Intel vs AMD build for Civ6

[SirWill90]

Thread title says it all. I have built PCs 15+ years ago but am now way behind, having gotten lazy and bought laptops for the last decade.

Now I want to begin planning to build my own PC again, and as Civ is my primary game in all its iterations, I would like to see if I should go with the Ryzen or, as I am inclined, the Intel.

If anyone would like to post their entire build with arguments, that would be welcome too.

 

[Victoria]

My arguments are just from observing.

My GPU was replaced lately With a gtx1080 and it's so under-utilised for civ I would not bother. Was put in for my children's appetite not mine but the graphics test on civ did improve a wee bit likely to a better clock speed

My I7's are a few years old and chug away through performance tests at 40%

My 16 gb ram is way overboard but on huge maps civ will eat over 4gb.

My civ game still stalls and stumbles... why?

Well with a thread for each major and minor civ and a few other graphic threads and an overall controlling thread by the looks of things we can make some assumptions. It's a turn based game and while some of these threads will contend, 8 threads looks like enough to me. I have 16 and they just are not getting hammered at all. Sure there is some swapping but the speed gain between 8 and 16 is I doubt of much consequence

The single threaded aspect of a turn based game I personally would say is mainly going to benefit from clock speed.

It's more about how they can run threads of different civs and tasks in a more parallel manner which is down to programming.

Take from all that what you like because you have not mentioned cost or pure pleasure from building the puppy. Suffice to say high end stuff will unlikely make a big difference

 

[SirWill90]

Oh you are right, I should mention price. I don't intend to spend more than $1500 on the machine, not including monitor. And that is even high.

 

[Jaybe]

For smooth sailing include a solid state drive with your setup.
Of course.

 

[teks]

For a tight budget AMD is the better choice, otherwise Intel is.
But that's just a generalization and honestly meaningless. They are just brands and a brand really has nothing to do with the performance of any one chip.
Last I heard AMD made its way back into the high-end processor market with the Ryzen series, and intel's budget chips have made good headway on integrated graphics, which was AMD's schtick just a few years back.
I think its safe to say that intel has been ahead for a number of years now, but AMD holds its niches through competitively priced processors at specific price ranges, but overall I would just determine how much you want to spend on a chip and go look at the benchmarks for some chips in that price range. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+1800X&id=2966

$1500 is a awful lot of money for a gaming rig, so really the skys the limit. If that's truly what you want to spend, maybe you should check out the AMD Ryzen 7 1800x or the Intel i7-6700k. The Ryzen is the better deal, but it has some issues with modern OS. They will probably be ironed out eventually. But if your making a PC just for civ 6, know that it would only take $400-500 worth of hardware.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm less familiar with VI than III - V, but as you mention "all its iterations", for at least III - V, the AI is purely single-threaded. And thus the AI turn times will be shortest with the fastest single-threaded CPU. Which currently is the Core i7-7700K.

However, I'd be hesitant to buy that now. If you solely play Civ on gigantic maps, and know that AI turn times in Civ are your main problem with your current laptop, it may make sense. But it only would if you are buying for that specific niche. But if we're talking 5 seconds per AI turn, it's not going to make a noticeable difference over a Core i5 7600K, or an AMD Ryzen 1600X. If we're talking 2 minutes per turn (I used to have that, or worse, on a Pentium IV with Civ III), the difference may be worth it.

Assuming it's closer to 5 seconds than 2 minutes, I'd recommend a Ryzen chip instead, either the 6-core 1600/1600X, or the 8-core 1700 (which is priced about the same as the quad-core 7700K). Over time, more games are starting to support multiple cores (including in graphics rendering, with DX12 and Vulkan, as well as AI), and thus for the long game Ryzen is the better choice. Buying a 7600K or 7700K today would be like buying a dual-core desktop CPU in 2008 or 2009. There were applications where it would be better than a quad core, but unless you were optimizing for specific, crucial applications that really needed that single-threaded performance, it was short-sighted versus buying a quad-core CPU. It's not all that uncommon to read about people still using a desktop with a Core 2 Quad processor from 2007 - 2009, but it's much more uncommon that someone is still using a Core 2 Duo desktop of the same vintage. The Ryzen, like the old Core 2 Quad, will have greater staying power.

Both Ryzen and a current-gen i5/i7 will also almost certainly be a notable increase over your current laptop, including in single-threaded applications like old versions of Civ's AI. You didn't mention what you have currently, but even Intel's most expensive mobile CPUs aren't going to be able to match either AMD or Intel's current desktop chips, due to thermal constraints and lower clock speeds to meet those constraints.

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My current build is from 2011, somewhat upgraded. Core i5 2500K (very mildly overclocked) quad-core, 8 GB RAM, Radeon RX 480 (haven't found a strategy game that makes it sweat yet; added last fall), Samsung 850 Evo SSD as the primary storage. Definitely agree with Jaybe, an SSD is the single biggest improvement you can make to general responsiveness; don't buy or build a new system without one. Use a hard drive for bulk storage if you need the space (I have two 2 TB HDDs, one of which is backup), but get an SSD for your operating system and frequently-used programs. I may well rebuild it into a Ryzen system this summer, but I don't really need to and I've been upgrading other aspects of my apartment instead the past couple months.

 

[Photi]

Definitely go for the SSD. I just built my current system, and the SSD (Samsung 960 Pro) didn't arrive until a few days after the rest of it was built. Until that was installed, my load times didn't improve much over my system that i built back in 2011 using a Western Digital Black 640GB HDD. Withe current SSD, games usually load towards the end of Bean's opening paragraph, or very near the beginning of the second paragraph.

The rest of the system is Ryzen 1600 (stock clocks for now until i get the bracket for the water cooler), RX 580, 32 GB Ram (i don't upgrade often, this should last me several years, plus the Trident Z RGBs are beautiful as a bank of 4) running below speed until when/if the motherboard bios will run it at 3200 MHz (or until i mess around with manually increasing its speed). Runs Civ VI with everything maxed no problem at 1920x1200 resolution. i usually only play standard sized maps and turn times are pretty good/not an issue. late in the game turn times slow down a little, but not frustratingly so. keeping browser open and switching in and out of the game is a snap. I want an ultrawide monitor, not sure how the graphics card will handle it. a new monitor is still a couple months away, by then hopefully we will have more news on the Vega cards. not an AMD fanboy, i just like choice and have no problem supporting the underdog if their offerings are competitive and especially value priced.