Does Civ IV benefit from Dual Core or 64 bit CPUs ?

[Siggy19]

I am in the process of upgrading my PC and want to know what to get for best performance at a price I can afford.

I'm going to get a nVidia GEForce FX6800GT since that seems stable, 1-2GB of RAM since that seems to help performance, but I need to know what CPU/Mobo to get. The Dual Core AMD Athlons start from about $320, while the 64 bit ones start from around $120, which is on a par with the non-64 bit XP series.

Any advice, or specific recommendations ?

I need CPU, Mobo, Memory, Video Card and sound - Onboard Audio will do for me - (and probably a new PSU !) but my existing case, CD Drive, Hard Disk and Monitor are all fine !

I can get the FX6800GT for $280, a 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM for $75 and would love to come in around $500 for the full upgrade (it is solely for a $50 game, after all !)

 

[Skullguise]

I just upgraded 2 days ago. First off I made the mistake of getting a Pentium D. I afterwards saw the reviews of the AMD 64 2X's. AMD crushes Intel atm. SO you are right by going with them. The Intel is however great at multitasking. So I can play World of Warcraft my mp3 player and whatever else I want in the backgroung and still get 60 FPS

Having said that I now have:

Pentium D 3.0 GHz
2 GB dual channel DDR2 PC 5300 RAM (blazing FAST)
Intel d945Pvs Motherboard
Nvidia GF 7800 GT OC (not SLI, just one )

Before I had a AMD 3.2 with 1 GB dual PC3200 RAM and NV 6800 GT. I couldn't play Civ4 longer than an hour without a CTD with no error message.

Now I have not had a single CTD even after playing for 6 hours or more. However the video still stutters.

 

[Skullguise]

oh also if you go dual cores I think pretty much all of the motherboards are PCIe. So you might consider a 7800. However my cost was around 800 total (I sorta got the 7800 free. My 6800 burned up and I got the 7800 for it! Gotta love COMPUSA's no question protection plans! It is WORTH the 65 investment trust me.) AND if you do get a PCIe MB you will need a new power supply that has v2.2 with 24 pin (2 X 12 instead of 2 X 10 on the AGP boards) power connector.

 

[Methodica]

I upgraded to a AMD X2 4400+ I also had a nvida 6800. Mother boards wise I would go with the asus A8V. Before you buy it though have them take out the mother board and look at the bios verison. You need a certain bios verison to support the X2.

As far as performance wise you will see little to none with Civ 4. For any game right now the best performance you will get is may 10-20% tops. If you only upgading for video games don't bother with the dual cores. Spend the same price on a faster single core proccess.

Dual core proccess only shine when your running multilple programs at once. I got mine because I normally have Visual Studio, Photoshop and 3dsmax running at the same time. For me its almost 80% preformance increase but its almost 0% for games.

I have a Nvidia 6800 and AMD 4400 and civ 4 does not work!!!

something you might want to keep in mind before picking the game up.

 

[Skullguise]

How much RAM do you have? I read elsewhere in the forums that having 2GB or more helps due to the memory leak. Also try increasing your pagefile size.

I DEFINTELY had an improvement with my upgrade both in no more CTDs and in FPS. I used to have ~15FPS. Now it is 25-30 average. As I said though the in game movies are still completely laggy. I am going to install my Audigy 4 pro and see if this helps. Something tells me its a sound issue.

 

[JasonX]

The Intel is however great at multitasking. So I can play World of Warcraft my mp3 player and whatever else I want in the backgroung and still get 60 FPS

I'm able to do the same thing on my AMD barton 2500 overclocked to 3200 speeds. AMDs are just as good at multitasking as intels.

 

[Skullguise]

Actually I meant my dual core Intel was good at multitasking. I already know and acknowledge that the AMDs totally blow away Intels at gaming, especially the dual core AMD 64.