New computer for Civ IV

[Pbhead]

Ok call me a civ addict but I am going to buy a new computer for the only porpouse of civing(I've needed a new one for a loooong time, but now I have a reason )

I have heard that the game freezes on large maps, I want to know what I need (ram and graphics mainly) to run the most insanely huge maps at the highest possible resulotion and graphic options. Also I want to hear for you that have the game and their game is choppy(so I don't get those computer componets )

p.s. I feel really stupid asking this, but can one of you tell me step by step(or point me to a thread) how to make lotz of screen shots? As soon as I get the game I am going to play my first game on the highest difficulty level and see how long I last(very short) and post about it.

 

[John L]

I won't even try to answer the question about getting screen shots, but you can easily find that answer on the internet.

However, let me give you some advice, ok?

When you get your new computer, and if you don't make it from scratch like many of us do, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize it's performance.

First, don't get an ATI or NVidia graphics driver, as these two are the ones that are having the maximum trouble. Unfortunately, both are among the largest, but there are others out there.

And second, use pull-out trays for your hard drive, to go into a drawer. They are very inexpensive, and easy to use. here is why they are preferable. With a drive drawer, and two, or more drive inserts, you can have multiple Operating systems that are easily interchangable.

For example, you can have one Windows unit for your business, or general things, and a seperate one for your gaming. Also, you can have one for learning to use Linux as well. The possibilities are endless. I use these trays and drawers on both my computers, and Love it.

Here is where you can order them. Go to Tiger Direct, and order this one here. There are many others that are cheaper, but the tray has an extra fan that will keep the hard drive cooler. Also, you can get the extra trays right here. The extra fan is located on the front of the tray, and another on the rear of the drawer unit. I really like them and can change them out any time I wish. YOu will never be dissappointed, and they are so simple to set up.

And if you can't find, what I am showing you, in Thailand, you can order them from Tiger Direct. Enjoy your new computer.

 

[vmxa]

The game as an in game camera to snap shots, but I have not used it. I just use Irfanview (free). set it to any hot key and punch it any time.

With 1.09 and the latest Nvida drivers on a 3.06HG with 1GB ram it has been running smooth so far. I bought a new Radeon X700 to try in the AM.

 

[Asterothe]

print screen key is your answer. Everytime you press it it saves the
screenshot in screenshots dicrectory of the game. Very simple.


John L Which card do you suggest then? You end up buying
either NVidia or ATI no matter what. ( and some Intels but
generally the other 2 are the dominant ones) And there are
so many things to say about a new computer and suprisingly
you chose to talk about hard disk drawers.

 

[John L]

print screen key is your answer. Everytime you press it it saves the
screenshot in screenshots dicrectory of the game. Very simple.


John L Which card do you suggest then? You end up buying
either NVidia or ATI no matter what. ( and some Intels but
generally the other 2 are the dominant ones) And there are
so many things to say about a new computer and suprisingly
you chose to talk about hard disk drawers.

Gosh, I have no idea on that one. I haven't needed another card lately, and have the NVidia one. And I am not about to change it over a case of CivRant. I naturally assumed that there were other competitors out there.

Have you tried Tirer Direct yet? They have about everything under the sun. Oh, I am not an employee of theirs either. I just happen to like them as they have a local store here in Raleigh. And they have great prices too.

Check them out. But I would not recommend getting a motherboard that has a one in all set up on board. Too many things to go wrong and "Fritz" the entire setup.

 

[John L]

And there are
so many things to say about a new computer and suprisingly
you chose to talk about hard disk drawers.

Oh, the "hard disk drawers". I mentioned this to the fellow, because it is something that is not readily talked about, and I happen to be sold on them.

If a person is married, and has children, the drawers are of particular interest, in that every member of the family can have a seperate drawer, and not have some kid allowing spyware, or other goodies tocontaminate your drive.

I was introduced to them a couple of years ago, and am an absolute convert. And if you are a geek, or someonw who likes to tinker with computers as I do, you will always have multiple hard drives laying around the house. I have eight extra ones laying around, so I like to get use out of them when I can.

 

[cleverhandle]

...there are a couple of things you can do to maximize it's performance.

First, don't get an ATI or NVidia graphics driver, as these two are the ones that are having the maximum trouble. Unfortunately, both are among the largest, but there are others out there.

I'm sorry, but what are you smoking? ATI and NVidia users have the most problems because they vastly outnumber any other users. Why? Because those companies dominate the gaming vid card marketplace. And they dominate because they make wicked fast cards. Any other GPU maker out there at the moment is "developing" at best.

And second, use pull-out trays for your hard drive, to go into a drawer. They are very inexpensive, and easy to use. Here is why they are preferable. With a drive drawer, and two, or more drive inserts, you can have multiple Operating systems that are easily interchangable.

Or learn how to use partitions and a boot loader. Desktop hard drives really don't like being jostled around very much. But what do multiple OS's have to do with running Civ?

