Suggestions for my "rig"

[yetubaba]

Hey fellow Civ-ers! I started a thread in a separate forum, but it was suggested this might be a better forum.

Ok, so I bought this HP 500-123w at Wal-Mart last month. Not a terrible system (I tell ya, in the past two weeks live learned more about how to build computers than I ever have lol). Anyway, got home decided to maybe "Civ", but no luck, had to run everything on medium and normal maps. So I decided to UPGRADE instead of building a brand new rig (although, i should have built my own, but i didnt know how )

Original specs:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03968985&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

I have since added an extra 4 gig ram, a 550 watt psu and a geforce 760 GPU (i found a video on youtube showing a guy using this card to play civ V on ultra settings) . I can now Civ on high settings and large maps, but it still has some lag. So now i've decided to upgrade my PSU. My friend says "Nothing less than an I7 (currently have an i3 duel w/hyper-threading) will stand a chance at running Civ V". He also CLAIMS Civ V is more intensive than BF: 4. I have never played it, so idk, but i find this HIGHLY unlikely! So what should I do to turn this system isto the ultimate Civ V gaming machine? Will an I5 be sufficient?

 

[leif erikson]

This chart should help you see the relative gaming performance of current CPU's.

edit - according to your specs sheet, your motherboard requires socket 1155 cpu's.

You need to figure out if your motherboard supports overclocking of the cpu.
If so, it might be worth getting the i5 3570K.
If not, then the regular version should do, and saves you a few bucks.

You do have some i7 choices, but they look expensive compared to the i5's that perform similarly.

It all depends upon your budget.
Good Luck.

 

[Zelig]

It's almost never worth upgrading the cpu of an existing system. The chart leif posted is good - they recommend upgrades are worthwhile if the replacement is at least three tiers higher, while a Core i3 of this generation will be in the second-to-top tier already.

 

[leif erikson]

That is a great point, thanks for reminding me.

 

[yetubaba]

it's not a bad cpu, but civ still lags. I wanna eliminate most of the lag. Hopefully an i5 will do the trick.

And ok, what is over clocking and how do i do it? Can i over clock my existing cpu? maybe that will solve the issue?

 

[yetubaba]

and what is a socket 1155 cpu?

 

[leif erikson]

Sorry, you cannot overclock your current cpu. You must have a cpu that is unlocked to overclock.

Unlocked cpu's have a "K" suffix after the model number, as in core i5 3570K. Your current cpu does not have that suffix.

1155 refers to the number of pins on the back of the cpu and the number of pins the socket on the motherboard will accept, they must match. If you click on the link to your system information, under processor it has a plus sign next to "processor upgrade information". Click on the + and you will see that it says your motherboard has an LGA1155 socket, so you must use a cpu that has 1155 pins, it is made for that socket.

 

[yetubaba]

So will an i5 do the trick?

 

[leif erikson]

It is hard to say as it depends upon how it works with your motherboard as to what performance you will get out of it.

I would search a bit and see if anyone else has done the upgrade and see if they report any performance standards or benchmarks comparing the i3 to the upgrade of an i5?

 

[yetubaba]

i5-2500k is what im considering... Not sure if it will run civ v or not.. hope so. As far as my mobo, I'm pretty sure it will support it, but im not sure if my mobo supports over clocking.. How would I find out? If worse comes to worse, ill buy a new motherboard.

 

[yetubaba]

Oh, is a duel core with hyperthreading same as duel core?

 

[leif erikson]

You need to get into your system bios to see if there are any overclocking options in there. It is not a place for those who aren't sure what they are doing...

Suggest you google your bios type and version to see if there are any instructions you could follow before messing around in the bios. Changing a setting incorrectly can be fatal.

Checked you specs and it says you have a joshua motherboard. But it does not list the bios type or version.
edit - never heard of this brand before?

If you are thinking about a new motherboard, that opens up other processor options as well. Again, depends upon your budget.

 

[yetubaba]

Ok, im not really comfortable with over-clocking a CPU, unless I absolutely have to. Do I REALLY need to over-clock to play civ 5? Is it really that intensive??

I THINK Joshua is an HP motherboard, and I know its a uATX type, but not sure what else... Anyway, to be blunt, is there a p processor (it has the list of supporter processors on the HP site) that WILL run civ 5 smoothly. I'm good on graphics (gefoce 760), ram (12 gig) and i have a 550 watt psu, but I want to be able to run civ 5 on full without long waits between turns. So what CPU will do the trick?

