Does the demo reflect the game's performance?

[ZenMonkey]

I've been trying out Civilization IV on my fiancé's PC, and like the game enough that I want to play it on my Mac. I just downloaded the demo today, and wow. So slow as to be well-nigh unplayable.

Here's my system (and yes, I read the G5 discussion below):

1.8 GHz PPC G5 iMac
OS 10.3.9
1GB RAM
GeForce FX 5200 with 64MB VRAM

Now the readme file says that the rendering problems on this particular machine are only in the demo and not in the game, so that explains that. But I was also getting some horrible sound problems, constant loud speaker pops. And it ran like molasses on the very lowest graphics settings and lowest resolution; forget trying to play in 1680 x 1050 like I can on the PC with no issues. (And this is not an up-to-date PC either.)

I realize that my settings are the minimum recommended for the game so I can't expect peak performance. But other than the sound and rendering problems, does the demo's performance reflect what it'll be like trying to play the real game?

If so, guess I'm playing it on the PC until I can afford that new Intel iMac.

 

[AlanH]

The demo is undoubtedly a disaster - it won't even run on my Mac Pro. I'm surprised you could see enough to actually play, as the terrain is black on my system. Aspyr really ought to pull it off the download site, as it's doing them no favours.

Moving on to the real software, however, your GeForce 5200 graphics card gets Brad, Aspyr's lead engineer, pretty hot under the collar, as it's a very low spec card and Civ4 really needs better than that. Couple that with OS 10.3.9, which has issues with the sound software used by Civ4, and you are not likely to have a happy experience from all I've read around here. If you have the PC version, and can play it on your fiancé's PC, then I would recommend sticking to that setup.

 

[ZenMonkey]

Thanks for the summary. Just what I needed: another reason to shell out for a new Mac (I got this one before I started gaming a lot). I suppose I'll just get it and if I really can't take the performance, play on the PC until I upgrade.