Playing Civ V on Netbooks?

[Shaithis]

Hey everyone,

I am upgrading my old laptop to a netbook, and am looking for it to be able to run Civ V on low settings.

Currently, I am considering the 1215n Asus Eee PC. I have found a discussion on running Civ V on this model, and wanted to cross-post it here to get the thoughts of this community. Basically, I am not interested in having to severely overclock anything to get smooth results, as I will be using this netbook primarily for work and do not want to risk losing client files.

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=88846

What do you guys think?

 

[tokala]

Problem is, those Atom CPUs are really really REALLY slow. Not a good starting point for Civ5, which is one of the most processor intensive games on the market. On the plus side, the video chip in those Ion-netbooks is really good for chipset graphics.
Unfortunately Civ5 likes it the other way around, it can deal with really slow graphics, but you will want every bit of CPU power you can get.

A better choice would probably be something with a AMD Neo CPU, those have a "real" CPU and a HD 4225, which is weaker than the Ion's, but about on par with the "minimum" intel i3 IGP.

If a subnotebook is small enough for you, this one looks pretty interesting.

Go up to the 13.3" format, and you can already get a fully-fledged computer with a dedicated video card and non-ULV CPU. And it's not that much more expensive than the 1215n.

 

[Shaithis]

This particular model does have a dual-core 1.8GHz processor. If I get one, I may do some light overclocking. My main concern is that the game itself runs smoothly on above-minimum settings (because they look terrible); CPU turns can take 5 minutes for all I care.

 

[tokala]

This particular model does have a dual-core 1.8GHz processor. If I get one, I may do some light overclocking. My main concern is that the game itself runs smoothly on above-minimum settings (because they look terrible); CPU turns can take 5 minutes for all I care.

All integrated video cards will have problems above min settings. In principle that Ion is one of the faster ones , BUT Civ5 at the moment does not work well with nVidia 8000/9000 series cards, and that's exactly what's inside that chip.

What make things worse, is that the graphics of Civ is heavy on the CPU side, too. And as I said, that Atom is extremely slow compared with other modern processors, those 1.8 GHz are not worth much, that thing has at best half the power of the "minimum" CPUs, probably even less. Overclocking will be pretty pointless, unless you get it up to 3GHz

"Civ5 running smoothly above minimum settings" and "netbook" are incompatible, unless you count that Alienware M11x as "netbook"

 

[civ_king]

Hey everyone,

I am upgrading my old laptop to a netbook, and am looking for it to be able to run Civ V on low settings.

Currently, I am considering the 1215n Asus Eee PC. I have found a discussion on running Civ V on this model, and wanted to cross-post it here to get the thoughts of this community. Basically, I am not interested in having to severely overclock anything to get smooth results, as I will be using this netbook primarily for work and do not want to risk losing client files.

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=88846

What do you guys think?

Wait until March for Zacate, it will beat minimum specs

 

[Tylerryan79]

I suspect you will have a hard time overclocking a netbook. I have zero experiance with laptops/netbooks, but will take a leap of faith that their bios are setup the same way as retail pc's, meaning all options that allow any form of overclocking will be locked out by the maker(ie Dell gateway etc etc). Most store bought pcs have their bios locked completely, only allowing you to change the most basic of functions. I have heard of, and tried, programs that allow overclocking a CPU through the OS but I myself haven't been able to find one that was reliable, or as easy to use, as the bios. Especially if you need to tweak voltage. Just something to keep in mind.

This game does make hardware run hot, and by overclocking you will be adding more heat to a very compact system, even before playing the game. Once your actually playing you could overheat and have random shut downs. Without proper cooling oc isn't even worth it. If you barely do oc anyways, the gains will be unnoticable, and you'll have counted on a fix to play the game(overclocking subpar hardware) that wasn't even true to begin with.

 

[Shaithis]

Wait until March for Zacate, it will beat minimum specs

Thanks for sharing that, did not know about it.

Although I am a bit concerned that the demo of the chip was biased as it used integrated graphics ans we all know that AMD > Intel there; perhaps this was a bottleneck with the i5 GPU.

Also, it seems to be almost tradition for cutting-edge technology to have bottlenecks that cripple overall performance, such as with the Atom + ION only having 1x communication speed, w/e it's called.

Where are you getting "March," or is that just an educated guess? Would love to get my hands on a "demo" netbook if it means I don't have to wait 5 months...

Also, you think they will bundle the 18W Bobcat version with 12" netbooks, or will that be reserved for laptops only?

 

[civ_king]

Zacate is designed to kill Atom which has far worse IGP than iX

Anandtech played video games on Zacate at press release and got to choose the games too

Release is supposed to be early next year and March is reasonably timed