how to upgrade PC

J

jasahram

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
2
Hi there !

I want to upgrade my PC to play civ 5 more enjoyable. I have quite old custom build system with following specs:
Asus P5B mainboard socket 775
Core 2 Duo E6400@2.8 GHz
4 GB DDR
8800GT 512MB
Vista 64bit
2x 1TB SATA WD RAID-1
26" LCD 1920x1200

I am running in DX9 mostly, with DX11 it FPS falls down. And I really dislike long waiting between turns.

I can upgrade cheaply to Core2Duo E6800 3.33GHz with overclocking I would say 3.8-4.0 GHz at least.
Or should I go for better graphics ? Thinking of GTX460 1GB with decent silent Arctic cooler.
 
New graphics card should be the better option, but i'm not a hardware crack.

If you then still have money "left", then better invest it into Win7 than into a new processor. Civ5 doesn't run very well under DX10 (and that's max. for WinVista), but runs better under DX11.
 
If you do not like the long waiting between turns, then you are going to have to completely overhall your system. ie get a current computer. Upgrading just the processer is not going to make much of a difference. Graphics card has nothing to do with the in between turns unless you are watching every movement of the AI. I am not sure you can turn off "show enemy moves". There is just a tremendous amount of processing in between turns. I have only a 1.8 Ghz CPU on a similiar system, and late game turns range from 45 sec. to 2 minutes and I am only playing against 3 civs. on a huge map. The overall speed of the 775 system is about half of what the newer computers are. You could upgrade the card first and then later transfer it to your new system.
 
Is it of any benefit to buy quad core CPU against dual core for Civ5 ? Maybe I could upgrade to some 775 Quad.
 
I will say this. Give it a few Months. They will be releaseing new CPUs Motherboards.

If you want to overhall your system. You be looking at
DDR3 memory
CPU
Motherboard
Even the Low end CPU Motherboard cost around $150 to $200 i3 which most motherboards can be upgraded with a i7 chips. Let not forget if you buy a OEM Windows 7 cd $90 to $130 depending on the OS. Ram $60 to a $200 or more.

Note Civ 5 More CPU useage vs GPU. So you can hold off on the GPU and buy it on sale after the holidays due to the fact new GPUs will be released after the Holidays.

Basicly this was the setup I did for my nephew. I payed around $700 for his system. But had to build the whole system. Ram, GPU, Hard drive, Windows, Case, Power supply, Motherboard/intel i3 combo.

Amd Setups can drop the cost about $200 to $250. So cost of the computer would be around $450 to $500 for the whole computer.
 
jasahram said:
Is it of any benefit to buy quad core CPU against dual core for Civ5 ? Maybe I could upgrade to some 775 Quad.
Click to expand...

Unless you can get one at a good price. The 775 was great for it's time. Putting more money into old technology has to be your choice though. You also need to double check to see if your motherboard will even make use of 4 cores.
 
This machine seems to be significantly better than mine, but if you're going to do an overhaul/replacement custom-build, may I suggest building an AMD(CPU)/ATI(GPU) system to save money without sacrificing performance. Intel CPUs generally offer slightly higher benchmarks at a similar price (until you get into the faster end of the i7 line), but the motherboards are so much more expensive than AMD boards, so that generally does more than just make up for the performance difference. For a graphics card: the Radoen 54xx, 55xx, 56xx, 57xx, 58xx cards, which offer quite impressive performance for a significantly lower proce than their nVidia counterparts. Go for dual- or triple-channel DDR3 memory.
 
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