sun surfer
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2010
- Messages
- 42
I'm thinking of buying a Mac Mini with these specs:
What kind of performance could I expect with those specs?
I looked at the requirements and see that these are above minimum and are basically the "recommended" specs, but I also see that the video card isn't supported and found that Apple actually put worse graphics on this mini than the last one, and that there could be problems with the new operating system and Mountain Lion.
So can I look forward to the game working fine on normal settings? Even more, with those specs, could I possibly up the settings to possibly even the max? If not, what are recommended specs for having the settings up to the max? I'm just curious if anyone with a Mac actually plays with the highest video settings.
I currently have an older Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard 10.6.8. It's ever so slightly under minimum requirements for Civ V - everything is exactly the minimum requirement except that it only has 2.26 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz. The game will actually play and look very nice with a mixture of medium/low settings - at first. But then it slows down to a crawl and sometimes video glitches happen like I'll scroll to a part of the map and all the sudden all the tiles of the map are blinking non-stop like crazy with red and white checkerboard and other things and won't stop or ever fully load. So to fix it, I have to have all the settings down to the absolute minimal (which for some reason makes the terrain look so much darker and drabber - the green grasslands because a dim greenish brown for instance), and change it to strategic view before I press new turn because otherwise the system takes way too long trying to show me everything happening in between my turns. And even with that, it still slows down to an almost crawl once the game has progressed enough, and I have to accept almost minute long waits in between turns and extremely slow scrolling on the map among other things. So being able to finally play the game with good graphics and without delays would be so great.
But I'm worried that for some reason the game might not work well on the Mac mini or for some reason it'll still be slow or I'll still have to have graphics on minimum or something. Some specs of the Mac mini I could be paying for almost specifically for this game - for instance it's $200 extra to have a quad core instead of a dual core and $100 extra to have 2.6 GHz instead of 2.3 GHz, and more for the higher RAM too. I mean, the extra specs will make the computer better for other things too but if not for this game I might go with the less expensive options instead. So that's why I'm worried about making sure beforehand that the game will actually work well if I do get the Mac mini.
- Intel Quad Core i7
- 2.6 GHz
- 8 GB RAM
- VRAM 512 MB (possibly 768 MB - it says "up to 768 MB for RAM higher than 4 GB" but doesn't specify)
- Video Card HD Graphics 4000 (Integrated)
- Operating System OSX Mountain Lion (latest version)
What kind of performance could I expect with those specs?
I looked at the requirements and see that these are above minimum and are basically the "recommended" specs, but I also see that the video card isn't supported and found that Apple actually put worse graphics on this mini than the last one, and that there could be problems with the new operating system and Mountain Lion.
So can I look forward to the game working fine on normal settings? Even more, with those specs, could I possibly up the settings to possibly even the max? If not, what are recommended specs for having the settings up to the max? I'm just curious if anyone with a Mac actually plays with the highest video settings.
I currently have an older Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard 10.6.8. It's ever so slightly under minimum requirements for Civ V - everything is exactly the minimum requirement except that it only has 2.26 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz. The game will actually play and look very nice with a mixture of medium/low settings - at first. But then it slows down to a crawl and sometimes video glitches happen like I'll scroll to a part of the map and all the sudden all the tiles of the map are blinking non-stop like crazy with red and white checkerboard and other things and won't stop or ever fully load. So to fix it, I have to have all the settings down to the absolute minimal (which for some reason makes the terrain look so much darker and drabber - the green grasslands because a dim greenish brown for instance), and change it to strategic view before I press new turn because otherwise the system takes way too long trying to show me everything happening in between my turns. And even with that, it still slows down to an almost crawl once the game has progressed enough, and I have to accept almost minute long waits in between turns and extremely slow scrolling on the map among other things. So being able to finally play the game with good graphics and without delays would be so great.
But I'm worried that for some reason the game might not work well on the Mac mini or for some reason it'll still be slow or I'll still have to have graphics on minimum or something. Some specs of the Mac mini I could be paying for almost specifically for this game - for instance it's $200 extra to have a quad core instead of a dual core and $100 extra to have 2.6 GHz instead of 2.3 GHz, and more for the higher RAM too. I mean, the extra specs will make the computer better for other things too but if not for this game I might go with the less expensive options instead. So that's why I'm worried about making sure beforehand that the game will actually work well if I do get the Mac mini.
