Best PC build for late game

[livingdeadbeat]

Hi everyone,

I've done a search on the forum and see there are a few posts about late game slow down, mostly quite old. I'm having the problem at the moment (its almost unplayable), and it seems to have got worse with G&K.

So i am going to get a new pc, and was wondering if someone could offer a little advice on what specs to get to try and prevent slow down later on. Is it more important for me to have a lot of RAM than the top end cpu for example? And would a SSD make much difference?

Thanks for any advice

 

[VimesUK]

In my observations based on the game and nothing else...

Mhz is king with this game. With a dual core it will max most out and thus the faster the better.

Quad core is about std now but all that you get is more load balancing across those cores rather then using each of them. So a fast CPU is better, per se, than a multi core aspect or hyperthreading.

Memory - the game never uses much more than 1.4GB or Ram. So a 4GB system would be fine for this game. But as 8GB seems to be pretty much std then that would also be ok. DDR3 at 1600mhz seems to be the sweet spot in terms of cost / performance.

SSD - seems to make little difference over that of a fast 7200 RPM HD drive dedicated for games. I see no difference with load or turn times with my 256GB Samsung series 830 SATA III SSD. Although it is a nice to have piece of kit, and quiet.

Video memory - the game seems to use around 1.3 to 1.4GB of Video memory at max for a large map all Civs revealed.
When I had a 1GB card (even at 168x1050) it would use all of that memory, or at least it would be allocated to the game.
My 670 GTX seems to run at about 60% or so from what I remember. I run at 2560x1440.

Longer turn times with larger maps and lots of Civs seems synonymous with Civ V and it also seems to have got a little worse with the expansion. Espionage and other factors might have influenced that.

Even with the above in mind longer turn times still hog the game.

 

[livingdeadbeat]

Thanks for the reply Xink, so i'm not looking at having to buy a complete beast. Which is good. I just want to be able to play it through to late game without getting annoyed.

 

[VimesUK]

I understand that. But as you do not note any specific parts etc I could only generalise.

 

[livingdeadbeat]

No thats cool, your advice has been very useful, and means i won't bother buying something stupidly powerful if its not going to make much difference.

 

[VimesUK]

When I upgraded from my Dual core E8500 running at 4Ghz to my 3570k running at 4.4Ghz I have noted hardly any difference in late game turn times. Disappointing with the money it has cost (board and RAM as well as GPU were changed) but at least the change wasn't just for this game.