Hardware requirements for playing C2C on Gigantic map with 50 civs

[Marko]

I am going to build or buy a new computer and one of the main criteria is to be able to play C2C on max settings: gigantic map with 50 civs. Maybe good folks here can offer some advice which hardware parameters are actually important for Civ 4?

I am currently thinking:

Processor:
Processor speed / throughput seems to be rather important in order to reduce wait times in late games. 4 cores is rather standard nowadays but it seems that Civ 4 can actually not benefit much from anything more than 2 cores.

Intel Core i7, some model with 8MB L3 cache, 4 cores.

RAM
C2C on max settings looks like to be a memory eater. So 4 GB RAM (in a 64 bit OS) is a must, but is there much point to increase the RAM size to 8GB? I have heard that Civ 4 can not use the extra memory.

Graphics Card
Discrete GPU is a must here. I have heard that Nvidia GeForce works better with Civ 4 than AMD Radeon cards, though most likely both are fine. But when searching forums I have noticed that people have had problems with cards from GeForce 400 and 500 series.

 

[Koshling]

I am going to build or buy a new computer and one of the main criteria is to be able to play C2C on max settings: gigantic map with 50 civs. Maybe good folks here can offer some advice which hardware parameters are actually important for Civ 4?

I am currently thinking:

Processor:
Processor speed / throughput seems to be rather important in order to reduce wait times in late games. 4 cores is rather standard nowadays but it seems that Civ 4 can actually not benefit much from anything more than 2 cores.

Intel Core i7, some model with 8MB L3 cache, 4 cores.

RAM
C2C on max settings looks like to be a memory eater. So 4 GB RAM (in a 64 bit OS) is a must, but is there much point to increase the RAM size to 8GB? I have heard that Civ 4 can not use the extra memory.

Graphics Card
Discrete GPU is a must here. I have heard that Nvidia GeForce works better with Civ 4 than AMD Radeon cards, though most likely both are fine. But when searching forums I have noticed that people have had problems with cards from GeForce 400 and 500 series.

Definately Intel not AMD (single thread performance is what matters). Core count irrelevant for the same reason. Sandybridge (i5 or i7 Sandy, not i3) ideal since it turbos up the single in-use core if its running lightly threaded workloads. I'd go with 8G since it leaves a good amount for the OS to use as disk cache. Any modern graphics card should be ok.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I agree with Koshling on 8Gb of ram.

I use a mid to low range Radeon HD 4650 vid card with only 512MB of DDR2 ram. It has worked like a champ with this Mod. The newer 5000 series with 1GB of DDR3 or 4 ram would be sweet indeed.

JosEPh

 

[datachild]

Fyi I'm running on an Intel i7 with 8GB ram and a high end nvidia card.
Game on a gigantic map on snail speed with rev 6?? ran well until turn 2000ish by then there were about 20-30 civilizations with around 20 cities each, iirc. The game slowed down considerable after this point with ai turn times linear increasing to 2-3 minutes and more. This might be bearable (also I think it will be quite anoying after another 2000 turns). The main problem was a ctd every 3-4 turns because of some error (from the top of my head something about memory allocation error in the graphic cards memory, because of insufficient memory???, but maybe something completely different, but it had to do with memory).
By this time I stopped, because it took me 1 hour to play 5-7 turns (which is really not that much with snail speed). The same game with >50 civilizations may not be playable. If you should try I would strongly suggest to invest in even more memory (>8GB), but I don't know if the game (or windows for that matter) can utilize the potential of 16GB.

Then again I played with a subversion rev >400 revisions ago, that means maybe there were some considerable improvements made. But then again I think it is highly unlikly to play with 50 civilizations. The next time I think I will limit myself to a giant map with 20-25 civilizations which by itself limits the average number of cities that will be build before there isn't enough space anymore. I don't know how much the buildings in the cities and the units build by the ai will slow down the turn times even further? In this case even this setting may be to much to be playable in the late game.
But the modders here did a small wonder allready, mayber they will improve the turn times even further and this goal can be realized.

