Can't Run Civ V on my Mac
- Thread starter rosynelson
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Killer Rabbit
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Considering buying Civ V for my Mac. I'm a little below the system requirements; 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and a 128 MB GeForce 8600M GT video card. Everything else meets the required system requirements. (It's the late 2007 MacBook Pro) Will I be able to run the game at all, or should I not even bother?
achabot
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I wouldn't bother, you won't like the feeling of a game moving as if in coal tar.
That's a bit rough. I wouldn't attempt it, especially at the current patch. PC got a great performance increase in the most recent patch, which is not yet ported to Mac.
That video card.. if I recall, the 8600 is different than the 8600M. If so, 8600M is unsupported, and unsupported cards haven't been doing well.
Aspyr does offer a little help: Open a support ticket (support.aspyr.com) with "Will Civ V run on this?" and list EVERYTHING - I note you didn't mention your RAM above, but it's important. If they have a system in house that will match it, they'll try it and let you know.
Killer Rabbit
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I have 2 GB RAM and run Mac OS X 10.6.6. I could upgrade to 4 GB, but it doesn't seem worth it to me to upgrade a three-year-old laptop. I guess my best move would be to simply build a relatively cheap PC, but I'm a poor college student.
I have the same computer and I originally bought the game for PC since I can run both with boot camp. That runs fine, albeit on low graphics settings, but I just realized Steam lets you download the game for mac as well without paying anything more. Unfortunately it's extremely slow and not worth playing.
Anyone know why this is/if they'll release something that would speed it up? It would be much more convenient to be able to play it on the mac system.
cecilbturtle
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Unfortunately I can attest that the Mac version will not run on a MacBook Pro with the x1600 - you likely will get the small black screen with two yellow bars and nothing else.
However, the Windows version DOES run on the same machine under Boot Camp (at least with XP). There are some graphical artifacts with some of the smaller icons and splash screens, but it is otherwise very much playable on standard=size maps or below.
However, the Windows version DOES run on the same machine under Boot Camp (at least with XP). There are some graphical artifacts with some of the smaller icons and splash screens, but it is otherwise very much playable on standard=size maps or below.
"Why" is 3 tangentially related reasons:
1) Firaxis wanted a ton of graphically-intensive eye candy in their game.
2) Apple has not, until very recently, been shipping with decent gaming video cards, especially in their laptops.
3) Due to differences in implementation, OpenGL (most commonly used on Mac) tends to perform more poorly than DirectX (Windows-only) on the same hardware. This isn't a design flaw, it's simply OpenGL implementation being behind the curve and needing more love.
"If they'll release" is unlikely. Aspyr is continually working on performance boosts, of course, but they would need Firaxis/2K to release some kind of "low res" mode that they could port to make older hardware perform reasonably.
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