Poll - Civfan's PC as of now: one single core CPU vs. multi-core (2, 4, more) CPUs?

[civ_king]

Silly intel

AMD, Xeon and others are where multi-xore processors are really at.

Xeons are intel....

I'm looking forward to a hyperthreading dual quad core wielding 2.93GHz wash it down with 32 GB RAM and you have a winner!

 

[Danielos]

My god, with those power-guzzling behemoths you own, the Civfanatics community will exceed the total power consumption of Sweden from the year 1974 or something...

 

[civ_king]

Silly intel

AMD, Xeon and others are where multi-xore processors are really at.

My god, with those power-guzzling behemoths you own, the Civfanatics community will exceed the total power consumption of Sweden from the year 1974 or something...

Actually that computer will use only a Kilowatt

 

[blade117]

Dual Core minimum is nothing unexpected. It's been standard on a computer since 2004.

Wait, so if my laptop was built in '08, it will be dual core? How would I check that?

 

[EmpireOfCats]

At best Firaxis makes eye candy optional. It is really nice that DX11 is supported and that the terrain now is alive. But many players do not need an animated terrain to love Civ.

I support this for a slightly different version: Virtualization.

I can (barely) play Civ V running in Win XP 32 bit in VirtualBox on Linux Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit on a quad core at lowest settings. The next computer, one way or another, will be an i7 (hopefully this summer in a MacBook Pro) with better virtualization support (nested paging) and far faster memory access (quickpath). If there is a "low level" mode like ColdFever suggests, I won't have to care if there is a Mac version or not.

Of course, I would get even less work done, but that's part of the Civ feeling .

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Wait, so if my laptop was built in '08, it will be dual core? How would I check that?

Well, first see if there is an Apple on the lid .

Sorry. Seriously, you need the processor type, which should be somewhere on the control panel where it says "System". Then google it or use the Intel processor finder:

http://processorfinder.intel.com/

It gets tricky if there is hyperthreading involved, I'm not sure which operating systems recognize that as two processors and which don't.

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

Tank:

It has 32 bit vista though. Do you think 64 but OS will make a big difference or is it mainly the cores and GPU?

Dude, that's the RAM on the GPU. The PC has 8 Gigs

If you have installed 8 Gigs of ram, but are running a 32 bit OS you're only effectively using 4 Gigs or so. That's basically how I understand it at least. If you have some work around to access your other 4 gigs I'd be interested in hearing about it.

I got Windows 7 x64 via MSDN. It feels like it runs smoother, but as far as games are concerned most of them install 32 bit versions anyway, so you don't get much advantage from the 64 bit OS in that regard.

 

[Newcomer24]

If you have installed 8 Gigs of ram, but are running a 32 bit OS you're only effectively using 4 Gigs or so. That's basically how I understand it at least.

That's exaclty as you said, you need a 64 bit OS to be able to use above 4Gb of ram... if you are on 32 bit the excess ram will just sit there unused.
Actually... a 64 bit OS is needed also to fully use 4Gb... with a 32 Bit OS only 3-3.5Gb will used depending on how much video memory you got.