 

[Koshling]

Fyi I'm running on an Intel i7 with 8GB ram and a high end nvidia card.
Game on a gigantic map on snail speed with rev 6?? ran well until turn 2000ish by then there were about 20-30 civilizations with around 20 cities each, iirc. The game slowed down considerable after this point with ai turn times linear increasing to 2-3 minutes and more. This might be bearable (also I think it will be quite anoying after another 2000 turns). The main problem was a ctd every 3-4 turns because of some error (from the top of my head something about memory allocation error in the graphic cards memory, because of insufficient memory???, but maybe something completely different, but it had to do with memory).
By this time I stopped, because it took me 1 hour to play 5-7 turns (which is really not that much with snail speed). The same game with >50 civilizations may not be playable. If you should try I would strongly suggest to invest in even more memory (>8GB), but I don't know if the game (or windows for that matter) can utilize the potential of 16GB.

Then again I played with a subversion rev >400 revisions ago, that means maybe there were some considerable improvements made. But then again I think it is highly unlikly to play with 50 civilizations. The next time I think I will limit myself to a giant map with 20-25 civilizations which by itself limits the average number of cities that will be build before there isn't enough space anymore. I don't know how much the buildings in the cities and the units build by the ai will slow down the turn times even further? In this case even this setting may be to much to be playable in the late game.
But the modders here did a small wonder allready, mayber they will improve the turn times even further and this goal can be realized.

I'm currently playing gigantic, default civ count for gigantic (25??, but considerably more now since revolutions have split them), snail, and am up to about 1600AD - that's about 2000 turns in. Turn times are currently about 30 seconds. That's on a 45nm intel quad from over 2 years ago. Haven't had a crash at all for many hundreds of turns.

 

[Marko]

Thank you, I think that I will settle then with

Intel Core i-5 2500 4 x 3.3 GHz
Kingston 8GB DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3

The weakest link is the graphics card, which I hope works fine.
I plan to try 30 civs on a gigantic map with eternity speed as my first game. Let's see how it turns out.

 

[strategyonly]

Thank you, I think that I will settle then with

Intel Core i-5 2500 4 x 3.3 GHz
Kingston 8GB DDR3
ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3

The weakest link is the graphics card, which I hope works fine.
I plan to try 30 civs on a gigantic map with eternity speed as my first game. Let's see how it turns out.

Its better with the i7 i believe it has DDR5(?), and the ATI should be a HD 5700 series or better and it is already set for DirectX 11

But its your money.

 

[Koshling]

Its better with the i7 i believe it has DDR5(?), and the ATI should be a HD 5700 series or better and it is already set for DirectX 11

Civ IV doesn't use DX11. It's a DX9 game. Civ V is DX10. The i7 memory bandwidth is slightly better than the i5 but an i5 should really be fine. If you are budget constrained then what you propose seems fine to me. If there is spare budget I'd go with a slightly higher graphics card before I went from i5->i7, though if not constrained both ;-)

 

[GiuseppeIII]

Civ IV doesn't use DX11. It's a DX9 game. Civ V is DX10. The i7 memory bandwidth is slightly better than the i5 but an i5 should really be fine. If you are budget constrained then what you propose seems fine to me. If there is spare budget I'd go with a slightly higher graphics card before I went from i5->i7, though if not constrained both ;-)

Civ v can use DX9 10 or 11

 

[hotrodlincoln]

My experience is that it matters little how good your PC is. Once this game starts to really get going, your turn times will progress like molasses in January. I have 8 gigabytes of RAM, an i7 processor, and two Radeon 5770s for my video card. I can barely even get to the Medieval era on a map with a lot of civs. I've had to stop using the Barbarian Civs option, even though I love it, simply because all of the tiny civs it produces makes for so much lag.

 

[AIAndy]

My experience is that it matters little how good your PC is. Once this game starts to really get going, your turn times will progress like molasses in January. I have 8 gigabytes of RAM, an i7 processor, and two Radeon 5770s for my video card. I can barely even get to the Medieval era on a map with a lot of civs. I've had to stop using the Barbarian Civs option, even though I love it, simply because all of the tiny civs it produces makes for so much lag.

Koshling is great at removing the bottlenecks in the AI code so if you have some savegames that show extreme turn times, post them so he can run the profiler on it and find out which part of the AI code scales badly and causes the turn times.

