Predicted system requirements

[Shurdus]

Game-debate.com lists the predicted system requiremenst for civ5 on their site. Here is the gist of it:

Intel Processor - Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz
AMD Processor - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+
Nvidia Graphics Card - Geforce 8800 GTS
ATI Graphics Card - Radeon HD 3800 series
RAM Memory - 2 GB
Hard Disk Space - 9 GB
Direct X - 9

It is not from-the-back-of-the-box accurate but it is based on some research. It seems reasonable, even though the amount of disc space seems low...

Discuss.

 

[StStutter]

This would be demanding very high graphics card and processor requirements!

I'm fairly sure they said that they wree trying to make it so laptop users without a dedicated video card could play the game decently.

This would certainly be impossible with these kind of requirements. I'd say required graphics card: 8600 GS?
processor:
C2D ~ 2 ghz

 

[Shurdus]

Indeed after posting I noticed that the requirements of the graphics card seems a bit high. It will probably run fine with lower specs, but it will lose a lot of eyecandy.

On the processor I am not that sure. That is not a very expensive processor, is it? Again, lower setings will probably do fine.

 

[staterman]

I watched a video online of the GDC talk Firaxis gave about how efficient their new graphics coding/engine was and though they didn't commit to it, they did make a big deal of how they wanted to (and would) reach all the customers who'd want to play in transit and other such situations where they only had a fairly low powered machine with integrated graphics...
The stuff they indicated would have to be deactivated were primarily water effects/animations, idle animations and depth fog.
Though I have a better laptop than with integrated graphics, it is a few years old and I was holding off pre-ordering until I watched this talk.... as I said, they didn't commit to making it run on integrated graphics, but that was the punchline of the second half of the hour long talk, so I think they've got to feel fairly confident about delivering.

 

[tom2050]

I'd say a game taking up 1% of my hard drive space is big enough.

 

[LegioCorvus]

I'm fairly sure they said that they wree trying to make it so laptop users without a dedicated video card could play the game decently.

Can Civ4 be played without a dedicated graphics card? I haven't been without one in at least 5 years, even on my laptops. (An aside: It's very easy to get high performance laptops for cheap. I got a P-7811 for $800 refurbished on eBay. Been going strong for 3 years now).

Anyway, I think they're referring to the Strategic View, which makes the map look like a board game. In that mode, you may be able to play the game without a dedicated graphics card. Of course, that is pure speculation on my part.

 

[Sephi]

Discuss.

anyone can make wild guesses like this. To me it sounds like a waste of time. Once the game is released there will be more than enough feedback on which systems can handle the game and which can not.

 

[Shurdus]

anyone can make wild guesses like this. To me it sounds like a waste of time. Once the game is released there will be more than enough feedback on which systems can handle the game and which can not.

It is not wild guesses, it is based on factual data and they extrapolated the info they had and applied it to this game.

I think they are pretty much overstating what this game actually needs in order to play, but I guess it will not be far off from the actuall recommended specs one needs to have in order to get a good performance. Whatever may be the case, any informed guess like this one is more likely to be accurate that you and me wildly guessing. Looking at the specs the site offered, they seem very much reasonable to me.

 

[Shurdus]

Can Civ4 be played without a dedicated graphics card? I haven't been without one in at least 5 years, even on my laptops. (An aside: It's very easy to get high performance laptops for cheap. I got a P-7811 for $800 refurbished on eBay. Been going strong for 3 years now).

Anyway, I think they're referring to the Strategic View, which makes the map look like a board game. In that mode, you may be able to play the game without a dedicated graphics card. Of course, that is pure speculation on my part.

Can you keep a straight face when you call $800 cheap? I tried, but I failed to take myself seriously when doing so.

 

[tom2050]

To play the game on a low end or mid system, much will probably be turned all the way down for smooth gaming. It won't look like the screenshots unless you have a high end or new desktop... Laptops are horrible performance wise compared to desktops of similar or even worse specs; so on the average laptop good performance shouldn't be expected.

