Civ 5 on Bootcamp

[NwabudikeMorgan]

Alright, so i have a mac, but civ is too good to miss out on, therefore i'm planning on running it in a windows partition. Does anyone know if there will be issues with doing this (directX, graphics and sound cards specifically). The mac i'm planning on partitioning is a new unibody macbook pro 15" with 4GB DDR3 ram, 2.66Ghz i7 processor, Nvidia GeForce 330M graphics.

Any thoughts?
also are any of the partitioning option better than others?
thanks in advance!

 

[civ_king]

seems fine, however you will likely only get medium graphics

 

[SirTurtle]

Have you thought of trying VMWare Fusion? I hate dual-booting. Also there's the free Sun VirtualBox (haven't tried it myself). Maybe the performance wouldn't be good enough though.

 

[civ_king]

Fusion will choke on civ, go with Crossover Games if you want to blend it with OS X

 

[Kilroywashere]

directX, graphics and sound cards specifically

Whenever you try and run "top of the line" games in boot camp, it's pretty much hit or miss. The stats say it should work (provided you go low on the graphics) but bootcamp isn't always reliable when it comes to dealing with especially taxing software, which Civ 5 looks to be, judging by it's specs. The problem, I've heard comes from trying to run two OS's simultaneously and a processor/graphics heavy software (like a game or CADD programs[why'd you try CADD on a mac is beyond my comprehension, though]); the processor or graphics card just can't juggle all these things and it winds up slowing down everything. However, I've heard that the new i5 and i7 chips should reduce this problem, but that's not guaranteed.

EDIT: The bottom line is that the only way you can be guaranteed able to play Civ 5 is to have a newer Windows machine.

 

[HarryLime]

I've got a Mac too and I've never actually used Crossover games. Is it compatible with all games? Will it work with CiV on release or will it take a few days for it to become available?

 

[paulelowey]

The nice thing about bootcamp is that it isn't actually running two OSs. You boot your computer in Windows and then the mac OS simply doesn't load up.

Everything I've read so far says that my mac will run the software on the minimum requirements (and it's a little slower machine than you've got). You should be ok. Sorry I don't have references for that - it was quite awhile ago that I was digging this info up.

Excitedly downloading the pre-load right now!!!

 

[civ_king]

The nice thing about bootcamp is that it isn't actually running two OSs. You boot your computer in Windows and then the mac OS simply doesn't load up.

Everything I've read so far says that my mac will run the software on the minimum requirements (and it's a little slower machine than you've got). You should be ok. Sorry I don't have references for that - it was quite awhile ago that I was digging this info up.

Excitedly downloading the pre-load right now!!!

correct!

 

[j51]

what would be the oldest mac you could run it on with Crossover Games?

Edit: What's the minimum of the latest macbook pros that would run it well (not minimum)?

 

[Drakesden]

I've also got a MacBook Pro from March 2009 with similar specs as the OP's (Dual Core 2.66 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 512 MB nVidia GeForce 9600M GT). It's way above the minimum requirements ("Dual Core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB GeForce 7900 or better"). It DOES meet the recommended memory (4 GB) requirements, and falls just a bit short on the recommended graphics card (512 MB GeForce 9800)--keeping in mind that the mobile version of the 9600 may be pared down a bit from the desktop version.

The only place it really fails the recommended requirement is that it's not quad core. I think I saw a thread that mentioned the quad core as helpful to processing the AI, as opposed to the graphics. I just checked, and it looks like MacBook Pros are still being sold with dual-core processors, so it looks like all recent MacBooks will have the same problem.

So to sum up, anybody with a recent MacBook Pro using Boot Camp can probably expect good overall performance (memory), decent-but-not-pristine graphics (GPU), and serious pausing between turns (CPU).

VMWare and Parallels usually split the memory and the dual-core processor--one for Mac, one for Windows--and can't port graphics over perfectly, so I'd expect both to be dog-slow and graphically nearly unplayable (except for Strategic Mode!). Crossover might work better, but I'd expect a lot of bugs up front and a lot of future patches from the good people there before it's really playable.

So there's my terribly humble opinion! I guess we'll know for sure in a week!

 

[Wuddel]

Use bootcamp. It is actually pretty easy to set up. You just pop in the dvd and the utility will do most of the work. I got a license for like 35 CHF (25 $) from my university.

I guess this will give you medium graphics settings. Still a good looking game i think.

 

[iop]

Another vote for bootcamp. There are nice walkthroughs on the web with pictures that will comfort you - and it's really easy. I suggest formatting the Windows partition with NTFS. If you ever want to put a large file on it (such as a Civ5 download, if it comes as a single file), you don't want to be stuck with FAT32. There are free tools (NTFS-3G) as well as good and faster commercial ones (worth the money in my case) that allow OSX to read/write to an NTFS partition (or a NTFS external disk). Note that the boot camp utilities allow reading from the OSX partition, but not writing to it.

The only downside is that you won't be able to use tools like SmcFanControl to adjust your fan settings, which means that the fans will not run high enough (for my taste) initially, unless you set the fans to high in OSX and reboot. But if you run a demanding application, they'll kick in eventually. I run Civ4 on maximum settings on my early 2009MBP without problems, and I hope to be able to run medium settings for Civ5.

 

[j51]

Are new imacs quad core?

 

[DarkMaster]

Bootcamp is just like Windows on any machine. You have to install nvidia drivers and directx just like any Windows computer.

As for your settings, the game isn't out yet so there's not way to know for sure, but I would say you are fine. I am in a 13'' MBP with the 9400m nvidia graphics and I'm fairly sure I won't have to run with everything on low. The i3 integrated is supported, and the 330m blows the out of it.

 

[civ_king]

Use bootcamp. It is actually pretty easy to set up. You just pop in the dvd and the utility will do most of the work. I got a license for like 35 CHF (25 $) from my university.

I guess this will give you medium graphics settings. Still a good looking game i think.

boot camp is well... Apple, even Johann and Brodie can set it up

Link to video.

on a side note:

OS X

 

[coffee junkie]

Are new imacs quad core?

- 21.5-inch models, one of the following :

ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory

( I suppose these 21" are not quad )

- 27-inch model with dual-core processor : ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory

- 27-inch model with quad-core processor : ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory