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Not a fan of Windows 8, either.

Would rather stick with Windows 7 or some other OS.

 

For a couple of bucks you can buy "Start 8" and it turns it into a Windows 7 desktop - works on Windows 10 too.

 

Thanks for that. I will take that into consideration.

 

I had grudgingly kept Win8 when it came with a new laptop a couple years ago. It was all right after a while, but definitely worse than Win7 in terms of interface. Windows 10 came with a gaming desktop that I bought this past Christmas and I was very reluctant for privacy and bandwidth reasons. After five months with it, I actually feel it performs better than seven did, but it's hard to compare. I gagged Windiws 10 quite thoroughly, so it doesn't phone home too much. The forced downloads are also fairly out of the way with a bit of freedom to schedule reboots. I opted out of all the "preview" stuff.

I think I'd put 10 with 7, XP, and 98. 98 may be a controversial inclusion, but I preferred it to 95 and ME. (3.1 I generally disliked, but I had just come from MultiTOS/GEM.)

 

Uninstalling the update is the only thing you need to do to prevent it installing Windows 10 without your permission. I have no idea about how it preloads the data, however unless you're running on a metered connection (which you should be able to monitor) this shouldn't be too much of an issue (certainly Win10 is smaller than 99% of modern games, anyhow).

As for "both", Microsoft can't support third-party hardware vendors, nor should they. It's on the vendor to make sure their devices support Windows 10, given how platform-agnostic operating systems are designed to be.

 

any more req from CIV 5, then its a NO NO for me... there goes off 1 customer...

 

I'm just curious if anyone knows or suspects what the requirements will be for Civ 6? I am about to purchase a laptop for the family and fully intend to play Civ when it comes out later this year. Now I don't play at all anymore, been years since I played Civ V. But I really want to play Civ 6 and BE. I don't want to overspend, seems like the cost of laptops gets much more expensive when you start looking at a quad-core processor versus a dual core. Anyone give me some advice on this and what I should be looking for? 90-95% of the time the laptop will be used by my wife to look at Pinterest or my kids to watch the stupidest YouTube videos you can imagine. The other 5-10% it might be trying to reclaim some old glory from my Alpha Centauri days.

Moderator Action: Welcome to CivFanatics. Merged your thread with the existing thread on the subject.

 

To be honest I feel Intel's mobile processors are overpriced these days, as they're both more expensive and less powerful than desktop processors from 5 years ago. However, among Intel ones, there's a few I might posit as guidelines:

- I'd avoid the Core M ones. They use the least electric power, but are also the least powerful laptops, and are generally no less expensive than the Core i5 line. They're good if you need a super-thin, long-battery-life travel laptop, but not for Civ AI turn times, and the benefits don't matter as much if they're only used at home.
- The Core i3-6100H is a decent mid-low end one, with a list price of $225. At 2.7 GHz dual-core, it is considerably faster than the 1.8 GHz dual-core that Beyond Earth states as a minimum, and should suffice for Civ6 as well.
- The Core i5-6350HQ is likely the sweet spot for a quad-core, at a list price of $306 for a quad (2.3 GHz with boost), with better graphics than the i5. You wouldn't have to worry about Civ running well. The Core i5-6300HQ combines the quad-core with the i3's graphics - less shiny, but same AI turn times as the i5.
- The Core i7 line starts at $378 list price and is certainly in diminishing return category, not really worth it if you're trying to be cost-reasonable.

The list prices are just for the CPU, so any laptop with these will cost at least a couple hundred more if the quality is anywhere decent.

AMD's processors are an interesting alternative, particularly as their most recent ones ("Carrizo") have respectable battery life. While their peak per-core performance is lower, it tends to be less costly to get a quad-core, and the graphics tend to be a fair amount better for the price. Basically, anything in this table with 4 cores would be worth considering. The ones farther down are up to 33% faster, but all are quad cores.

In the end it will depend somewhat on whether Civ6 uses a truly multi-threaded AI. If it does, the AMDs will likely wind up being the better deal from a combined CPU-GPU perspective. If it doesn't, the Intels likely will if you prefer large maps, and if you prefer small maps the AMDs will likely win anyway due to slightly better graphics. Not really sure how likely it is that Firaxis will go with a multi-threaded AI; I thought they might for Civ5 but they did not.

 

Buying a laptop for Civ 6 right now before specs come is certainly risky. I know Civ V would probably work well on a current generation i5 laptop with not dedicated graphics card. Even a laptop from 2 or 3 years ago could handle Civ V but maybe just barely. But it's certainly possible that Civ VI won't work without a dedicated graphics card - basically, it's a question of whether Firaxis/2k wanted to target the current laptop user market.

There was discussion somewhere on here about whether Civ VI would require 4 cores. I guess the current generation of i5 mobile processors have 4 cores, but that has not been the case in the past (even with some currently sold lines that haven't been updated). That might be a huge barrier to the laptop market. Or not if they make Civ VI work on 2 cores.

If the required specs are pretty high, it might even be more economical to get a separate low-end laptop and desktop. It seems like it could go either way.

I'm in a similar situation since I want to buy a new laptop that I can do work on (higher requirements than YouTube, but still nowhere close to a typical gaming computer), but I'd also like to play Civ VI.

 

I'd be surprised if Firaxis drops the integrated gpu laptop market. Sooooo many people that play civ5 seem to do so with a crappy mainstream laptop. With crappy performances of course but nonetheless.

If civ6 is absolutely unplayable without a dedicated GPU I can smell the tears of that market from miles away.
The graphics while nice haven't impressed me that much anyway in term of possible required power.

Anyway it's totally pointless to buy anything before an official statement about required specs.

 

I'm hoping it runs on the Surface Pro 4 or 5 (that means Intel iGPU) because the ability to run your Civilization on a tablet is simply... empowering.

 

The demo has strategic view icon. So, it gives hope.

 

I hope the game is based on i5-i7, Windows 10 and Direct X12. If they want it to be playable also with PCs of ten years ago, it will be slow and will have issues with X12 as Civ5.

 

Civ VI can support 64-bit OS, but still work on 32-bit OS, right?

 

As far as we know, it's 64-bit app, so it won't work on 32-bit OS.

 

Of course, I wasn't thinking straight. It works the other way around, a 32-bit program will work on 64-bit OS.

They could make two versions, 32 and 64 bit. I don't know how much extra work that would take, but I doubt it would be worth it.

 

And yet Civ2 will not run on my 64bit Windows 7

 

Like Thormodr, I was a die hard Win 7 Pro person. I changed over (to Win 10) after lots of research and talking to many folks including some folks over at Tom's.

I am likely going to build a new PC in February using the recently released Broadwell cps ~specifically the 6900K.

With the promises that DX 12 offers Win 10 has won me over. I have been able to disable all the crap I dislike in 10 and browse using Tor if needed with no problems. Win 10 feels as snappy and robust as 7 so I am happy so far.