@OP: I don't think there's any clear pattern as to vid card performance in cIV yet, especially post-patch. If it's truly that important to you, wait for sites like Anandtech to add cIV to their vid card test suites - that probably won't take very long. If you're truly devoted, order several video cards, test them yourself, and return what you don't want. More realistically, check out some comparisons at the review sites and buy the best card (based on current data) that you can afford. Generally, there are very powerful cards to be had in the $200-$250 range and anything past that has you paying a lot more for a card that will just be that much cheaper in a few short months.

As far as RAM goes, get plenty of it (1GB minimum, 2GB would be super) and make sure it's decent quality stuff. It's really easiest to do this if you learn to build your own machine, which is quite easy and fun to boot. OEM's tend to use pretty marginal components at best. That also lets you install Windows without all the preloaded crap.

Other than that, any decent proc should be OK. Last I checked, AMD was king for pretty much everything but video work, but I've been out of the hardware loop for a while. Other components are going to have negligible impact on cIV.

 

[El_Machinae]

You know, I don't think it's necessary to totally focus on just playing the game. I think that the WAY extra utility you can get by using your computer for a few other things will totally outweigh the losses from 'reduced' performance.

 

[vbraun]

You will be able to play the game on basically any setting with this machine:
AMD Athlon 64 FX57
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2x eVGA Geforce 7800GTX 256MB
2x CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR400
4x Western Digital Caviar 250GB
OCZ OCZ600ADJSLI
A floppy drive (can take from old computer)
DVD Dual-Layer writer of your choice (maybe 2 of them)
A case
Liquid Nitrogen Cooling

of course this machine with the proper overclocking would be able to set a new record 3dMark 05 score, aand you'll be able to play any game for the next 2 years at the highest settings.

So with this machine you'll be able to play Civ4 just fine.

 

[Subtestube]

One mistake there Vbraun - Get an Athlon X2 rather than an FX series CPU. Dual core is gradually getting more support, and in all likelihood will be a *little* bit better future proofed. Actually, as a matter of interest, anyone know if Civ IV supports dual-core stuff for performance?

 

[vbraun]

One mistake there Vbraun - Get an Athlon X2 rather than an FX series CPU. Dual core is gradually getting more support, and in all likelihood will be a *little* bit better future proofed. Actually, as a matter of interest, anyone know if Civ IV supports dual-core stuff for performance?

The X2 is not yet as fast as FX, but it soon will be. The FX is still the best gaming chip out there. It's really up to you. Do you want to be playing Civ while watching a DVD on your other moniter?

I do not think Civ4 is designed to take advantage of dual-core, and SLI for that matter.

 

[Calder]

Ok call me a civ addict but I am going to buy a new computer for the only porpouse of civing(I've needed a new one for a loooong time, but now I have a reason ).

I to am getting a new computer for civ4, well at least not entirely new, just an upgrade. I'm getting it mid-December, and after reading all the forums about problems playing the game, I'm quite glad I haven't had to go through all that frustration.
I was thinking about getting the best processor out, i.e. Athlon 64 FX57, but that comes at quite a cost! Reading through 'Toms Hardware' site and the likes, I came to the conclusion that the Athlon 64 dual Cores are much cheaper and at only 200mghz difference it was hard to justify the extra expense.
Here's what I'm getting anyway:

Foxconn FNF4SK8 with integrated audio
Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200
1GB (2 x 512mb) DDR400 Ram
80GB Sata HDD
DVD Dual layer drive
GeForce 6600 PCI-E 256mb
Windows XP Home fully patched

As I'm on a fairly tight budget, I hope this will do for now, and this system is easily upgradable. I've kept the price down also by keeping all my old periphials.
Anyway I hope this will do for Cic4. And good luck to you in what ever you choose to get. We civ addicts need the best!

 

[ceiph]

AMD Athlon 64 FX57
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2x eVGA Geforce 7800GTX 256MB
2x CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR400
4x Western Digital Caviar 250GB
OCZ OCZ600ADJSLI
A floppy drive (can take from old computer)
DVD Dual-Layer writer of your choice (maybe 2 of them)
A case
Liquid Nitrogen Cooling


rofl yea that comp will play civ 4.... does this kid have 2 or more grand to spare?

as for the nvidia and ati suck.... um dude they are the only possibilitys, unless u get intels intergrated vid, which wont run civ 4 OR install the new windows in a year or 2.

pbhead any new comp should play civ 4 easy just dont skimp on mem (at least 1 gb if u wanna plan ahead) and make sure u have an ati or nvidia card....

to go with everyone else though if u can build it yourself do it. its cheaper and better in any way u look at it.

anyways id preach to you and all but we dont know ur spending limit and what not so yea

 

[Subtestube]

Actually, ceiph makes a good point - what kind of budget are you looking at? That could help us tailor something to you.

 

[cleverhandle]

I do not think Civ4 is designed to take advantage of dual-core, and SLI for that matter.

SLI was landing at about the same time as I stopped following hardware, but I thought it didn't require any special support, that the 2 vid cards basically acted like a single vid card as far as the software was concerned. Am I mistaken?

