PC Advice

[skodkim]

Hi

Long time player of Civ and still enjoying it. I am however beginning to feel that it runs a bit slow on my PC. I know I use a lot of mods and these can slow down the system, but I like using them and therefore I'm thinking about renewing parts of my PC.

Problem is I'm really that experienced with hardware. I'm thinking that maybe my HD (lots of free space but only 7200 RPM) or Graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series) may be the weakest spots, but would really like some feedback.

Summary:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.9GHz

Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: P55M-UD2

Memory: 8192MB DDR3 RAM
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Display Memory: 754 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1013 MB
Shared Memory: 3837 MB

HD: SAMSUNG HD103UJ ATA Device
Free Space: 123.6 GB
Total Space: 249.9 GB

Full Dxdiag also included.

Any help much appreciated!!!

\Skodkim

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

 

[timtofly]

You can try going to the config file and adjusting the "core" options.

TheJ may have the exact instructions.

Other than that there is really nothing to change that will make that much of a differrence. An SSD may help, but I doubt it. It does not hurt adding an extra drive.

Not until they come out with the next faster CPU and bus speeds.

 

[callan]

The largest bottleneck in your system is definitely the GPU and if I was improving anything on that system it would be that, no question. However, since you use a lot of mods there is a good chance thelack of responsiveness is being caused by the older lua compiler used by Civ.

This thread has advice on using an alternative lua compiler which may be of help to you. Since it's free that's where I'd start anyway.

 

[Heerlo]

I don't use many mods, but whoa, that's still a pretty good computer you got there.

I have a AMD Phenom 2 Quad Core and a 4800 series ATI GPU, and used to have four gigs of RAM and my computer played Civ5 pretty good just with that.Probably not on max settings though.

 

[skodkim]

I don't use many mods, but whoa, that's still a pretty good computer you got there.

I have a AMD Phenom 2 Quad Core and a 4800 series ATI GPU, and used to have four gigs of RAM and my computer played Civ5 pretty good just with that.Probably not on max settings though.

Thanks

Also thanks for the advice. I'm leaning a little bit towards upgrading my graphics soon. One thing I noticed is that when I exit CiV the PC really struggles to close it and show the desktop (just a black screen). Quite ofthen I have to hit ctrl+alt+delete to get the PC to react. I'm thinking this could be a graphics issue, but as I sais before I'm not a hardcore hardware-man.

\Skodkim

 

[tokala]

Also thanks for the advice. I'm leaning a little bit towards upgrading my graphics soon. One thing I noticed is that when I exit CiV the PC really struggles to close it and show the desktop (just a black screen). Quite ofthen I have to hit ctrl+alt+delete to get the PC to react. I'm thinking this could be a graphics issue, but as I sais before I'm not a hardcore hardware-man.

A new video card won't make much of a difference for Civ5, new HDD even less. New CPU could make the turn times a bit shorter, but your i7 is already decent.

Nevertheless, for games other than Civ5, a new video card would be the most sensible upgrade for your system.

I would recommend a HD 7850 if you go for a new video card, good compromise of performance and power requirements (less than a 4850), and most models are very quiet.

 

[skodkim]

A new video card won't make much of a difference for Civ5, new HDD even less. New CPU could make the turn times a bit shorter, but your i7 is already decent.

Nevertheless, for games other than Civ5, a new video card would be the most sensible upgrade for your system.

I would recommend a HD 7850 if you go for a new video card, good compromise of performance and power requirements (less than a 4850), and most models are very quiet.

Thanks for the advice!

\Skodkim

 

[skodkim]

Hi

Still looking to upgrade my system. I'm looking for a new graphics card and have a question about the proposed HD7850 series. As far as I can tell this uses PCI Express 3.0 while my motherboard (again as far as I can tell) uses PCI Express 2.0 (Link).

Will this make it impossible to use this card?

\Skodkim

 

[The_J]

According to this chart (sorry, not available in the English wikipedia), there's no info available for compatibility issues between the different versions .

 

[tokala]

Will this make it impossible to use this card?

No, it will work without a problem.

AMD chipsets are still using PCIe 2.0. It would be bad design if the lastest AMD graphics cards won't work on the lastest AMD mainboards.