Don't bother if you have a mac

[blitzkrieg1980]

Think that a $3000 Mac workstation with 8 gigs of ram and a quad core will allow you to run Civ5 using Parallels? THINK AGAIN.

Civiliztion 4 ran flawlessly on the exact same rig that I have right now. And Civ5 is NOT running worth a damn.

Tried running the directx 10/11 versions. It immediately crashes without opening the game at all.

Tried running the directx 9 version. It gets about 3 seconds into the intro video and crashes to the desktop.

If you thought that a powerful rig like a MacPro tower with Intel Quad core would allow you to run your TURN BASED strategy game with parallels, think again.

Save your 50 bucks until they decide to release the mac version, or just buy a dedicated CIV machine. Such . I waited so long for this friggin game and now I have to spend ANOTHER 400 BUCKS JUST TO PLAY A FRIGGIN GAME.

Forget this crap... Civ5 huge failure.

 

[Minmaster]

uh yea... running a demanding new game on parallel? fail...

heard of bootcamp?

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Sorry, man, this doesn't seem to be a Parallels problem. If you cruise around the 2k Forums, you'll see that this EXACT same problem is happening to a hell of a lot of people and they all have PCs.

I mean, there are a LOT of people having the exact same problem as me.

It appears that this is a highly flawed release. 2K and Firaxis have some serious crap to answer to.

 

[AlanH]

I've just played the demo for an hour in Parallels v6 on my 2006 vintage quad core MacPro with GeForce 8800GT.

Seemed OK to me - no crashes, just a bit slow to update the screen sometimes. I imagine it would be pretty smooth on this Mac in Bootcamp, but I have an aversion to rebooting. Meanwhile, this'll work fine for me.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I'm talking the full version, man. Though, I am glad that someone on Parallels is able to run the game, even if it is the demo.

I guess I'll have to up it to Parallels 6, then. I'm still running 5.

However, the problem is the exact same as those being described for many Windows Vista and Windows 7 64-bit based PCs (which is what I'm running). Perhaps it has something to do with that.

 

[civ_king]

Yeah, Parallels 5 hates the new Mac Pros, apparently Parallels 6 fixed it (why not do boot camp?)

 

[AlanH]

(why not do boot camp?)

1. When I play a game, I don't want "total immersion" - I prefer turn-based games because I can break off to do other things without affecting the game. I run a two-screen config, and I expect to be able to see and interact with mail, IM, Skype, Twitter, web forums, write code, and other stuff between snatches of a game. I have a Mac for all that, and I don't want to replicate that whole shooting match in a Bootcamped Windows partition.

2. I mostly run Civ these days to provide support for the GOTM and Mac communities. I very rarely play the games these days, and I have never played a Civ4 game through to completion. So peak gaming performance isn't a must-have for me.

 

[RRtexasranger]

TC. Have you tried using CrossOverGames for Mac?

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

It is basically a splinter from the Wine project (which, another user has posted works with Civ 5.)

And what do you mean PCs are having tons of trouble with it? Do you mean when people try to run two OSs and play it (Because that wouldn't be 2K or Fraxis problem), or just run it in general. Cause my PC can run everything at max (AA included) at 1920x1080p.

 

[civ_king]

1. When I play a game, I don't want "total immersion" - I prefer turn-based games because I can break off to do other things without affecting the game. I run a two-screen config, and I expect to be able to see and interact with mail, IM, Skype, Twitter, web forums, write code, and other stuff between snatches of a game. I have a Mac for all that, and I don't want to replicate that whole shooting match in a Bootcamped Windows partition.

2. I mostly run Civ these days to provide support for the GOTM and Mac communities. I very rarely play the games these days, and I have never played a Civ4 game through to completion. So peak gaming performance isn't a must-have for me.

totally reasonable and understandable!

Hopefully Crossover Games gets it to work well

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

And what do you mean PCs are having tons of trouble with it? Do you mean when people try to run two OSs and play it (Because that wouldn't be 2K or Fraxis problem), or just run it in general. Cause my PC can run everything at max (AA included) at 1920x1080p.

