Official System Requirements

[scienide09]

Actually, it depends whether civhelp121 is looking at the 13" MBP or 15"/17" models.

In the 13" MBPs, indeed, the best (only) GPU available is the GeForce 320M, integrated and not very powerful. This is the same as can be found in the non-aluminum MacBook.

In the top-end 15" MBP and in the 17" model you'll find that the GPU is a GT 330M with 512MB.

 

[civ_king]

Actually, it depends whether civhelp121 is looking at the 13" MBP or 15"/17" models.

In the 13" MBPs, indeed, the best (only) GPU available is the GeForce 320M, integrated and not very powerful. This is the same as can be found in the non-aluminum MacBook.

In the top-end 15" MBP and in the 17" model you'll find that the GPU is a GT 330M with 512MB.

for an IGP it's decent, better than the iX IGP

 

[Huyanglee]

My current system is:

MSI P35 Neo 2 FIR (limited to 1 x PCI-E 1.0 x 16)
HD5770 1 GB DDR5 Sapphire
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2,66 Ghz)
2 GB DDR2 (800 Mhz)

Following the "recommended" system requirements I know I'm 100 % in trouble for RAM since last time around with Civ IV they told us that 1 GB would be recommended but Civ IV ate it away like crazy. So back then I already had to double it to 2 GB Ram to be able to play it on the biggest maps.

So now I'm in a predicament since I believe that 4 GB won't be 100 % enough so it would be more towards 6 GB. That would mean an expense of 2GB (55 €) or 4 GB (110 €). My video card is good but my processor is between minimum & recommended so I guess it could cause some grieve on the biggest maps.

So what do you guys think should I do just an upgrade of 110 € (knowing that this RAM is useless as soon as I want to upgrade my video card since that would mean an upgrade up the motherboard & switch to DDR3...)

However if I would buy a partially new system (everything apart from video card and HDD's) this would mean I would have to buy an i7 950 (dropping to sub 300 $ at the end of the week). But off course Sandy Bridge & competition from Bulldozer is coming mid next year probably. (PS. New system would cost 1000 €)

Then again I still have all my holiday days for this year which I will take up starting from the end next month... Would it be stupid to endure 4 weeks of not 100 % optimum pleasure from Civ IV or would I be better to say to hell with it, I'm maxing my system now and have a great 4 weeks??

Many thanks for your thoughts.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Huyanglee, my view is that 4GB of RAM will be plenty, and that 2GB will probably be passable if you're running a 32bit version. I might be wrong but I didn't think P35 supported triple RAM anyway so how is 6GB even feasible? Better to stick with 2x2GB, making sure they are identical modules too.

Very few people in the market would have more than 4GB of RAM at the moment and it would be really rather poor of Firaxis to build a game that used the RAM that much in a typical game. Probably the video memory is going to matter more and it sounds like you're in no trouble there, with that graphics card.

I'm still skeptical about how much impact the expensive multicore CPUs will have on the performance of civ5 so until you see the demo or can play the game I'd recommend waiting. I have that CPU and I know it can be overclocked fairly well - I'm running it at 3.2GHz at the moment but it can probably go higher if I needed it to.

 

[invader83]

Huyanglee, my view is that 4GB of RAM will be plenty, and that 2GB will probably be passable if you're running a 32bit version. I might be wrong but I didn't think P35 supported triple RAM anyway so how is 6GB even feasible? Better to stick with 2x2GB, making sure they are identical modules too.

Very few people in the market would have more than 4GB of RAM at the moment and it would be really rather poor of Firaxis to build a game that used the RAM that much in a typical game. Probably the video memory is going to matter more and it sounds like you're in no trouble there, with that graphics card.

I'm still skeptical about how much impact the expensive multicore CPUs will have on the performance of civ5 so until you see the demo or can play the game I'd recommend waiting. I have that CPU and I know it can be overclocked fairly well - I'm running it at 3.2GHz at the moment but it can probably go higher if I needed it to.

What kind of CPU you have? quad core or the new x6??? i gues that you have x6......