 

[calyth]

IMO there isn't a need to build the top of the line PC to play this game.
I was able to play a Huge map. I'm sure I'd get lag as I approach the Modern age, but the main problem I've experienced is actually load time.
Get a motherboard that takes AMD64, and has PCI-E. Not that you'll need that 64-bit computing, but AMD64s are truly faster, but I don't think you really need the FX for this game. PCI-E will let you get graphics cards beyond a 6600GT from nVidia. I'm using an AGP 6600GT 128MB and I don't have graphics problems anymore.
Avoid onboard sound and video like the plague, usually they drain CPU cycles. More often they both drain CPU cycles, and not good for anything more than entry level computing, or business computing. onboard video would simply eat up system RAM, so don't even bother.
Get SATA HDs. And make sure your motherboard supports it (most new motherboard does). I've heard that it does provide better actual HD speeds than UDMA drives. And if you must avoid loading speed like a plague, buy 2 and stripe them (but then if one of them fails, you loose all data). If you don't like the stripe's disadvantages, you could try RAID5, but I don't think it's great for games.
You'll want at least 1GB of RAM.
The main thing is actually spend money on quality parts, and test the thing out to be stable. Don't use that typical cheap no-name power supply that came with cheap cases. Go through Tom's Hardware and find at least a decent one that doesn't fail physically or ATX specs. Check that you don't have bad RAM. Check that your hardware is running stably. Then if you want, push it a little bit, but remember to check for stability afterwards. I've diagnosed laptops that crashed a lot because the hardware is no longer stable for Windows, and Civ 4 isn't going to be good if your hardware isn't behaving.
If you've round out with a good motherboard, decent CPU (but not like an arm and a leg like the FX57), good amount of RAM, and a good HD, then spend the money on a good graphics card. You shouldn't need an SLI setup for Civ 4, so IMO it would be a great waste. Now if you do play FPS, that would be a different story.

 

[AsnoT]

too much advice here that has nothing to do with playing civ4.

the game has a footprint in memory of around 800mb (and it's not a memory leak, meaning the situation most probably won't change with any patch).

that necessitates TWO gb of memory if you want to avoid the (comparatively) extremely slow harddisk access times when your computer starts swapping out data from ram.

i threw out my 2x512 y'day and put in 2x1gb - improved speed of gameplay a whole lot, harddisk doesn't work overtime any more.

(1gb modules cost more than two 512 modules, btw, and you should not mix RAM. if you can't afford 2gb right now, get a one gb ram, not two 512, which will block the slots in your mainboard once you DO want to upgrade.)

i have no problems playing the game on two machines here, one with the specs in the sig, the other a slightly slower cpu and a radeon 9500pro.

 

[cleverhandle]

Avoid onboard sound and video like the plague, usually they drain CPU cycles.

Puhlease... while onboard video is just crappy budget stuff (as it's meant to be), onboard sound hasn't caused significant CPU load in years. Modern CPU's can pump some sound effects out of a pair of speakers with their little pinky fingers.

I've heard that it does provide better actual HD speeds than UDMA drives.

I've heard that pigs fly and that I'm getting a new Porsche for Christmas, but neither of those are likely to be true. SATA only bumps the maximum throughput across the cable, but no drive on the market has the mechanicals to saturate a 133MB/s UDMA connection on it's own. Even a pair of striped drives might just break 133, and that's not the kind of data transfer that gaming requires. SATA drives are "better" only because that's the current cabling standard and anything that still runs on PATA is more likely to be either obsolete or budget-line and have corresponding internals.

If you don't like the stripe's disadvantages, you could try RAID5, but I don't think it's great for games.

Did you "hear" this, or do you know it? Do you know what RAID5 is or how it works? If you do you'd know that RAID5 favors reads over writes (it reads faster than a single drive, but writes slower) and therefore would be fine for games. A complete waste of money and a ton of added heat and complexity, but fine performance-wise. Of course, the best option would be to ignore all the hardware machismo out there and just buy a single freaking drive and put your money into a better video card.

@OP: Please do yourself a favor and go to a real hardware site if you want advice on building a machine. Suffice it to say that you really just need a gaming machine, with maybe a bit more RAM and bit less video than the hardcore FPS guys want. Find a forum, tell them what you want, and see what they advise. I'm out of here...

 

[holy king]

mine is:

athlon 3200 (2gigs)
1g ram (pc3200)
radeon 9800 SE
80gb hard drive, 2mb cache

playing my first game right now, huge map, 16civs, epic
and im facing no problems at all

 

[rguymon]

NVIDA and ATI are the best video cards. I suggest you get one or the other. I strongly disagree with the advice someone gave above to aviod them. They are the best and will be supported by virtually any game that comes out. If there are problems now you can bet they will get resolved. I have used both cards and I prefer the NVIDA I have 660oGT and it works great.

If you have some thecnical ability it is not hard to build you own system. Go to some where like Mwave.com and order the parts. You will have a better computer for less money. Only down side is no guarentee or thec support.