 

[hotrodlincoln]

Koshling is great at removing the bottlenecks in the AI code so if you have some savegames that show extreme turn times, post them so he can run the profiler on it and find out which part of the AI code scales badly and causes the turn times.

Fair enough. I will load up a game as much as I possible can and see how it goes.

 

[IronClaymore]

If you're having problems with too many civs but don't want to turn revolutions and barbarian civs off, you can limit the max number of civs that appear. Go to: C2C\UserSettings\Revolution.ini and scroll down until you find "MaxCivs = -1". Change the "-1" to whatever number you want, like 16 or 20. Once the limit is reached, revolutions will still occur, but the rebels will usually be barbarians instead of a new civ.

Barbarians cities will remain barbarian once the limit is reached, though fun things can occur, such as right after wiping out an opponent, a new one developing the very next turn.

I know this thread was meant to be for hardware requirements for gigantic map + 50 civs, but I love revolutions and barbarian civs and I hate to see people forced to turn these options off because too many civs develop and the turn times get out of hand.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@IronClaymore,
This needs to go into the Tips and Strategy thread! Good stuff.

JosEPh

 

[ls612]

Graphics Card
Discrete GPU is a must here. I have heard that Nvidia GeForce works better with Civ 4 than AMD Radeon cards, though most likely both are fine. But when searching forums I have noticed that people have had problems with cards from GeForce 400 and 500 series.

I run C2C on highest graphics settings with a rather large Viewport with Intel HD 4000 graphics, which are integrated. granted, I have an i7 Ivy Bridge proc, so the integrated on it is much better than most, but Discrete is most certainly not a necessity for C2C at this point in time.

 

[strategyonly]

I run C2C on highest graphics settings with a rather large Viewport with Intel HD 4000 graphics, which are integrated. granted, I have an i7 Ivy Bridge proc, so the integrated on it is much better than most, but Discrete is most certainly now a necessity for C2C at this point in time.

I am trying the PG again just to see what happens, what do you recommend for a Viewpoint on the biggest GIGANTIC map then?

 

[ls612]

I am trying the PG again just to see what happens, what do you recommend for a Viewpoint on the biggest GIGANTIC map then?

I use 75 by 50, and on a Gigantic Map (180 by 120 tiles) it works fine. I'd try a 60 by 40 on the largest PG map if I were you.

 

[Taxman66]

Is there really an issue with GeForce series 400 cards? I am planning on eventually loading this onto my 1 1/2 year old I7 machine (2.93Ghz x 4). I just spent $90 to order 16GB of RAM to replace the existing 4GB. However the machine has Geforce 450 (I forget which varient) card. I'd really rather not upgrade the video card at this time.

I'm currently running on an old XP machine (Pentium IV 3Ghz, 3GB, GeForce 7600GT)... but it takes 9-12 minutes (off a warm boot to reduce CTD occurances) to load the game and load a save.

 

[strategyonly]

Is there really an issue with GeForce series 400 cards? I am planning on eventually loading this onto my 1 1/2 year old I7 machine (2.93Ghz x 4). I just spent $90 to order 16GB of RAM to replace the existing 4GB. However the machine has Geforce 450 (I forget which varient) card. I'd really rather not upgrade the video card at this time.

I'm currently running on an old XP machine (Pentium IV 3Ghz, 3GB, GeForce 7600GT)... but it takes 9-12 minutes (off a warm boot to reduce CTD occurances) to load the game and load a save.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/nvidia-geforce-470-480/

 

[Taxman66]

I did read that article, but it is old and seems mostly speculative as it is talking about the cards just as they hit mass produciton...

I take it you mean that there isn't a problem. *My reading of it is that the sole issue is that the cards weren't as good as everyone expected prior to release... that's not a problem in my mind*

I saw this thread reactivate and since I'm getting close to putting CivIV on my Win7 machine I got nervous when I saw the comment about the Nvidia 400 series cards.

*******
Stupid but quick question:
I have a link to the thread providing instructions on the best way to load CivIV on a Win7 machine. He states to create a C:\Games folder. Then he says to change the default location to C:\Games\CIV4. Would I need to create the CIV4 folder or will the install program do that?

Thanks!