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

[Danielos]

Your computers last 11 years

I want to have a computer that stands the test of time...

 

[aajiix]

I have a few years old Athlon XP 3200+ with 2 gigs of RAM and a 6800GT graphics card. I haven't had any reason to do an upgrade because I switched my gaming from the PC to the Xbox 360 in 2007. I was originally planning to upgrade when Diablo III comes out but it seems I have to buy a new computer this fall already just to play Civ 5.

 

[ColdFever]

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 certainly would prefer a game that optionally runs with a static terrain on my computer instead of a game that does not run at all. So I hope Firaxis will find ways to make the candy optional again.

That would lower the requirements on the GPU side but not on the CPU one.

No, animated stuff like animated terrain (moving trees, waves, animals etc.) also requires CPU power. I hope we will be able to turn all animations off to play with a static map to save CPU power. Apart from ocean waves (I like them in CivCol) I personally have no need for animated terrain if this will prevent the game from running on my single core CPU. And for the sake of modders I hope that we also can turn off animated diplomacy screens and animated leaderheads - or at least replace them with static elements.

 

[Shiggs713]

starting to feel inadequate with my dual core 2.6Ghz processor, 6gb RAM, and 512mb 9600gt. next upgrade has to be the processor(s).

 

[Newcomer24]

No, animated stuff like animated terrain (moving trees, waves, animals etc.) also requires CPU power

Surely but to a far minor extent... the 90% of the cpu load will come from the Ai and all the other things appening when you hit end turn, with a slow CPU it will take ages to finish a turn later in the game, expecially on bigger maps.

 

[The_J]

[x] Single core.

Well I never expected Civ5 to be able to run on a single core cpu... I mean it's ancient stuff!

agree. My PC has the same age like Civ4, and i expected to need a new one for Civ5...i'll definetly try, if it runs on my old one, but i don't think, this will be fun.
No idea if i can afford a new pc .

 

[President]

I honestly never knew why the game developers of the Civilization series or any other PC gaming series do this. Why would they make the standards so high for PCs, especially for the Civilization series? It's the most illogical thing out there. Now, I support their improving the graphics, but they should never make it multi-core at this stage, because they run the risk of ostracizing many, many Civilization fans by doing so. PC games are nothing like console games, because computers are much more diverse than a single console would be, which doesn't have to worry about graphics capabilities. Rather than making Civilization V completely ultra-high tech, why not make it so that the least common denominating people will be able to play it, and releasing updates later onwards for people to upgrade, if they feel it necessary? This increases the Civilization market out there, and it also allows for the gamers to do what they feel best for their current circumstance and situation with their PCs. Civilization also basically has one of the most dedicated modding community out there; therefore, there is no excuse for the game developers to do this.

Civilization IV had fairly low graphics, so that my old PC was able to handle it. When I bought a new laptop, I was completely able to upgrade the graphics as I saw fit through the modding community here. Had those been the original graphics in the first place, I wouldn't have had been able to play it for starters at all.

 

[tank79]

Have an i7 laptop with 512 ram nvidia card. Got it two days before getting the news of civ5. Wish I had waited till just before it release do I could have gotten a little more pc for my bucks. In case it won't run it on max settings on any size map I will play on my desktop. Has two quad core xeons, so 8 cores. Runnin an nvidia 8800 gtx with 600 something ram. 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?

 

[civ_king]

Dual Core minimum is nothing unexpected. It's been standard on a computer since 2004. If you don't even have a computer built in the last 6 years, buying new games obviously isn't your top priority.

Err... they sold Pentium 4s until 08 so I'm calling BS on that

Have an i7 laptop with 512 ram nvidia card. Got it two days before getting the news of civ5. Wish I had waited till just before it release do I could have gotten a little more pc for my bucks. In case it won't run it on max settings on any size map I will play on my desktop. Has two quad core xeons, so 8 cores. Runnin an nvidia 8800 gtx with 600 something ram. 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?

How much GHz per core?

 

[cardgame]

Only 600 ram, nd you run vista?

XP ran really slow on my old comp with 512 ram...

Can you even play civ 4 on that?


I refuse to believe they sold you a comp with that much RAM, it must be 6,000 something my brother's new laptop came with 8 gigs of ram 6 months ago

 

[cardgame]

Err... they sold Pentium 4s until 08 so I'm calling BS on that

Silly intel

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

 

[Gliese 581]

starting to feel inadequate with my dual core 2.6Ghz processor, 6gb RAM, and 512mb 9600gt. next upgrade has to be the processor(s).

