Need help building/buying PC for Civ 6

[Acken]

Are you sure ? According to intel website, the i56300HQ has 4 cores 4threads.

 

[Selereth]

Are you sure ? According to intel website, the i56300HQ has 4 cores 4threads.

Hm, my bad. Seems Intel realized that purposely gimping laptops with core i5s was no longer a viable strategy. Good to see they've now started putting quad cores in laptops and calling them i5s.

 

[CivSteph]

I don't think you can go wrong with MSI. Their stuff is usually good quality and fairly priced. The component choice are also consistent (contrary to some other more public brands who will sell you a super CPU surrounded by crap).
It's rare I don't have a MSI component in my desktop builds.

i5s are very good gaming CPUs usually. I don't really know about the CPU version of it though (2.3/3.2 Ghz when my desktop currently runs at 4.6Ghz make my eyes bleed ;P). i7 usually only have the hyperthreading over it which is mostly useless in gaming. From what I see on intel website the best laptop i5 is at 3.5Ghz turbo so yours is fine at 3.2Ghz I guess and you don't need a better integrated graphics since you have a real card in it.

The 960M seems like a good entry level for gaming laptop. Although I wonder if 1060M cards are coming ? The difference with a 970M is really high but a 970M must be 500$ more. A 960M should be enough for civ6.
12GB is enough.

The SSD is a bit small but if you plan to only put windows and Civ6 on it it will be enough. Make sure you manage space carefully on it, windows will require extra free space.

Thanks for the information. It's much appreciated.

 

[gunnergoz]

FWIW my two bits: If your computer largely stays in one spot, don't bother with a laptop. Laptops are more vulnerable (they travel and can be dropped) and once something breaks you need to go to a much more restricted list of parts providers and the prices are higher if you can find the parts at all, which depends on who made the laptop to begin with and how long ago it was made (do beware of sales of outdated laptops.) If you do buy a laptop, consider getting insurance with it. Good luck either way and happy gaming!

 

[Acken]

Yes it goes without saying that if it's a choice a desktop is always better for gaming.

 

[3 EMS]

So I'm stuck in spec hell trying to come up with a laptop that is around $1000 CDN ($800 US) that will perform well enough. I plan to buy this for nothing else other than Civ6 since I've been limping along on Civ 5 on my work PC. What do you guys think of this MSI model if it is in the price range? Any concerns about the i5? Is the 960 good enough? I like this one because if has a little extra RAM and the SSD.

MSI 15.6" GL62 6QF-1226 Intel Core i5 6300HQ (2.30 GHz) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 12 GB Memory 128 GB SSD 1 TB HDD Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

That laptop is a last generation one. The new ones have the latest graphics cards in them. So look around. See if you can find a deal. I'm sure they are trying to clear out inventory. Another thing, you will be stuck with the graphics card it comes with. Some things, though, are changeable. like the memory and SSD for example. It may pay to see if you can get the same laptop without the SSD and only 8 gigs of memory. Manufacturers charge an arm and a leg for each step up on things. You might be able to add a stick of memory and a better SSD for far less than what it cost to have them already installed in your laptop.

 

[dexters]

General rule of thumb
i3s are dual core with HT (hyperthreading - doubling cores)
i5s are quad core no HT
i7s are quad core with HT;

There are many variants of course. There is an octo core i7 and some older i5s have Hyperthreading
Core counts also isn't the end all, as single core performance tends to follow this hierarchy, assuming same generation/architecture i7 single core > i5 single core >> i3 single core


i7 tends to be the best bet for gaming in the past few years, though conventional wisdom was several years ago that i5s was best value. But as consoles have gone massively multi-core, a lot of the PC development pipeline has finally started to tap into extra cores so those 4 extra threads and enhanced single core performance from i7s have really become much more attractive with their 4 real and 4 virtual cores.
I'm a bit miffed that intel is still sitting on its behind with i7 octo core choices as the one in the market is 'last gen' so the current i7 6700k quad core comes pretty close to its performance in almost all instances unless doing video editing or something.

Here's a recent article testing various i7 CPUs for games; note the lack of i5s in the selection.

Their conclusion

The takeaways here seem pretty self-evident though - virtually all modern games utilise at least eight threads, and this translates into higher and often smoother performance when a Core i7 processor is compared to its i5 counterpart

On my most recent build I got a great ASUS (always stuck with ASUS) Motherboard + an i7 6700k as a package deal for about $600 cdn before tax.
Pricey, yes, but I plan on running it for the next 6 years or so, just as I had done with my overlocked i7 920, which can still run many current games and could probably run Civ6 just fine even though it's a Gen 1 i7 and is technically not a recommended CPU but is above the min spec requird.

Works out to $100 a year amortized over 6 years; probably cheaper than buying two PCs in that time where most of your cost is going into those 2 line items anyways.

 

[mnf]

General rule of thumb
i3s are dual core with HT (hyperthreading - doubling cores)
i5s are quad core no HT
i7s are quad core with HT;

Wow, that's actually very valuable information to know. Thanks for sharing! Now I'm glad I bought an Xeon 1230v2 a few years back that has hyper-threading. Aren't i7's generally all relatively expensive? For something like Civ VI, would it really be worth it to spend say almost twice as much for an i7, when that money could instead go into a slightly better display, or a slightly bigger SSD? Since the original poster is talking about a budget build.

Regarding the amortization. It does seem that we don't need to upgrade our CPUs as frequently, and we won't run into socket changes if we plan for a longer time span there, too. Graphics cards probably would do better going for second-tier models but upgrading every three years due to how rapidly they release new cards.

 

[Seek]

www.pcpartpicker.com

Thanks for that! I've been hemming and hawing about choosing parts, worrying if there's incompatibilities, etc. and this proved a valuable tool. Here's my build, hope the parts arrive before Thurs. http://pcpartpicker.com/list/d324gL