How many cores are you planning to have for Civ V?

[Shurdus]

I have an E8500 dual core processor with 4Gb of ram. Also I have a 9800 GT videocard which is decent still even though it is not the best out there. My rig is not that hot anymore but it should be able to support Civ V just fine. If it does not run smooth on that system I would be severely disappointed.

 

[liquid fire]

My system is completely cobbled together. The processor is either dual core or quad core I think, but came with integrated graphics, so i cannibalized an old graphics card and upgraded the ventilation. I may need to actually shell out some dough for a new graphics card when ciV comes out though...

 

[Willem]

Sure they do. Valve publishes its hardware survey on the Internet, and there are more quad core users (25%) than single core users (18%). The rest are dual core.

That's the point I was making. That puts dual-core at 57% of the market, and developers are going to be keeping that in mind when they determine their target market. Quad-core is still a small sector of the computer systems out there, less than half of dual-core, so it's not to their advantage to design with them in mind. They certainly aren't going to be designing their games with hex cores in mind, so all those extra cores are just going to be wasted for years to come. People who are paying money for those things are just being scammed as far as I'm concerned.

 

[civ_king]

You, sir, have way too much money and should give me some .

I'm waiting for the (overdue) MacBook Pro refresh, which will either be an i5 or i7. With the companies I care about pumping out OS X games (Valve, Blizzard, hopefully Firaxis soon, too), I'm thinking about going from the 13" to the 15" MacBook. That will depend on the specs ...

nah, I just like drooling over the Mac pro, I'm waiting for the refresh so I can grab the current generation of Mac Pro cheaper, might go with a MacBook Pro maxed out, I'll probably cash my bonds cuz I'm not going to need them for college (Army ROTC pays for it) and I'll work some also

That's the point I was making. That puts dual-core at 57% of the market, and developers are going to be keeping that in mind when they determine their target market. Quad-core is still a small sector of the computer systems out there, less than half of dual-core, so it's not to their advantage to design with them in mind. They certainly aren't going to be designing their games with hex cores in mind, so all those extra cores are just going to be wasted for years to come. People who are paying money for those things are just being scammed as far as I'm concerned.

If you have been keeping up they said they made the game engine make lots of little tasks so it is core scalable, I find that absolutely brilliant,

Besides Grand Central is awesome (for those who don't know it is a program built into OSX Snow Leopard taking advantage of the OS being 64 Bit and only multicore)

 

[kiwitt]

I've got 4 cores + HT (Core i7) and I will get a 8 cores + HT (core i9) next. In the meantime I ramp up my RAM to 12 GB from 6GB and my Graphics Card from 512 MB to 2 GB.

 

[civ_king]

I've got 4 cores + HT (Core i7) and I will get a 8 cores + HT (core i9) next. In the meantime I ramp up my RAM to 12 GB from 6GB and my Graphics Card from 512 MB to 2 GB.

Core i9? that doesn't even have a projected release date, you might have to settle for Core i7 980X AKA Gulftown with 3.6GHz with Turboboost (with six cores)... 2GB GPU? isn't that slightly overkill?

 

[kiwitt]

Core i9?

I am satifised with the performance of my Core i7 920 - it'll do me until something significantly better comes along and 6 cores is not significant, however 8 cores would be.

2GB GPU? isn't that slightly overkill?

I currently run a 26" 1920 x 1200 and a 22" 1680 x 1050 and when I start up Civ 4 I get video issues, so I need to disable my 22" while playing. I would like to have sufficent Video RAM to allow me to have Civ running as well as links to reference sites on the web while I am modding. In the interim, I go into Windowed mode and this is sufficient. I don't want to upgrade my video card until the HD 6000 series is out. (I have a HD 4870 at the moment.)

 

[The_J]

Looking at the 5 years old PC i play Civ4 with, and looking at the PC i'm currently using for surfing with less than a Ghz, i seriously want to cry now.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I do have access to a dual quad core (8 cores total) and 8 gig RAM desktop PC........ could use that.

With some Krazy Glue!

 

[kiwitt]

Looking at the 5 years old PC i play Civ4 with, and looking at the PC i'm currently using for surfing with less than a Ghz, i seriously want to cry now.

Hey don't worry, my PC is used for more than Civ ... I run multiple VMs sometimes when I am testing.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I have a ye old dual core. Though that's going to change once Crysis 2 comes out

 

[Disgustipated]

I have a quad core system, but is there anyway to verify they are all working? I read somewhere on the internets (not everything on the internet is true as we know) that you had to activate the other 2 cores. Is this true? How do I see if I'm running at full capacity?

 

[civ_king]

I have a quad core system, but is there anyway to verify they are all working? I read somewhere on the internets (not everything on the internet is true as we know) that you had to activate the other 2 cores. Is this true? How do I see if I'm running at full capacity?

They should all work, just shuffle your programs around to the different cores

 

[NBAfan]

They should all work, just shuffle your programs around to the different cores

How do you do this? Is it done by setting Affinity in the task manager?

 

[Zhahz]

Dual since that's what I have now and (my PC will crush Civ5 as is).

Multiple cores aren't that useful unless you have software specifically designed to use them, and seeing as how Civ games are always designed to run on average or worse hardware, the chances of there being any truly significant multi-core features are pretty slim, IMO.

 

[Willem]

How do you do this? Is it done by setting Affinity in the task manager?

That's one way, but this way is better:

http://edgemeal.110mb.com/SetAffinity/index.htm

 

[Willem]

Multiple cores aren't that useful unless you have software specifically designed to use them, and seeing as how Civ games are always designed to run on average or worse hardware, the chances of there being any truly significant multi-core features are pretty slim, IMO.

Agreed. The software industry, game developers in particular, are a long ways away yet from writing with quad-cores in mind, never mind 6 or 8 cores. I think those are nothing more than a scam, providing consumers with the illusion of better performance. The vast majority of the public don't need anything more than dual-cores at the moment.

 

[Ahriman]

One miiiiillion cores. MUAHAHA!

 

[mechaerik]

Ahriman has OVER 9000!!!!! cores.


I, meanwhile, have a single-cored (2ghz) laptop. I'm trying to find a job so I can get a decent desktop.

 

[civ_king]

Agreed. The software industry, game developers in particular, are a long ways away yet from writing with quad-cores in mind, never mind 6 or 8 cores. I think those are nothing more than a scam, providing consumers with the illusion of better performance. The vast majority of the public don't need anything more than dual-cores at the moment.

unless they are written natively for Mac