Civilization 5 Mac System Requirements

[gepapado]

Hello, I recently started playing Civilization V on my more than adequate iMac and noticed that during the late game, it sometimes ran a little slowly for my liking. I'm not going to complain about the leaders' graphics as I know this has something to do with Windows technology not ported correctly to the Mac version. Anyway, I searched for underlying causes on my end and did not find anything. So, I checked the system requirements (SR). The recommended SR for the Windows version are ridiculously lower than for the Mac version. As far as I am concerned though, the game is not running in some sort of emulator. So, my question is, after endless ranting, why does the Mac version have to run on such a high-end computer while the Windows version does not? The system requirements for both operating systems are listed below. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_V)

System requirements

Windows​

• Microsoft Windows
• Windows XP SP3
• Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0Ghz Processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 8 GB free disk space
• DVD Drive for disc-based installation
• 256 MB ATI 2600 XT/nVidia 7900 GS video card, or Core i3 integrated graphics
• DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
• Internet connection and a Steam account for authentication

Recommended​

• Windows Vista SP2/Windows 7
• 1.8 GHz Quad Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• 8 GB free disk space
• DVD Drive
• 512 MB ATI 4800/nVidia 9800 or better video card

Mac​

• Mac OS 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
• 2.6 GHz Quad Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• Video Memory: 512MB

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to the Mac section.

And the answer is easy: Stuff gets optimized for Windows. The same optimizations don't work on a Mac, due to different structure and missing APIs, that's why the game has to run with less optimization -> more power needed.

 

[gepapado]

Thanks for the "lightning fast" answer. So, they can't optimize it for the Mac as well, using some different optimization method?

 

[forty2j]

Thanks for the "lightning fast" answer. So, they can't optimize it for the Mac as well, using some different optimization method?

Not easily. Translating DirectX calls into OpenGL calls is a rough enough science already. Optimizing it is something else entirely.

Another factor is the video cards / drivers themselves.. they have hardware acceleration for DirectX, but not OpenGL, so more stress is put on the CPU & RAM on the OS X side. There's no technical limitation here, it's just a matter of the video card companies & Apple working on the software...

 

[civ_king]

Hello, I recently started playing Civilization V on my more than adequate iMac and noticed that during the late game, it sometimes ran a little slowly for my liking. I'm not going to complain about the leaders' graphics as I know this has something to do with Windows technology not ported correctly to the Mac version. Anyway, I searched for underlying causes on my end and did not find anything. So, I checked the system requirements (SR). The recommended SR for the Windows version are ridiculously lower than for the Mac version. As far as I am concerned though, the game is not running in some sort of emulator. So, my question is, after endless ranting, why does the Mac version have to run on such a high-end computer while the Windows version does not? The system requirements for both operating systems are listed below. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_V)

System requirements

Windows​

• Microsoft Windows
• Windows XP SP3
• Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8Ghz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0Ghz Processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 8 GB free disk space
• DVD Drive for disc-based installation
• 256 MB ATI 2600 XT/nVidia 7900 GS video card, or Core i3 integrated graphics
• DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
• Internet connection and a Steam account for authentication

Recommended​

• Windows Vista SP2/Windows 7
• 1.8 GHz Quad Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• 8 GB free disk space
• DVD Drive
• 512 MB ATI 4800/nVidia 9800 or better video card

Mac​

• Mac OS 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
• 2.6 GHz Quad Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• Video Memory: 512MB

Actually for OSX you posted the Recommended, the Minimum is
Operating System: 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
CPU Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (Dual-Core)
CPU Speed: 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB
Video Card (ATI): Radeon HD2600
Video Card (NVidia): Geforce 8600
Video Memory (VRam): 256 MB
Media Required: DVD-ROM