How POWERFUL is you computer?

[Bushface]

Athlon 64 X2 3 GHz
2GB Corsair XNS2 800MHz
320MB GeForce 8800GTS
2 x 150GB Raptor SATA hard drives
22" 1680x1050 TFT monitor
Vista 32bit Home Premium (and how I wish it was XP)

And even after a complete reinstall, I still get "Civ 4 has stopped working" messages and a black screen, usually when trying to access one of the advisers or when another leader wants to talk to me. So I have to save every few minutes: so far, saving always works.

 

[Admiral Armada]

P4 3.0 GHz (single core)
2xNVIDIA GeForce 7600 Gs
2GB ram (supposed to be 3, must check that out soon..)
XP Pro 32-bit

IT gets the job done quite nicely on any settings i care to try

 

[Mundungu]

Run CIV IV on my Laptop.
Intel Dual Core 7300 2GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM, NVidia Quadro NVS 140M (no idea on performance).

Without going into the details, by eliminating all animations, all settings on LOW, single uniit graphic etc, I can play confortably on 1024x768 even on large Marathon maps.

I could even play CIV IV BTS ( I feel after the patches BTS was faster than the orginal vanilla) on my 2003' laptop with similar settings.
The key is to get rid of all those animations and nice looking stuffs ...

 

[DragonHawk]

CPU: Pentium4 2.4GHz
RAM: 3GB DDR PC3200
Video: Radeon X700
OS: W2K SP4

My 4 year old PC is good enough for playing huge 18 civs games that I like

 

[AmazonQueen]

5 year old PC, 3Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, 256 MB Graphics Card, manages huge maps and marathon speed fine, does struggle with some of the gigantic maps found in mods

 

[Wolfshanze]

good to know im not alone

Sesh, I have a similar setup to you with one glaring major difference... system memory... I "used" to have 1GB of system memory (you have 512MB), and I recently upped it to 2GB (for $40 bucks). The difference between 1GB and 2GB of system memory on my 4yo system for Civ4 can not be understated... the game became much more enjoyable... you don't need to spend a fortune or do a major upgrade with your setup... just buy some cheap memory sticks and upgrade to a couple of GBs or more of system memory... it will make the game run much, much smoother.

 

[Ravellion]

AMD Athlon 1800+ (single core, 1.7 Ghz)
1 GB RAM
N6600LE videocard

I use single unit graphics and mostly medium detail. Some patience is required every now and then.

 

[Kiwi Tyrant]

The Wolf speaks of truth....

My ninja set-up is now a lowly peon, yet merely upgrading from 1GB RAM to 3GB has breathed new life into this tired mule; at least just for Civ anyway!

....the Austrian civ juggernaut is rollin' smoothly again.

 

[ERLoft]

Starting to seem old now, but...

Asus A8N-SLI Premium
X2 4800+ overclocked to I can't remember what
4GB Patriot low latency ram (can't remember the timing either)
(2) 8800GTS 614mb in SLI
Liquid cooled
XP Pro
Almost 1 terabyte of drive space combined.

Been thinking about moving back to one of the newer dual/quad core Intels, but just can't justify the expense when you figure in a new MB, RAM, CPU and dropping the liquid cooling.

 

[Inky]

I have four systems, and I think that RAM is the biggest limitation. It is the bottleneck which limits large maps with large numbers of AIs.

My old Athlon SP 2400+ with 2GB ram and a 7600GS doesn't balk at any size map, WinXP.

P4 3.0 GHz w 1 GB ram and 8800GTS w 640MB, on the other hand, gets unstable or slow on huge maps except on low settings. With 3 GB, it runs smoothly, all settings maxed. While the CPU is nothing spectacular, CIV doesn't use more than one core, so that isn't critical. The surprise to me is that the fast graphics card with plenty of ram made little difference to game performance.

X2 6400, 2 GB and onboard 6150 graphics is OK, but not awesome. Still, it works fine. Whereas with the original 512MB it came with, it was unusable for huge maps.

2 GB laptop with Vista is OK, but not great. I think Vista's memory footprint and Intel graphics slow it down.

If your system uses DDR2 ram, you'll have no trouble finding more memory at a decent price. Older DDR, you'll need to search more for bargains, but there are decent deals online.

Just track the memory use of Civ (you can run task manager in the background, or just start it after quitting or alt-switching). It can burn over a gig running large maps, more on huge.