Why is that? Sounds to me like your bottleneck is the GPU, Nvidias x600 line of cards are not primarilly designed for gaming. I run a 2.66 intel duo with 4gig ram and just upgraded from 8800 GT to Radeon HD 5770, I can max out most games and run them with good frames including new shooters.

 

[V. Soma]

We are now over (the first?) hundred votes, and I see that ca. 1/6 of us are with single core...

1/6 - isn't that big slice enough to provide for....?

 

[bob rulz]

I got this computer in 2003 and it is a single core, and it's definitely starting to feel old. Mass Effect, a 2-and-a-half year old game, has trouble running on some of the lowest graphics settings. Forget about Crysis, Far Cry 2, or any game released in the last year. Fortunately I have a PS3 to help offload some of the gaming difficulties.

However, I'm getting a new computer within the next month or two and therefore will be plenty ready for Civ V (and Starcraft II).

 

[Thormodr]

I'm hoping there's a good netbook that will be able to run ciV.

I believe you can get a dual core processor for it, 3 Gb of DDR3 ram, an Nvidia Ion video card that may be up to snuff and a 80 Gig Solid State drive.

Decent screen resolution as well with a 11.6" diagonal HD LED BrightView Widescreen Display (1366 x 768)

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Category&v1=Mini&series_name=mini311_series

Oooh...Alienware has a gaming netbook out now. That definitely will run ciV.

 

[tokala]

We are now over (the first?) hundred votes, and I see that ca. 1/6 of us are with single core...

1/6 - isn't that big slice enough to provide for....?

Usually the forumites are not really representative for the complete audience of a game. They tend to be more "hardcore" gamers, and accordingly own more powerful/modern computers. And ~20% IS a big slice.

As others said, Civ is one of the franchises that do NOT revolve around Eye-Candy, but rather gameplay substance. So I would be quite surprised if the settings would not allow to tone down the graphics far enough to run it on a low-spec machine.

Additionally, rendering is the part of games where it seems to be REALLY difficult to utilize multi-core CPUs, at present they are mostly useful to offload all the other threads to another core.

This leaves the AI calculations during turns as the potential main beneficiary of multi-core systems. Assuming that there is a mechanism to reduce the rendering load during turn calculation, a dual core would at best reduce the time required to 50%, a quad to 25%. But usually the scaling is not that efficient.

But there is a snag. If Fireaxis really took the effort to create an engine that scales well with multi-cores (meaning MORE than 2), this would result probably in a game that will run quite inefficient on a single-core as a trade-off.

Personally I think that a high-end single-core (Pentium 4 >3GHz, Ahlon64 >2Ghz, Pentium M >1.5GHz) will be able to run CiV, at least on relatively small maps

 

[V. Soma]

Usually the forumites are not really representative for the complete audience of a game. They tend to be more "hardcore" gamers, and accordingly own more powerful/modern computers. And ~20% IS a big slice.

So it would be all the more reasonable to let single core owners have the experience to play... not a full-fledged way, but still with main features...

Personally I think that a high-end single-core (Pentium 4 >3GHz, Ahlon64 >2Ghz, Pentium M >1.5GHz) will be able to run CiV, at least on relatively small maps

If I were Firaxis, I would let single core able to play mid-speed on
- a low-graphic setting,
- medium sized maps
- with say 8 civs...

 

[tank79]

Only 600 ram, nd you run vista?

XP ran really slow on my old comp with 512 ram...

Can you even play civ 4 on that?


I refuse to believe they sold you a comp with that much RAM, it must be 6,000 something my brother's new laptop came with 8 gigs of ram 6 months ago

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

 

[AlpsStranger]

We are now over (the first?) hundred votes, and I see that ca. 1/6 of us are with single core...

1/6 - isn't that big slice enough to provide for....?

What part of that slice will refuse to upgrade? Since we are civ*fanatics* I'd wager you're looking at 1/3rd of the 1/6th who will refuse to upgrade.

You're also not factoring in people that will buy it, play it 7 or 8 times and then move on. These folks will never post on Civfanatics or Apolyton. They will, however, pay just as much for it.

Less eye candy would cost them more customers than the tiny fraction of old farts with single cores Not really saying it is "right", but I think it is "correct."

 

[shmily_dana]

All I need to do is attach my single core PC to that vacuum tube thing that Spock builds in "City on the Edge of Forever".