 

[tokala]

So now I'm in a predicament since I believe that 4 GB won't be 100 % enough so it would be more towards 6 GB. That would mean an expense of 2GB (55 €) or 4 GB (110 €). My video card is good but my processor is between minimum & recommended so I guess it could cause some grieve on the biggest maps.

So what do you guys think should I do just an upgrade of 110 € (knowing that this RAM is useless as soon as I want to upgrade my video card since that would mean an upgrade up the motherboard & switch to DDR3...)

PieceOfMind formulated it spot on. My 2 cent:
"4GB recommended" probably means "more than 2GB" as 4GB is the next biggest standard RAM configuration. >99% of all Civvers will have 4GB or less, so it just wouldn't make sense that ciV will require more. And it will take a 64bit system or a tweaked 32bit system to take advantage of more than even 2GB, most ciV users won't even qualify for that.

Socket 1366 /i7-9xx just don't make sense for a home user, you won't get any advantage out of the triple channel RAM interface, and an equally fast socket 1156 system will be significantly cheaper

If you upgrade your video card, it is not strictly necessary to switch to a PCIe 2.0 capable mainboard, the performance difference to PCIe 1.0 will be somewhere in the single digit % range, only synthetic benchmarks will really profit from it.

The one bottleneck of your system is the CPU and upgrading to a Core2Quad won't make much sense financially. So overclock your C2D!

Bootom line: get another 2GB (same type) and maybe a decent CPU Cooler if you don't already have one, and overlock the heck out of your CPU. Should hit something between 3.5 and 4 GHz, which would be at least equivalent to the "recommended" Quad

And if contrary to all expectations ciV is really really efficient in using multicore systems, a Phenom X6 on a DDR2 and PCIe 2.0 capable AM2+ board will be the upgrade to go, no money wasted

@PieceOfMind: 6GB in dual channel= 2x2 GB + 2X1 GB

 

[PieceOfMind]

@PieceOfMind: 6GB in dual channel= 2x2 GB + 2X1 GB

Oh, I didn't realise you could do that.

What kind of CPU you have? quad core or the new x6??? i gues that you have x6......

I said in the previous post, but maybe wasn't very clear, that I had the same CPU as what Huyanglee has - the Intel E6750. Between now and release of civ5 I have an e8500 to install. I'm wondering whether to wait and first see how the e6750 goes though. It might be interesting to compare what performance increase, if any, I see with that switch.

 

[bhavv]

Its installed, but wont be working until I get another Molex > Sata power cable. I had to unplug my CD drive to connect the SSD, and cant use my windows CD to format and reinstall windows until I get a second converter cable (the CD drive and SSD are too far away for my Sata cables).

The HD is a 2 Tb eco drive, and I'm going to Raid my Samsung F3s.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I see you took my advice. Muahaha.

I suspect your raid0ing the other drives is going to make practically no difference compared to what you see with that SSD. I'm jealous, but I think I'll wait a bit for prices to come down further before going ssd.

 

[tokala]

Oh, I didn't realise you could do that.

Might not work on every board though

Edit: never mind ...

 

[bhavv]

I see you took my advice. Muahaha.

I suspect your raid0ing the other drives is going to make practically no difference compared to what you see with that SSD. I'm jealous, but I think I'll wait a bit for prices to come down further before going ssd.

The SSD wont have space for more than one or two games on top of Windows, the Raid 0 F3s will be an improvement over them currently being unraided.

I had a nightmare installing the SSD. I spent ages trying to get it into an empty hard drive bay, frustrated over why the mounting bracket wouldnt fit, before remembering that 3.5" is the floppy disk drive! (Not used that thing for many many years). So then I get the 3.5" drive bay open, and realise that I'm missing my cases mounting brackets for that slot, so I thing 'no worry, they are in my components box ......'.

*Looks through components box, find 5.25" drive bay mounting bracket. Finds another. Finds 4 more. Sees no 3.5" drive bay brackets. Turns room upside down searching for them ..... only to find that they are screwed into an old unused fan connector in a drawer just right next to where my tool shelf was .

