Min System Requierment

[Jürgen Hubert]

My current computer came with an "All-in-Wonder Series 9200" from ATI, whatever that might be. I have no clue about lots of hardware details, and this is one of them...

 

[jameson]

256 MB sounds like it might need some upgrading though. A typical XP installation easily takes up some 150-200 MB I've noticed. CPU and graphics card should be good enough in your case and since decent memory is not expensive I would recommend you to invest in 500 MB extra RAM. You won't regret it.

Thanks for the tip ( I am considering upgrading anyway, but given my budget constraints I can't really justify upgrading for gameplay reasons). .
I think the Radeon 9200 is pretty much equivalent to Jürgen Huberts All-in-Wonder card except the latter has some more multimedia features. I comes with 128MB of memory, which should be enough.

Preordered my copy of the game today at Dynabyte for 43.55 euros, seems October 28 is the release date in Holland.

 

[Mazruk]

That's very good advice. If you're looking to buy a new video card, I'd suggest not going for the MX or FX series cards. Also, avoid the XFX or PNY brand cards if you're going with Nvidia.

The "budget" video card I'd suggest is 6600 GT. It should cost about $135 and handles directx 9.

What is wrong with PNY Nvidia cards? I just ordered a PNY 6600GT.

 

[Sark6354201]

I agree; there's no real hard requirement like the game won't start at all when you don't meet these minimum requirements. It's just that the gameplay will be horribly slow without enough memory and a decent graphics card so you will give up playing very quickly when your hard drive is swapping all the time and the graphics stutters along. But there's a large grey area what people will and won't find acceptable to play so the only way to find out is just try it out.

256 MB sounds like it might need some upgrading though. A typical XP installation easily takes up some 150-200 MB I've noticed. CPU and graphics card should be good enough in your case and since decent memory is not expensive I would recommend you to invest in 500 MB extra RAM. You won't regret it.

While I agree extra RAM would help, I don't think much money should be invested in a system with a Duron processor. I would save the money and put it towards the purchase of a new machine in the future.

I also agree with the sentiment that some people may be ok with some lag while others would not be. Once you pass below the minimum requirements for a computer game though, you are most likely going to run into some serious issues... As mentioned previously I believe, the minimum requirements are just that. Game developers set them as low as possible.

@Mazruk, personally I am unaware of any issues surrounding PNY video cards. Anyone care to shed some light on this?

 

[darkdude]

While I agree extra RAM would help, I don't think much money should be invested in a system with a Duron processor. I would save the money and put it towards the purchase of a new machine in the future.

We agree about the 'much' part but there can be debate how much is 'much'
That would be a personal matter.

I looked it up and in The Netherlands you can get a decent chunk of 512 MB RAM for a desktop (Kingston DDR SDRAM PC2700 CAS Latency 2.5) for a little over 50 Euros, which is about 60 Dollars. You can of course also put it into a new system later, so the effective price even drops a bit.

 

[Sark6354201]

We agree about the 'much' part but there can be debate how much is 'much'
That would be a personal matter.

I looked it up and in The Netherlands you can get a decent chunk of 512 MB RAM for a desktop (Kingston DDR SDRAM PC2700 CAS Latency 2.5) for a little over 50 Euros, which is about 60 Dollars. You can of course also put it into a new system later, so the effective price even drops a bit.

Ya, true. I would even go with PC3200 if possible, it it should clock down whatever his current DDR is and will cost basically the same.

On the other hand, purchasing two sticks of 256 for a possible dual channel motherboard would yield better performance than purchasing the one stick now and putting it in a dual channel motherboard later. But since some motherboards only have two ram slots... well purchasing two sticks probably isn't wise.

It's all preference

 

[jameson]

Ya, true. I would even go with PC3200 if possible, it it should clock down whatever his current DDR is and will cost basically the same.

My DDR is listed as PC333 Cas2,5; what does the PC rating mean exactly ?

Edit: never mind that, apparently it's PC2700 (still interested what the PC rating is though). And I did find a 512MB block selling for 40 euro's .


Mind you, I built the system myself 1,5 years ago with only price as a factor in component choices; I could also fit an Athlon processor on the motherboard (asrock K7S8X) if that would help run it better. I have no clue whether the motherboars supports dual channel , but I guess not (it has 3 RAM slots).

 

[darkdude]

It's all preference

Very true. Last time I bought a new system I spent weeks deciding on many things like:
- What's my budget?
- Desktop or laptop?
- High end video card necessary?
- How much RAM?
- How fast must the CPU be? Intel or AMD?
- 64 bit system or not?
- If a laptop, widescreen or not?
- Replacement for the good ole 17'' CRT?
- Perfect sound or not?
- Go with a standard speed hard disk or go for faster?
- Lots of hard disk space or can you do with less?

Very quickly you realise you always have to compromise unless you have an unlimited stash of money. I had Civ 4 in mind as a minimum requirement for the system to run smoothly and it looks like that'll be more than OK

 

[darkdude]

My DDR is listed as PC333 Cas2,5; what does the PC rating mean exactly ?

Edit: never mind that, apparently it's PC2700 (still interested what the PC rating is though). And I did find a 512MB block selling for 40 euro's .


Mind you, I built the system myself 1,5 years ago with only price as a factor in component choices; I could also fit an Athlon processor on the motherboard (asrock K7S8X) if that would help run it better. I have no clue whether the motherboars supports dual channel , but I guess not (it has 3 RAM slots).

Well, it sounds to me a 40 dollar investment in RAM would not be a bad thing for you. But please don't hold me, Sark6354201 or anybody responsible if it doesn't turn out like you imagined. Only you have a good feel for the system you have. I don't know exactly what your requirements are for a decent system.