Not trying to be difficult, I'm just not very familiar with processors. lol

 

[tokala]

It's pointless to get a i5 , much less a i7 over a i3 if your main concern are the AI turn times.
Even with the fastest, overclocked i5 or i7 you will have to wait for the AI to make its turns, on large maps, late game you will have to wait quite a bit.
Can't be helped.
(4GHz i5 here, upgraded from a Phenom X3 that was much slower than your i3, and while the speedup is noticable, AI tuns are still annoyingly long)

The only major difference of those nominally faster CPUs are that they are capable of computing stuff faster if it can be handled efficiently in parallel.

The Civ AI (most/all AIs?) isn't suited to that kind of computing, so your turn times will be mostly depending on the speed of one single core in the CPU.
A high-clocked i3 is pretty much the most efficient CPU for playing Civ.

 

[yetubaba]

if its the most efficient, civ v is waaaay ahead of its times. If an I7, arguably one of the most sophisticated processors on the market, cant run it smoothly, what can?

As far as the lag, could it be my gpu? It's brand new, updated drivers and is a geforce 760 (not top of the line but a very good card, i know people who run starcraft 2 on one)

 

[Zelig]

Nothing can run civ 5 smoothly, any hardware will result in spikes to 0 fps: (Those chips are a couple generations old, but note that they're clocked at 4.8 GHz)

Spoiler :

The gameplay in civ4 is much better anyway, I recommend that game instead.

 

[tokala]

if its the most efficient, civ v is waaaay ahead of its times. If an I7, arguably one of the most sophisticated processors on the market, cant run it smoothly, what can?

No, its the other way around. Civ can't use efficiently the theoretically superior power of modern multicore CPUs, and to be fair, not even all games coming out right now can.

 

[Quintillus]

Yeah, in any recent Civ games (by which I mean 3, 4, or 5... this may also apply to 2 and 1, but I haven't played them so I could be wrong), you will have non-instant AI turn times late game on sufficiently big maps. In part it's due to the complex stuff being calculated, and in part because Firaxis probably doesn't optimize the AI performance that well. It's also worth noting that in all Civ games, the AI only ever uses one thread. So if all you care about is Civilization AI turn times, and you're considering a quad core vs. a dual core that are identical other than the number of cores, you might as well go with the cheaper dual core. Civ5 will use multiple threads to keep the graphics smooth during your turn, but it still only uses one for the AI. And Zelig's charts show the effect of this - during AI turn times, the graphics may spike to zero, but it's the CPU, not the GPU, that is the limiting factor here.

I wouldn't say it's pointless to get an i5 or an i7 over an i3 for turn times, but the difference won't be drastic, so don't spent much money on it just for that. If the only difference is in core count, or hyperthreading being present, the AI turn times are going to be the same. You can make a case that dual core might be slightly better than single core since background tasks still have a thread with the dual, but beyond that, you aren't going to get anything.

It's kind of interesting comparing Civ AI turn times to something like Galactic Civilizations II. In that game, Stardock (its developer), and CFC member draginol in particular (the owner and AI programmer) made AI performance a priority, and it's noticeable. I'm a good part of the way in to a map on the biggest possible map, Gigantic. Gigantic is circa 66,000 tiles, slightly bigger than the biggest possible in Civ3, and much larger than what Civ4 can realistically handle (Civ5 I'm not sure about, but I suspect 66000 tiles is also well above Civ5's practical ceiling). But there's no waiting for AI turns. Stardock did make the AI use multiple threads in that game, even though it came out in early 2006, about the same time as Civ4, when few games used multiple threads. It makes a difference, though - on my 3.3 GHz i5, I can turn the AI settings to the max, and it still has instant turn times. Faster AI turn times has been on my wish list for Civilization for a long time now, and it really hasn't improved meaningfully from version to version. Maybe Civ 6 will change that, but I wouldn't count on it.

I do second Zelig's recommendation of Civ4 over Civ5. It won't solve the AI turn time issue, but it really is a great game.

 

[Zelig]

When I played civ5 I just made sure to kill the AI before they had a chance to build enough units to bog down the game.

It's basically win-win-win, since there's not much to do in the game other than kill AI, and at high difficulties they become impossibly tedious to slog through if you allow them to get to late-game.

 

[yetubaba]

When ever I start a civ 5 game, I alway check task manager to see what my cpu usage is. It hovers around 20-30%. Is this normal?