Building a system to play BTS .3.19 looking for advice best video/OS etc.

[Garsonga]

I'm building a new system, CIV IV BTS is my main application, internet being next. I'm looking for advice on best Graphics Card(s), memory and Operating system.

Presently I'm running a AMD Phenom II 945 X4 3.0 Ghz, on a Gigabyte motherboard (MA785GT-UD3H) with one DDR3 1333 2 GB stick, I'll be adding the second 2Gb stick this weekend. I still haven't decided on operating system but I'm leaning toward Win 7 64 bit Pro. Would Vista ultimate or XP Pro 64 bit be a better choice? I'm also going to be picking up a video card(s) for the system, video card budget right now is $200, could possible go to $300 if needed. I was leaning toward Nvida but after reading about the driver problems with Nvida I will look at Ati. Motherboard has one 16x PCI express and one 4x pci express slot available with Radeon 4200 as on board video.

Any help or advice would be appreciated, this system has to last me 3 or 4 years!

Monitor is 22" Acer with a resolution of 1680 x 1050, I'd like to run full screen with Latest Bat mod with graphics set to high and have it run smoothly.

Thanks!
Garsonga

 

[ori]

As for Civilization: the game does like as much RAM as possible - and will otherwise work fine on pretty much any modern machine. Make sure to run all installers and all patches with admin rights - especially on the 64bit OS versions.