Don't run a WW2 enigma machine and expect the latest software to run gloriously on it!

That much is basic knowledge to even a lowly cabbage!

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

Interesting that online they say 512 minimum for XP and 512 recommended. Weird that they would be the same.

 

[Mercade]

No, it's been there since the web site was put up. I forget when that was now. And there's been tons of threads here and over at Apolyton for months now that have been mentioning the same info. And no they weren't given faulty info, 256 is the minimum, but for 2000. Granted they could have been somewhat clearer about that.

At any rate, anyone who knows even a little about computers should know that 256 for XP is inadequate if you hope to run anything well. The OS alone requires almost 200 meg. 512 should be considered a minimum for any application, with 1 gig or more recommended.

In all fairness, the system requirements were only added to the websites after the game was released. While the game was available for pre-order (and pre-ordering was promoted by the producer with a special version in US) there were no official requirements. In fact, on October 21 I received an e-mail from Kelley Gilmore - Marketing Manager Firaxis - that said 256 minimum without distinguishing the OS.

That said, while WinXP may run in 128 MB, it is widely known that 256 is the minimum for running WinXP + Notepad. I think it is a little naive to expect a modern 3D graphical game to run on WinXP with 256, even though that may have been suggested by the confusion about the specs created by the developer and publisher.

 

[Mercade]

Interesting that online they say 512 minimum for XP and 512 recommended. Weird that they would be the same.

Agreed. Apparently they don't feel comfortable setting a higher recommendation than 512 for XP - or someone didn't realise that minimum and recommended for XP are now the same (surely possible).

Personally when setting RAM requirements for software I develop, I always write "X RAM over OS requirement". That way you don't have to specify the specs for all different OS's. If you write "minimal requirement for the game 128 MB and recommended 256 MB over OS requirement" then everybody can do the math.

 

[opkoad]

If you're still running 256, you might want to think about an upgrade, another 256 cost as low as $30.

Actually, it can be as little as $20: newegg.com

And probably the best $20 you'd ever spend, because you would be doubling your system memory and making an extraordinary difference in the performance of Windows and every app running on it. But I guess I'm getting off-topic so I'll stop now.

 

[Shakes]

Just curious if anyone from Firaxis or any of the mods are willing to address the changing system requirements. My comp. has 512MB RAM and I was led to believe this was above the minimum requirement, but now I'm told it is the minimum, and if I experience gameplay issues it is because of that. Why did they give us a lower number to begin with, and why haven't they made any kind of attempt to announce the change?

The minimum & recommended is 512. You have 512. I don't see the problem. If you had 256 then maybe you'd have something to complain about.

If you're really worried about memory usage, change from XP to 2000.

 

[valrond]

The minimum requiremens are not the real requirements of the game. I learnt that a long time ago. If you are at the minimum, they game will run, but will be barely playable, slow, and with low detail. Heck the minimum requirements for Battlefield 2 are 512 MB, but it needs over 1 GB of RAM to run smoothly.

Don't trust the minimums, you should have at least 1 GB of RAM to play any current game under Windows XP.

 

[warpstorm]

XP will happily take the first 256 MB for it's own usage. This is common knowledge that all XP users should be assumed to have.

If you are even near the minimum, don't expect a game to work well if at all. If you are not at or above the recommended level, then you don't have the type of system the developers assume will actually run the game.

 

[Skybuck]

Just curious if anyone from Firaxis or any of the mods are willing to address the changing system requirements. My comp. has 512MB RAM and I was led to believe this was above the minimum requirement, but now I'm told it is the minimum, and if I experience gameplay issues it is because of that. Why did they give us a lower number to begin with, and why haven't they made any kind of attempt to announce the change?

Lol are you for real mister faroa ?

Be happy with your 512 MB ram... your graphics card probably sucks or your software settings suck suck adware spyware etc lol