 

[DBear]

EMachines T5230
AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core processor 4400+ ~2.3GHz
Memory 894MB RAM
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 approx. 313MB
Generic Monitor
resolution 1024x768


gets the job done, but still locks up occasionally and is a beast in later ages.

 

[Snazzye]

Desktop-
Pentium 4 3.4
2 gb DDR2 RAM
Nvidia Geforce 8500gt

Laptop- Dell Inspiron 5160
Pentium 4 2.8
2 gb RAM
Nvidia geforce fx 5200 (Crappy)

Both run on windows XP. I notice the times in between turns isnt bad on either computer but the desktop lets me crank up all the pretty graphics and of course runs better.

 

[Willem]

So
i bought the new CPU to accomodate civ, AND its still not enough!!!

There's nothing wrong with the CPU, it's the video card that's slowing you down.

 

[KingMorgan]

Pent D
2GB Ram
2 x 7300GTX - SLI

Run all settings at max.

It's the extra ram that makes a HUGE difference.

 

[Pluvo241]

3 GHz Pentium IV
3 GHz 2 GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT with 512 MB
Windows XP Service Pack 3

Game runs at 1680 x 1050 resolution with all settings on high with no problem.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

2 GB laptop with Vista is OK, but not great. I think Vista's memory footprint and Intel graphics slow it down.

Try ReadyBoost when using Vista. It really makes a difference on bigger maps or bigger mods. My laptop can't have more than 2 GB so a big map with my little graphics card doesn't work so good. I can practically dust my house and do laundry between turns in the late game. If I plug in my 2 GB USB drive - zoom. It's like playing a small map. A 2 GB one is only about $20.00 CDN, but you have to make sure it's fast enough to support the mode.

 

[AlessioCerci]

Intel core 2 duo 2.0 ghz
4gb ddr2 ram
256mb ati radeon graphix card
(+ready boost if it slows down - you really can see the difference sometimes, try it if u have vista)

No problems whatsoever so far

 

[SnedFarling]

Compaq Presario
2.8 GHz, 1.0 GB RAM (+ 1.5 GB swap space on the hard drive)

I had been playing Civ III just fine, and then bought Sid Meier's Pirates. I had been a freak about that game when it was a dinky little Mac Game back in the stone age (early '90s), and couldn't wait to play the updated version. It turned out to be completely unplayable until I broke down and bought a new video card with its own RAM, a Radeon X1300. This in turn required buying and installing a new power supply. But in the end it was totally worth it, since I was all set for Civ IV when it came out. (Oh, and did I mention that this is my wife's computer I've been taking apart and rebuilding, just so I can play computer games on it?)
Over all I've been happy with the Civ IV performance, other than lengthy waits between turns in the end game. But I like Marathon/Epic games with big maps and lots of AIs, so I can't complain.

 

[shulec]

AMD Turion 64 Mobile 1.79 GHz
ATI Radion Express 200M running 128 MB RAM
2GB RAM
Windows XP

My game ran slow only on large maps. BUG MOD (which is awesome) slows it a bit more. I recently crashed due to bad RAM and an upgrade from 1 GB to 2 GB didn't help game speed.

No difference is seen between lower game settings and the highest settings.

I auspect my Video Card holds me back. (This is a great notebook picked up on Black Friday dirt cheap two years ago.)

 

[nNemethon]

After a few hours I reload the game to retain super-fast processing (I guess its clearing the cache?) but that takes 2 min and helps a ton. Anyone else do this? If not, give it a try after a couple of hours.

Restarting the game usually clears caches and so everything runs faster again. I do it regularly at late game stage when it starts to take it's shoes off to count past ten.

XP is recommended to have 1 gig of ram to function smoothly and with 2gig, turn off pagefiling for a nice fast system. Vista NEEEEEEDS 2 gig of ram to run anything viably and well, 1 gig is basic minimum and 4 gigs recommended for really fast thigamies to happen. Mines 4 gig Vistax64 with no pagefiling and it screams, well, until the shoe thing.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core 6000+ 3ghz
4 gig ddr2 mem
Radeon X800XT gfx card
SATA 7200 RAID dual HD's set to odd/even stripe.

I work with a lot of gfx programs and so need the channeling (plus it's fun) Civ BtS runs very well with max quality on everything up until late game and then I do a quit to desktop and reload. Then it's good again. Memory fragments over time and so a small util can be used if necessary to defrag it. Usually quitting and reloading is good enough.

Cheers.