Buying a PC just for CIV

[cricketts]

Hey everybody!
I hate to say it, but I wanted to know what kind of a PC system I could get to play CIV4? I just want a computer that is cheap, maybe even second hand, to play. Especially with CIV4 Warlords coming out. I have an iBook G4 and will never be able to play CIV4 I haven't even got to see the game in action yet! So for interests sake, can anyone let me know about running a PC system just for CIV and how much it would likely cost? I feel like a traitor, but since I don't have any money I won't likely follow through for a while if at all, but I'm sure there are many mac lovers out there who feel empty without CIV4 and would like to know what would be the best bang for the buck when it comes to a machine solely to play CIV4. Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[Riesstiu IV]

Why not just get an intel Mac and install Windows XP using bootcamp. That's what I did, and it's nice having the ability to use both operating systems.

 

[AlanH]

I would suggest you recheck your priorities. I can't claim "! don't have any money", but even for me, buying a PC just to play Civ4 seems to be the height of extravagance. How can any single game be worth the 100's of dollars you'd need to spend to get a PC capable of running Civ4?

And regarding BootCamp, I don't see Civ4 as worth spending 100's of dollars to buy a copy of Windows XP, either.

 

[Riesstiu IV]

Unfortunately, I had to install Windows XP in order to run several design and engineering programs related to my degree.

 

[AlanH]

Sure! I only wanted to question buying anything expensive *solely* to play Civ4.

Of course, everyone makes his/her own decisions in these things.

 

[wiglaff]

Hey everybody!
I hate to say it, but I wanted to know what kind of a PC system I could get to play CIV4? I just want a computer that is cheap, maybe even second hand, to play. Especially with CIV4 Warlords coming out. I have an iBook G4 and will never be able to play CIV4 I haven't even got to see the game in action yet! So for interests sake, can anyone let me know about running a PC system just for CIV and how much it would likely cost? I feel like a traitor, but since I don't have any money I won't likely follow through for a while if at all, but I'm sure there are many mac lovers out there who feel empty without CIV4 and would like to know what would be the best bang for the buck when it comes to a machine solely to play CIV4. Thanks for your help in advance!

This is actually feasible.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DE51F2&s=dhs&fb=1

That computer runs for $650 (if you reduce hard-drive size) and comes with a free monitor (17 inches). Has more than enough horsepower to run Civ at medium settings on a huge map, but I'd recommend upping the RAM to a gigabyte. But it's not necessary from my experience.

This is slightly more expensive than Bootcamp but it's a good computer, lots of hardware, tons of available software and has decent graphics power.

 

[wiglaff]

Actually I'd spring for the $40 video card update if you are interested in civ at max settings, or any other intensive 3D activity.

So $650 for medium setting Civ 4 or $700 for high settings, basically.

If you have your own monitor, subtract $100 from the cost.

 

[wiglaff]

I can't imagine why you'd only use it for civ, though.

 

[Helmling]

I empathize. When Civ4 was coming out and I only had my old iMac, I had some desperate thoughts about what to do.

If you're going to spend $650, then I'd say spend $1100 and get a MacBook. It'll be a nice replacement for your iBook, and you could bootcamp into Windows to play Civ on it.

And to whoever said you'd have to spend $200 on Windows...well, who doesn't have a couple copies of windows lying around? I think you can find someone with an unused license.

 

[wiglaff]

A Macbook could not run civ as well as the $700 pc even w/ bootcamp.

not that I think civ should be the only factor in making a computer purchase, though.

 

[ancestral]

Like people have said earlier, buy a computer for the computer, not for a game.

But I guess I'm confused why you're posting here anyway. Most of us here don't have PCs running Civ4 so we're not in the best place to recommend you a system. I'd try a different section of the forums.

 

[Helmling]

A Macbook could not run civ as well as the $700 pc even w/ bootcamp.

not that I think civ should be the only factor in making a computer purchase, though.

Actually, I think it would be plenty. Though certainly he could end up with a better video card on a chop-block PC, it wouldn't be nearly as worthwhile a purchase. The PC version of Civ 4, while still surprisingly resource hungry for this genre, is no where near as demanding as the Mac version. The Intel graphics chips will work, and I would think the MacBook's horsepower would make it highly playable--though he'd probably want to turn down the graphics. That's how I've played on my PC laptop--low graphics--and it really doesn't take much away from the game at all. There's one figure for each unit instead of three--which greatly reduces the polygon count--but otherwise, it's hard to even tell the difference.

That's just my two cents. Me, I'll never buy another PC, though honestly the only reason I'd even consider it is to play games, Civ and CS in particular. My new MacBook will ship this week, but I will not install BootCamp, not even Parallels if I can help it. I will just go to the extra trouble of lugging home my work laptop--bohemouth that it is--whenever I want to play Civ, which with an add-on due out in two days, may be quite a lot in the near future.

 

[wiglaff]

Yes the macbook can run civilization 4. however probably not as well as the dell. anyway, $700 is a bargain for that machine. and if the poster likes playing games, it's a much better platform to do so than the $1200 macbook.

 

[doronron]

I would suggest you recheck your priorities. I can't claim "! don't have any money", but even for me, buying a PC just to play Civ4 seems to be the height of extravagance. How can any single game be worth the 100's of dollars you'd need to spend to get a PC capable of running Civ4?

