Intel Chip i7-860 2.8 Ghz

[Brew God]

Hello All Die Hards,

I have asked this question many times and have had great responses. My computer just fried on me two weeks a go from a power outage...plugged into a surge protector but still it died. Rather than chasing the problem and pumping money into it, I decided to get a new computer. I ended up getting the HP Pavillion 170t. It comes with the intel chip i-7 860 at 2.8 Ghz speed and the video graphic card is a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4650 Graphics. What are some of the benefits I will be able to notice while playing Civ IV and BTS. My last computer is 5 years old and believe it has a Dual Core intel chip. Most people have told me on this forum that Civ is not really a complex gave when it comes to detail and graphics etc. It does not require such a state of art intel chip nor video graphics card.

What should I be able to notice with getting a huge upgrade in cpu and graphics card compared to my last cpu which only had either 250 or 500 meg video card, plus I will be getting a nice HP 23 inch hd wide screen monitor which will make the game even more exciting to play.

Thanks

Your fellow civ fanactics since the floppy discs of civ 1 back in 1993-1994.

Brew God

 

[karadoc]

I have asked this question many times and have had great responses

Yes.. I've seen this question before. May I ask why you decided to post it again?

 

[GravityWave]

Why don't you just stick all the settings on max and then eyeball the difference?

Yes.. I've seen this question before. May I ask why you decided to post it again?

...works for Intel?

 

[Dida]

CPU is great, but the video card is weak. I would go for a 5000 series chip, something like 5770 would be nice.

I personally upgraded from a AMD 3000+ to Phanom II X4 not too long ago, now I can play huge map games! Civ4 doesn't seem to utilize multiple cores though, but having more core definitely helps unload some of the background apps to the idling cores and the game runs more smoothly as a result.

 

[.pakje]

we need a few more details

• the screen resolution
• budget
• are you going to build it yourself?
• or pre-built

etc...

 

[Willem]

What should I be able to notice with getting a huge upgrade in cpu and graphics card compared to my last cpu which only had either 250 or 500 meg video card, plus I will be getting a nice HP 23 inch hd wide screen monitor which will make the game even more exciting to play.

Probably nothing. Civ 4 is a single core only application, you won't notice any improvement on that score from your old dual-core. It wasn't even making use of that one. Unless of course it was a really, really slow dual-core. As for graphics, Civ 4 is not all that demanding in that department. Anyone can play it with a middle road card, and it certainly doesn't need 1 gig of VRAM to function to full capacity. If your old card had at least 512, then you won't see any improvement in your graphics either.

 

[Willem]

CPU is great, but the video card is weak. I would go for a 5000 series chip, something like 5770 would be nice.

A 5770 is complete overkill for Civ 4. Even the one he's getting is over the top for the game. Unless he's also playing other games, like Fallout 3 or Crysis that are more graphic intensive, what he has is more than good enough.

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: Moved to computer talk.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Probably nothing. Civ 4 is a single core only application, you won't notice any improvement on that score from your old dual-core. It wasn't even making use of that one. Unless of course it was a really, really slow dual-core. As for graphics, Civ 4 is not all that demanding in that department. Anyone can play it with a middle road card, and it certainly doesn't need 1 gig of VRAM to function to full capacity. If your old card had at least 512, then you won't see any improvement in your graphics either.

That depends on which dual-core he had. A pentium D to a Core i7/i5 is a huge jump in architecture. You're essentially going from Netburst to Lynnfield which in itself is a large performance jump per clock cycle.

I wouldnt base anything on VRAM, although if you do resolutions higher than 1680x you will want to have more than 512MB VRAM. Anti-Aliasing settings will especially impact how much VRAM you should have. Nonetheless, its still a secondary consideration.


The HD4650 is plenty fine for Civ 4 at up to 1680x on high settings. After that, you will either want the HD4850 or higher, or the GTS 250 or higher.

A 5770 is complete overkill for Civ 4. Even the one he's getting is over the top for the game. Unless he's also playing other games, like Fallout 3 or Crysis that are more graphic intensive, what he has is more than good enough.

It may be more than he needs, but its a power-efficient GPU thats also rather future proof. It will also be easier to find, and cheaper than the HD4xxx series starting very soon. It will also allow him more gaming options if he so wishes. As long as it is within his budget, I would reccommend a 5xxx series over a 4xxx.

 

[Fëanor]

What should I be able to notice with getting a huge upgrade in cpu and graphics card compared to my last cpu

You will notice that huge map games will still run badly while CPU utilization is stuck to 50% of one core.