 

[MJH90]

Now I'm a bit worried. My laptop's processor and graphics card might not be enough to play CiV fluently though I've been able to play some of the newer fps-games without problems.

 

[CTH]

way way too high, on everything except disk space. Perhaps this could be recomended but not required... It will be playable on a integrated graphics card, perhaps not well but it will run

 

[LegioCorvus]

Can you keep a straight face when you call $800 cheap? I tried, but I failed to take myself seriously when doing so.

For a portable desktop replacement? Yes, that's cheap.

If we're talking in the grand scheme of things, then it's relative to each person's individual budget, and too subjective for me to really speculate on.

 

[Sephi]

It is not wild guesses, it is based on factual data and they extrapolated the info they had and applied it to this game.

Extrapolation in this context is just a nice word for wild guess. I wouldn't be surprised if the final version of Civ5 runs much faster than whatever they used to collect their data. Or maybe their data is the set of system requirements of Civ1-4 and they extrapolated based on that .

 

[aMoralAtheist]

Well i have a phenom ii x4 at 3.2 ghz ( quad)
ati 5850
Gygabyte 890GX mobo
4gb ddr3 1600
Win7 pro

i hope for a large variance.

barebone the graphics for laptops but let me make it beautiful.

 

[comatosedragon]

I'm going to have to agree with most of the other posters so far, these estimated specs seem reasonable; except for the video cards. Pretty low RAM and CPU speeds, I think any machine built within the last 5-6 years should meet these requirements easily. As someone pointed out, there will most likely be settings to play on a machine with an integrated graphics card (like Civ IV). Obviously though, the developers seem to be offering a lot more 'eye candy' for those of us with better cards . . .

 

[PieceOfMind]

Can Civ4 be played without a dedicated graphics card? I haven't been without one in at least 5 years, even on my laptops. (An aside: It's very easy to get high performance laptops for cheap. I got a P-7811 for $800 refurbished on eBay. Been going strong for 3 years now).

Anyway, I think they're referring to the Strategic View, which makes the map look like a board game. In that mode, you may be able to play the game without a dedicated graphics card. Of course, that is pure speculation on my part.

I can give you part of the answer you're looking for. I'm posting at the moment from a laptop without a graphics card that was mid to low range in 2006. I did try installing civ4 on it. While the game was able to run, it was a disaster from in-game because there were all sorts of graphical problems like the terrain looking almost completely black. I think it has something to do with shaders or rendering problems. I think it was also running very sluggishly, possibly because of the slower CPU and limited RAM as well.

In case it matters, it's a Pentium M 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM running Windows XP. 64MB is dedicated to video.

 

[cccv]

I can give you part of the answer you're looking for. I'm posting at the moment from a laptop without a graphics card that was mid to low range in 2006. I did try installing civ4 on it. While the game was able to run, it was a disaster from in-game because there were all sorts of graphical problems like the terrain looking almost completely black. I think it has something to do with shaders or rendering problems. I think it was also running very sluggishly, possibly because of the slower CPU and limited RAM as well.

In case it matters, it's a Pentium M 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM running Windows XP. 64MB is dedicated to video.

Holy crap, I didn't think anyone had a worse computer than me =o
Mine is only slightly better (in some areas), and the graphics card is probably worse. I had the same problem with the black terrain, it was fixed by selecting "frozen animations." On my machine I could play only with frozen animations, lowest settings for everything, and maps no larger than standard.

And ram must have had something to do with it. My comp used to have 256 MB and it had major problems running the game, then I bought more RAM and expanded it to 704 MB, and it was playable after that.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Yeah well it was the only computer I ever bought knowing it wouldn't be used for playing games, and it's done just fine (and still going strong) doing everything else I need a computer to do. I'm one of those people who prefer to do gaming on a desktop computer where it's much cheaper to buy parts and it's easier to tailor it to my own needs.

 

[Shakes]

This would be demanding very high graphics card and processor requirements!

Hardly. The recommended AMD CPU can be had for not much more than $50 US, and the recommended ATI graphics card is a couple of generations behind. Any relatively recent machine should have no problem with the game.