Gets everything installed. breaks a sata connector trying to plug the SSD in, and realises that it wont connect without a second Molex > Sata connector

My PSU came with 3 SATA cables, each with 4 connectors. Two of those cables are now down to 3 usable connectors because the silly things go snap far too easily



Wont have it working until a molex > sata cable arrives tomorrow.

Btw the 64 gb SSDs are pretty affordable, I've seen -

kingston 64 Gb - £96
OCZ 60 Gb - £109
Crucial 64 Gb - £113
OCZ 96 Gb - £140.

Those are all fine for using as a windows drive and will make what you use the most go lightning fast. The Kingston was really slow though, 140 read, 120 write. The OCZs were better, around 250 / 120, but the Crucial is Sata III with 355 / 70. Write speed isnt important for a windows drive, so I went for it for the huge read speed and have it plugged into a Sata III port.

 

[Bino]

I'd like to be reassured that my pc will run it properly, im severely outdated about hardware knowledge.

My new pc has I3 2,93 ghz cpu, 2gb ram, ATI HD5700 video card, xp sp3 and enough space on the HD. Thanks for replies!

 

[tokala]

I'd like to be reassured that my pc will run it properly, im severely outdated about hardware knowledge.

My new pc has I3 2,93 ghz cpu, 2gb ram, ATI HD5700 video card, xp sp3 and enough space on the HD. Thanks for replies!

You might want to add another 1 or 2 GB of RAM, but it should run already fine on the system as it is.

 

[KMRblue1027]

I'd like to be reassured that my pc will run it properly, im severely outdated about hardware knowledge.

My new pc has I3 2,93 ghz cpu, 2gb ram, ATI HD5700 video card, xp sp3 and enough space on the HD. Thanks for replies!

What's your OS? Is it's a 64 bit the you might want to throw in a gig or 2 more RAM. RAM is cheap (At least compared to other things)and it will help a lot.

 

[Fire Bringer]

I'm wondering if my laptop has a graphics card that will work. It's a AMD M860G with Mobility Radeon 4100. I also have a NVidia GeForce 6200 256 mb and a Radeon 9200. I was also wondering if I could use both of the then to play Civ 5.

 

[tokala]

I'm wondering if my laptop has a graphics card that will work. It's a AMD M860G with Mobility Radeon 4100. I also have a NVidia GeForce 6200 256 mb and a Radeon 9200. I was also wondering if I could use both of the then to play Civ 5.

mobility 4100: maybe
GF 6200, radeon 9200: no

 

[ButSam]

Decided to upgrade for a whole slew of reasons...I think my upgraded system will be well more than ample, but want the experts' take on it...particularly since video cards in laptop-land have strange conventions:

64-bit, Intel i5-430M processor (2.26 GHz dual core)
nVidia GTS 360M (1 GB), which I think is way more than ample but can someone confirm?
4 GB RAM
And of course tons of HDD space (500 GB)

I am pretty darn sure this should make Civ 5 fly along on my machine (among other uses I have for it)...but can someone confirm please before it's too late and I've spent $800 on the machine? (I do have other reasons for getting the nVidia GTS 360M...but I know the -M extension sometimes doesn't mean what you think it means. The GTS 360 flies, but they GTS 360M isn't a GTS 360, I know that much...)

 

[tokala]

Certainly a reasonably powerful system, at least for a notebook

The CPU is about halfway between "minimum" and "recommended", the GTS 360m should be on par with a desktop GT240 or a HD 5570. Those cards mark at the moment the entry level for "gaming" video cards, and are about 30% less powerful than the "recommended" 9800GT.

So ciV will probably run well enough, but i doubt it will "fly".

 

[trevort]

Can anyone give me an indication of the performance boost I will get from going to a 1GB Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 from an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT? Thanks.

 

[civ_king]

massive, considering the second number is the same and the first is four higher it should be much more powerful especially if the 5670 uses GDDR5