If you want more information about hardware at best you visit some hardware test sites and forums that specialise in that; there are a lot around. I know I did
But if you built your own system I'm sure you can find some good sites. For The Netherlands tweakers.net is a great forum for hardware info and finding cheap shops with quality stuff, but that's in Dutch. I know anandtech.com and tomshardware.com are US web sites with tons of info and reviews about hardware. I don't know any forums though.

 

[jameson]

Thanks again !

If you don't mind my asking , what kind of system did you end up getting ?

( I know I said the budget is a major consideration, but I might find myself getting weak-kneed after all ).

 

[mabellino]

Some of us are stuck with the MX/FX series of Nvidia cards because their PCs are those stupid low profile machines! Grrrrr!
I spent several weeks researching what I could do to upgrade my machine from a lowly P4 1.7GHz, 512Mb RAM, Geforce4 MX420 to something that might actually play Civ4 without the huge interturns. Problem was I needed to keep it under £100 so a new system was out the window.
I ended up compromising on a new stick of RAM to take me up to ~900Mb and an nVidia FX5200 128Mb graphics card. My motherboard only supports processors upto 2.2GHz so I didn't think it was worthspending the cash on that.
I've been testing it with The Sims2 and my party guests have doubled! Looks good for Civ4!

 

[darkdude]

Thanks again !

If you don't mind my asking , what kind of system did you end up getting ?

( I know I said the budget is a major consideration, but I might find myself getting weak-kneed after all ).

I ultimately got myself an Asus A6K Q013H laptop. Everything standard: widescreen (later I discovered you can watch DVD's in bed with that ) , a standard 4200 rpm hard disk with 80 GB disk space; AMD Turion MT 30 (1.5 or 1.6 GHz CPU I think) and an Nvidia Geforce 6200 TC (Turbo Cache) 64 MB (supporting 256 MB) video card. The only thing I added was 512 MB extra RAM so I have now 1 GB RAM. For half the money you probably can get a desktop with the same specs but I decided for the laptop anyway because it's so convenient sitting on the couch watching TV and being on CFC at the same time
I saved some money for it; I used to have a 4 or 5-year old Dell Pentium III 500 MHz desktop with 128 MB RAM which I upgraded to 384 MB but it was not up to par to run the latest games; Civ 3 worked quite alright though; but usually heavy swapping, and some cursing from me involved, which probably explains my preference for having a decent amount of memory in my system

 

[ArdRaeiss]

My current pc:
Athlon XP 2600+(1.9MHz)
512Mb RAM
MB Asus A7N8X-X
MSI GF4 MX440 AGP 2x,4x,8x

MX is only part from my old computer(Celeron 400, MB Intel 440BX, 256 RAM) which run even NFS-U and NFS-U2(low level-of-detail of course) with playable FPS and D3 without. MX serves me well when i walkthrough HL2 and fail only with these shaders- and MHz-hungry Doom3 and Empire Earth 2. This was good low-level card, so Rest In Peace GF MX440.
Now this card is "tight hole" of whole system and can be replaced with Gigabyte GF 6600 or 6600GT plus maybe 256-512 RAM(can't be "too much RAM"). Furter upgrade can wait til next summer. I'm sure - even current pc can run CivIV with lov-med LOD at good speed.

 

[darkdude]

My current pc:
(can't be "too much RAM")

Hear, hear

 

[Sark6354201]

My DDR is listed as PC333 Cas2,5; what does the PC rating mean exactly ?

Edit: never mind that, apparently it's PC2700 (still interested what the PC rating is though). And I did find a 512MB block selling for 40 euro's .


Mind you, I built the system myself 1,5 years ago with only price as a factor in component choices; I could also fit an Athlon processor on the motherboard (asrock K7S8X) if that would help run it better. I have no clue whether the motherboars supports dual channel , but I guess not (it has 3 RAM slots).

The PC rating on normal SDRAM indicates the speed of the front side bus. PC133 indicates a 133 mhz FSB (Front side bus). Front side bus connects the components of the PC (like RAM) together, like a road system. The faster this is... well, the better

However, DDR SDRAM (or just DDR) and its PC rating means a whole different thing. DDR 400 is 400 mhz and refers to the 'speed' of the RAM, similiar to the original SDRAM ratings. However PC3200 for example indicates the amount of bandwith that can travel at one time to the RAM. 3200 would be 3.2 gb/sec i believe.

I hope that wasn't too confusing. If I messed something up someone correct my errors

 

[GR8Madmax]

What is wrong with PNY Nvidia cards? I just ordered a PNY 6600GT.

XFX and PNY make the lower quality cards. Thus, the cards made by these two companies are the cheapest. XFX has a bad reputation but you should be ok with PNY.

 

[Avernus]

Even though my machine is the minimum requirements for Pirates it ran pretty good once I toned down some of the world detail (trees) and enchanced lighting (full screen glow). Pirates also runs fine on Win98 so I would assume Civ4 will also run on Win98. Wether it's supported or not is another story since the OS is so old.

On the other hand if they did lock out 98 and force people to use XP I would be somewhat dissapointed. The older machines like mine do not run XP well at all. Sure I can install it and it works fine but performance across the board is about 60% lower (after tweaking). At least with the old Win98 I can load the entire OS using 16MB. It's funny my ATI driver uses more memory than the OS itself. So my 512MB is a little more viable in most situations. Anyways here is to hoping this game runs on 98 so us peeps with crappy computers can at least still play a decent game.

 

[Bast]

I have 1.3 Ghz/256 MB Ram and an old video card.. something like RAGE 128 PRO. Do you think this'll be enough?

 

[Avernus]

At least a Geforce 3 or Raedon 8500 is my guess.

 

[Bast]

Yes but can you do without one?