System Requirements?

[Wolle68]

In this video, Dennis Shirk mentions a current target of Dual core processors and 256MB of video RAM.

 

[The_J]

Will there be a version for mac?

No Mac version is planned for launch, but the producer noted that all Civ games have eventually come out for Apple computers.

.....

 

[fromeast2west]

For anyone who's planning an upgrade to a system using DDR2 so you'll be ready for Civ V, you may want to think about buying RAM now.

DDR2 prices have been climbing, and are expected to increase all year as the economy improves, demand increases for the holiday build up, and production switches from DDR2 to DDR3.

I'm going to wait on the CPU and graphics upgrades, but I'm sticking with my current MB so I ordered my RAM today.

Oh, and SSD boot drives are dropping in price, and will will probably get cheaper, so I'd wait on those as well unless someone has some inside info on the market...

 

[civ_king]

DDR2 is going to get ugly in 2-3 years, and hold off the SSD purchases as long as possible, but get machines with lots of Hard Drive slots (so you can swap Memory as needed)

 

[Willem]

For anyone who's planning an upgrade to a system using DDR2 so you'll be ready for Civ V, you may want to think about buying RAM now.

If you're going to upgrade to a new system, why would you want to get one that uses DDR2 RAM anyway? DDR3 is going to be the standard in the near future so it would be pointless to upgrade to an obsolete system. The only reason to stick with DDR2 is if you want to keep your current MB and processor. If you're willing to change both of those things, then by all means go for DDR3. It's faster and a DDR3 capable MB has 6 RAM slots instead of 4. That makes it ideal for a 64bit OS.

 

[civ_king]

If you're going to upgrade to a new system, why would you want to get one that uses DDR2 RAM anyway? DDR3 is going to be the standard in the near future so it would be pointless to upgrade to an obsolete system. The only reason to stick with DDR2 is if you want to keep your current MB and processor. If you're willing to change both of those things, then by all means go for DDR3. It's faster and a DDR3 capable MB has 6 RAM slots instead of 4. That makes it ideal for a 64bit OS.

I know one board has 8 RAM slots (but it is EFI)

 

[Willem]

I know one board has 8 RAM slots (but it is EFI)

I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, the new boards use a tri-channel system instead of dual. Are you sure it's not 9 slots?

 

[civ_king]

I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, the new boards use a tri-channel system instead of dual. Are you sure it's not 9 slots?

nope, it is dual channel 8 slots

 

[Willem]

nope, it is dual channel 8 slots

Well then you don't want it. Tri-channel is faster.

 

[civ_king]

Well then you don't want it. Tri-channel is faster.

I know, I'm waiting until it get trichannel 9 slots

 

[Willem]

I know, I'm waiting until it get trichannel 9 slots

Why? With 2 gig cards, a 6 slot board will give you 12 gig RAM. That should be plenty with a 64 bit OS at the moment. Eventually we should start seeing 3 and 4 gig cards, if they aren't out all ready. There's not many programs available yet that can make use of that much RAM. It will probably be years before there are.

 

[civ_king]

Why? With 2 gig cards, a 6 slot board will give you 12 gig RAM. That should be plenty with a 64 bit OS at the moment. Eventually we should start seeing 3 and 4 gig cards, if they aren't out all ready. There's not many programs available yet that can make use of that much RAM. It will probably be years before there are.

If the Dual Channel board can take 64 Gigs...

 

[fromeast2west]

If you're going to upgrade to a new system, why would you want to get one that uses DDR2 RAM anyway?

I was addressing those who were planning to upgrade a current system, not upgrade to a new system. For a new system, I agree, start with a board that supports DDR3, USB 3.0, ...

Civ is about the only gaming I still do on my PC (although Diablo III may change that ...), so a few inexpensive upgrades to my AM2+ system should see me through. I'll wait until closer to the release date on CPU and graphics upgrades. Now that Nvidia finally has a DX11 card on the market there should be some price pressure on the mid-market cards in the near future. The CPU price war should heat up with attention moving to 6 core systems, so the quad cores prices should move down too.

The one part I may hold back on until after the Civ V laund is the SSD. 25 nm NAND is scheduled to roll out in Q4, so that and another generation of SSD design are probably worth waiting for.

 

[Willem]

If the Dual Channel board can take 64 Gigs...

And what program do you have that needs that much RAM? There's hardly even any 64 bit software available yet so even 12 gigs is going to be overkill. It's certainly not going to help you any with Civ 5, that's most definitely going to be a 32 bit program in order to be as backward compatible as possible.

 

[civ_king]

And what program do you have that needs that much RAM? There's hardly even any 64 bit software available yet so even 12 gigs is going to be overkill. It's certainly not going to help you any with Civ 5, that's most definitely going to be a 32 bit program in order to be as backward compatible as possible.

It is a Mac MoBo, Snow Leopard is 64 Bit, all Macs these days are 64 bit, within the next 2-3 years all new Mac Programs will be 64 bit

 

[Drago Askani]

You can already buy 4gig dimms.

 

[wabatt]

My predicted specs:

Minimum System Requirements:
CPU: Dual core 2.0 ghz
RAM: 2 GB for XP / 3GB for Vista/7
VGA: 128 MB, Shader model 2.0.
ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
DX: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
OS: Windows XP and later

 

[The_J]

VGA: 128 MB, Shader model 2.0.

256 MB have already been mentioned by the devs.

 

[Drago Askani]

My predicted specs:

Minimum System Requirements:
CPU: Dual core 2.0 ghz
RAM: 2 GB for XP / 3GB for Vista/7
VGA: 128 MB, Shader model 2.0.
ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better
DX: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
OS: Windows XP and later

god I hope the video req isnt that low, needs to be an 8800 or later really...anyone still playing on a 6600 needs to either start upgrading some , or just buy a console.

 

[Willem]

It is a Mac MoBo, Snow Leopard is 64 Bit, all Macs these days are 64 bit, within the next 2-3 years all new Mac Programs will be 64 bit

That's irrelevant. The question was what programs you have that need that much RAM. Just because they're 64 bit doesn't mean they can use up tons of it. 12 gig should be more than enough for the vast majority of programs that will be coming out, unless you're doing something like 3D or video rendering on a commercial level.