Go to the 2K forums and see for yourself. Lots of people who are running (1) operating system (either Vista 64 or Windows7 64-bit) are getting the same error message and details as I am getting in Parallels. It may yet be that my system needs Parallels 6 instead of 5, however, it seems that there are many PC users (running 1 operating system) that are having the same exact issue as I am.

I will try upgrading to Parallels 6. If that doesn't work, I'll have to backup my system, format the HD, and reinstall everything in order to do a BootCamp partition. Apparently, there are files on my system that can't be moved (or so OSX is telling me when I try to do the partition with BootCamp).

 

[civ_king]

Go to the 2K forums and see for yourself. Lots of people who are running (1) operating system (either Vista 64 or Windows7 64-bit) are getting the same error message and details as I am getting in Parallels. It may yet be that my system needs Parallels 6 instead of 5, however, it seems that there are many PC users (running 1 operating system) that are having the same exact issue as I am.

I will try upgrading to Parallels 6. If that doesn't work, I'll have to backup my system, format the HD, and reinstall everything in order to do a BootCamp partition. Apparently, there are files on my system that can't be moved (or so OSX is telling me when I try to do the partition with BootCamp).

Or get another drive. OWC has a Sandforce SSD holding 60GB Data for $160 (works flawlessly on Mac and has the best controller yet)

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

A 60Gig solid state? $160 more for Civ? I am excited about it, but not enough to pop another 160 bucks to play it. Why Solid state? Can't I use another SATA? Then I could spend like 40 bucks for another 150 gigs and dedicate that to Windows 7.

 

[civ_king]

The Spinpoint F3 is a good compromise it is both fast (for an HDD) and cheap, $55 for 500GB

 

[peter grimes]

@ Blitzkreig - Try the free 7 day trial of CrossOver Games from CodeWeavers. I downloaded it last night and ran the demo. My system isn't anywhere near yours (a 27" iMac from early january 2010), and there were some definite graphics glitches, but the game itself didn't crash and ran very smoothly. I'm curious to hear how a different system runs CrossOver Games.

for crappy cell-phone screenshots of my graphics glitches, click

 

[guenzak]

Go to the 2K forums and see for yourself. Lots of people who are running (1) operating system (either Vista 64 or Windows7 64-bit) are getting the same error message and details as I am getting in Parallels.

I'm running Vista 64 and the game is operating flawlessly

 

[Eio]

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87584

 

[coffee junkie]

I've just played the demo for an hour in Parallels v6 on my 2006 vintage quad core MacPro with GeForce 8800GT.

Seemed OK to me - no crashes, just a bit slow to update the screen sometimes. I imagine it would be pretty smooth on this Mac in Bootcamp, but I have an aversion to rebooting. Meanwhile, this'll work fine for me.

What is your computer RAM Alan please ? I plan to try too with Parallels 6 but I doubt my graphic card will be ok. Rebooting is not my cup of tea too

 

[Welnic]

So there is a problem with the game that a lot of people are seeing on PCs? And your solution is not to buy the game if you have a Mac?

 

[silentknight111]

I just tested it in Parallels 6. Runs for me. (although not very well, due to this mac having a poor graphics card for games.)

 

[AlanH]

What is your computer RAM Alan please ? I plan to try too with Parallels 6 but I doubt my graphic card will be ok. Rebooting is not my cup of tea too

I have a Mac Pro (original 2006 model). It has two dual-core 2.66 GHz Xeon CPUs, and I have not turned on multi-core operation in Parallels - WinXP only gets one core. (Civ4 only uses one core anyway, as far as I know). I have 8 GBytes total RAM, but I only allocate 1 GByte to Windows XP. I haven't tried increasing that.

I have a Nvidia 8800 GT graphics card, as the original 7300 GT was not particularly sparkling.

The advantage of multiple cores and extra memory for me is that I can have lots of other stuff up and running in OS X at the same time as Parallels is running XP.