Phenom X4 or X6 or Intel Core I7

[afa2000]

Hi,

I have a Core 2 duo E7400 with 4GB RAM ddr2 and a Geforce 9600 GT 500mb. It takes
2-4 secs per turn at minimum graphic settings, standard map, 4 civs.
I'm considering a processor upgrade, but I'm not sure if Civ V uses
more than 4 cores. So, which one do you think is better ?

Phenom X4 955 black edition
Phenom X6 1055t
Core I7

Or should I buy a new graphic card too ? I dont mind playing at minimum graphic settings, I just want faster turns.

 

[shadowplay]

I'm not familiar with the Phenoms but I'm running a Core i7 here with an ATI Radeon 5870 graphics and it's playing the game quite nicely. Details all to high, 2x AA.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.

 

[geofelt]

It does seem to take some time per turn. I have a i7-920 @3.3 and it still takes a couple of seconds per turn. I use a 5870 at 2560 x 1600. Fraps shows 20-40 FPS.
Looking at the task monitor, it looks to me like civ5 can use 4 cores. But, each of those cores looks to be only about 15% busy. If it is not cpu bound, I don't know why the delay.

The i7 will be stronger than the amd on a clock for clock basis. On a dollar basis, the i7 and X4 are about the same. I do not see the value of the X6 processor here.
Unless the need is urgent, I would wait for the Intel "sandy bridge " 32nm processors due out in January.

 

[tokala]

If you are mainly interested in faster turntimes, a quad- or hexacore in itself won't make much of a difference, and a better video card non at all
Even two cores are not fully utilized during AI turns, (see the experience of geofelt) so you need only one or two very fast cores. Of cource you get those included if you buy a high-end multicore, but it would be a rather inefficient investment. For your specific profile it seems a fast i3 or i5 dual core would be the right thing to get. Of course if money is no object, a i5 or i7 quadcore will deliver almost the same performance running on two cores, thanks to the turbo-mode

And to emphasize again, just because the taskmanger shows all 4 (or 8 logical) cores doing a little bit, this does not mean that those cores are really used. It's just work enough for one or two cores, but it gets shuffled around really fast so you see only the time-averaged use for each core.

And in the end the best you can get without overclocking would be about a 50% speed increase over your E7400.

 

[geofelt]

What bothers me a bit is how windows-7 handles multi cores and hyperthreading.
W7 is supposed to be aware of the distinction between hyperthreads and full cores, dispatching full cores preferentially. It is also supposed to redispatch the same task to the same core if it can, thus preserving the value of that core's cache and improving performance.

I am beginning to suspect that civ5 is really using only one task, and w7 task manager is not properly showing that task's workloas on a single bard.

 

[enchanter100]

Not sure at what you are trying to say geofelt. But win 7 handles multicore processors and threading better then any previous windows operating system. Civ developers even said that they built the new engine to use threading and the way dx11 handles it not only increases performance for dx11 but dx9/10 users see benefits also.

 

[geofelt]

Exactly, yet task manager shows 4 cores active <20% each, yet civ5 appears to be waiting . Something does not compute.

 

[enchanter100]

well most programs you run even if they are waiting or processing doesn't automatically 100% your processor. Personally i wouldn't want mine maxed out all the time.. I'm sure there's a lot going on then just civ needing to use more processor. Hard drive, caching, saving, etc.

 

[afa2000]

Thank you very much, guys.

 

[civ_king]

Hi,

I have a Core 2 duo E7400 with 4GB RAM ddr2 and a Geforce 9600 GT 500mb. It takes
2-4 secs per turn at minimum graphic settings, standard map, 4 civs.
I'm considering a processor upgrade, but I'm not sure if Civ V uses
more than 4 cores. So, which one do you think is better ?

Phenom X4 955 black edition
Phenom X6 1055t
Core I7

Or should I buy a new graphic card too ? I dont mind playing at minimum graphic settings, I just want faster turns.

Prices
$195.99 Phenom X4 955 BE
$195.99 Phenom X6 1055t
$279.99 (cheapest) Core I7

IMO that's unfair to pit the AMD chips against a CPU that is ~$80 more

The problem is the i7 I list is the cheapest and both Phenoms are the highest end in the core count and have unlocked clock (super easy OC), but look at the prices
$279.99 Core i7-870 @2.93GHz
$265.99 Phenom II X6 1090T BE @3.2GHz
$183.99 Phenom II X4 970 BE @3.5GHz