And regarding BootCamp, I don't see Civ4 as worth spending 100's of dollars to buy a copy of Windows XP, either.

I came at this from the other side. I already own a Windows PC capable of playing Civ 4 (and have been since release), but recently purchased a Mac for work - maybe five programs in total. All of them had Windows ports which didn't require I switch, but the environment XP provides was not conducive, especially with Civ right there.

It was a pricey investment, but I'm glad I made the leap.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Yes the macbook can run civilization 4. however probably not as well as the dell.

I get the impression from this and other posts that you have never even seen Civ4 running on a Mac. How much stock should we place in your advice?

 

[wiglaff]

I get the impression from this and other posts that you have never even seen Civ4 running on a Mac. How much stock should we place in your advice?

Um, your own post in a different thread stated that "the macbook will run civ4 very poorly."

Someone recommended that the original poster should buy a $1200 Macbook and not a $700 dell.

I responded that the macbook would not run it as well as the dell.

What exactly is wrong with that ?You yourself agreed . (your Post reproduced below)

Did you read any of the post-patch feedback? "Jerky" was not a common description with the beta patch. That said, the regular MacBook is not supported and will play Civ4 very poorly. It's been said before, and I'd like to re-emphasize. A list of supported video cards is on the back of the Mac Civ4 box. If yours is not on that list, Civ4 will, in all likelihood, run very poorly.

--posted by brad oliver in the OSX bootcamp thread.

The MacBook is not supported for Civ4, and has some pretty bad video hardware, so this should not be surprising. The list of supported video cards is on the back of the Mac Civ4 box.

-- posted by brad oliver in a "should we return Civ 4-Mac for a refund because it is a crap port" thread


The dell has a much superior video card, Brad...and it's one that I have run civ4 on.

 

[wiglaff]

Unrelated observation : why apple designs expensive but non-upgradeable computers with bad video is beyond me. i understand that they look good and have a nice OS, but god, the hardware just sucks. this is a part of the problem that Brad has to deal with, and he really isnt responsible for it.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Um, your own post in a different thread stated that "the macbook will run civ4 very poorly."

Someone recommended that the original poster should buy a $1200 Macbook and not a $700 dell.

I responded that the macbook would not run it as well as the dell.

Everything is relative of course, and as of yet I haven't commented on the Dell you pointed out. But let me do that now.

I'm skeptical that the Dell would perform better. The Dell card you point out has many of the same deficiencies as the GMA 950, including shared VRAM with system memory. That's not surprising, since it is a "budget" 3D chipset. They also have roughly the same fillrate, although the GMA 950 edges it slightly. Also, the default ATI card in that Dell config has 32 MB of VRAM, which is below what Civ4 needs to run. Upping that gets you roughly the same as the GMA 950.

The GMA 950's vertex performance is directly related to CPU performance, and the MacBook has a Core Duo, which leaves the vertex processing to run on its own CPU core. This eliminates most of the vertex performance gap that you'd see on the x300. Civ4 is generally single-threaded so the multiple cores on the Pentium D do nothing useful, whereas they benefit the GMA 950.

As well, the Pentium D you point out is generally regarded as a slower CPU than the Core Duo found in the MacBook, never mind the power consumption issues.

It's kind of silly though, in the final analysis: neither one of these cards is really good for Civ4. Everyone's experience is relative, and Civ4 lacks good benchmarking utilities, but I feel comfortable stating that the MacBook is not measurably worse (or better for that matter) at running Civ4 than the Dell mentioned earlier.

 

[wiglaff]

Everything is relative of course, and as of yet I haven't commented on the Dell you pointed out. But let me do that now.

I'm skeptical that the Dell would perform better. The Dell card you point out has many of the same deficiencies as the GMA 950, including shared VRAM with system memory. That's not surprising, since it is a "budget" 3D chipset. They also have roughly the same fillrate, although the GMA 950 edges it slightly. Also, the default ATI card in that Dell config has 32 MB of VRAM, which is below what Civ4 needs to run. Upping that gets you roughly the same as the GMA 950.

The GMA 950's vertex performance is directly related to CPU performance, and the MacBook has a Core Duo, which leaves the vertex processing to run on its own CPU core. This eliminates most of the vertex performance gap that you'd see on the x300. Civ4 is generally single-threaded so the multiple cores on the Pentium D do nothing useful, whereas they benefit the GMA 950.

As well, the Pentium D you point out is generally regarded as a slower CPU than the Core Duo found in the MacBook, never mind the power consumption issues.

It's kind of silly though, in the final analysis: neither one of these cards is really good for Civ4. Everyone's experience is relative, and Civ4 lacks good benchmarking utilities, but I feel comfortable stating that the MacBook is not measurably worse (or better for that matter) at running Civ4 than the Dell mentioned earlier.

the dedicated card in the system I configured has 256 mb VRAM (128 physical), not 32 ; and despite the fact that 1/2 of the vram is shared with the 1GB of system memory, I have not noticed any performance problems while using a similar ATI card with the same hypermemory (a fancy marketing term for "fake memory") on an old laptop. you might be looking at a different system.

it is a budget card, and for $800-900 you could do a lot better. but it runs civ4 fine.

 

[yvovandoorn]

Moderator Action: Please cut out the personal attacks
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889