Upgrading your computer

[Niptium]

Have people thought about upgrading their computer for Civilization 5?

I have and have done so.

Well, it's gonna be a busy gaming 3rd quarter with Victoria II being released on ausgust 13th and Civilization 5 a month and a half later. So I went out of my way and spent 100$ on buying 4 GB of DDR3 memory sticks. I built this computer back in Febuary so it would have runned Civ5 very easily, but I felt like 4 GB wasn't enough so I bought 2 other sticks yesterday to double what I had.

 

[Ddude97]

I upgraded from a 2 core 2GB RAM to a 6 core w/ 4GB RAM (I'm probably going to get more)

 

[cyril25376]

I do not plan to upgrade my computer (dual core 2, E6400, 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5700 Series Grafikcard)
When the 64-Bit mode is good, maybe I will upgrade to 4 GB RAM (and changing from winxp to win7)

 

[fromeast2west]

I'm going to drop in a new CPU (AMD board, but will probably only go with a quadcore unless early tests show the game is able to use 6 cores well), upgrade to 8GB RAM, and grab a 5xxx series ATI GPU. It should be a fairly modest investment cost wise, but I'm hoping it speeds up the game.

Later in the year I may also add in an SSD for OS/Apps. I haven't been watching the price / performance in that area lately, but the tech seems to need another generation or two to work out all the bugs (TRIM support and stuff)

 

[civ_king]

I'm going to drop in a new CPU (AMD board, but will probably only go with a quadcore unless early tests show the game is able to use 6 cores well), upgrade to 8GB RAM, and grab a 5xxx series ATI GPU. It should be a fairly modest investment cost wise, but I'm hoping it speeds up the game.

Later in the year I may also add in an SSD for OS/Apps. I haven't been watching the price / performance in that area lately, but the tech seems to need another generation or two to work out all the bugs (TRIM support and stuff)

they (Firaxis) claimed they know it can use 12 cores, but aren't sure beyond that because the most the have is a 12 core machine

 

[ShaqFu]

I only have DDR2 motherboards, so I'm buying 4GB of it for $40 this week. That RAM's for a different machine (ZFS chews through RAM), but I'll take the 2GB out of it, put it in my one that already has 2GB, and hope for the best.

I don't think I'll do a major upgrade for Civ5; I'll tolerate it on an e5200 on integrated graphics until prices go down, I lose my patience, or I find a cheap used machine on sale.

they (Firaxis) claimed they know it can use 12 cores, but aren't sure beyond that because the most the have is a 12 core machine

Programmers usually have to go out of their way for multicore support, hence why so many games/programs don't really benefit from more than a dual core processor. If what Firaxis claims is true, it'll be nice to start seeing programs written that can make use of an arbitrary number of cores.

 

[Shurdus]

I have a solid pc so upgrading will be hardly worth it. I have to spend pretty much 1200 euro's to get a better performance, and I simply will not do that.

 

[Xzylvador]

I upgraded my PC 7 months ago just to be able to play Civ4-RoM-AND on large maps
But I kind of over-did it, so I guess I'm pretty safe for Civ5 too...
Yes, it can run Crysis.

 

[Shurdus]

I upgraded my PC 7 months ago just to be able to play Civ4-RoM-AND on large maps
But I kind of over-did it, so I guess I'm pretty safe for Civ5 too...
Yes, it can run Crysis.

Oh wow, Crysis? Really? A several years old game?

 

[Tylerryan79]

Oh wow, Crysis? Really? A several years old game?

You make me crack up a lot.

 

[paradigmx]

Well it's not directly for Civ V, but I plan to double my RAM shortly, the 2GB I have is barely enouogh to run Starcraft 2 and it would be nice to have 4gb in time for Civ V

 

[PieceOfMind]

You might not even need more than 2GB, yes even with Win7 or vista. Depends on the game engine and how memory is used.

Having said that, 4GB is pretty cheap now anyway so it's worth it.

As for cores, I have my doubts that the game will make much use of anything more than 2 cores, but we will have to wait and see.

 

[paradigmx]

You might not even need more than 2GB, yes even with Win7 or vista. Depends on the game engine and how memory is used.

Having said that, 4GB is pretty cheap now anyway so it's worth it.

As for cores, I have my doubts that the game will make much use of anything more than 2 cores, but we will have to wait and see.

Well as I said, the upgrade is mostly for Starcraft, but I don't think it would be a bad thing to have twice the RAM for Civ

Everything else in my rig is good though, if not a little dated.
AMD 64 x2 4600+, Pretty confident this will hold me over for at least another year or 2 of game releases.
ATI X1650, I might look into an upgrade soon, depending on my budget.
2GB RAM now, probably 4GB within a week or two
onboard sound, more than that would be wasted.
3x1TB Hard drives, I don't think I'll be needing more than that, not for a few years.

Now my Laptop, that's a completely different story, the Intel GMA945 itself makes it pretty well impossible to play anything made in the last 2 years. I doubt I'll be buying a new laptop though, money has more important priorities right now.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Oh, my post was mainly aimed at the OP, but I guess it's general enough to have applied to you as well. I have 4GB myself but when running winxp (32bit) it's only about 3.25GB it can use. 4GB in my mind should mainly coincide with a shift to 64 bit OS, so I just got win7 x64 the other day.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

To meet standard requirement to play 7th generation games that are released now for your desktop pc is to have at least a quadcore processor of 2.3 ghz or more, 4 GB of space, 64 bit Vistas or 7, and a graphic card at least Nividia 250 - or for some ATI users it would be HD 5770. You would have no complaint with these I've listed here.

 

[kiwitt]

I upgraded from my Athlon XP 1800/1.5 Gb/6600 GT to my Core i7 920/ 6 Gb / ATI 4870 512 MB, WD 10,000rpm HDD. to play RtW. It should be good enough for Civ V at least. Civ is what pushed me to upgrade in all cases. Civ II / P133 to Civ III / Athlon XP to above.

My next upgrade (mid to late next year) will be to a core i7/i9 with 8 cores / 16 threads and 12 GB of RAM and an ATI 6xxx series 2 GB card, plus dual SSD's. Which should make Civ V fly.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I'm curious. What games make best use of quadcores? (i.e. not just 100% of core 1 and 10% of the other 3 cores)

I suspect that in most games still, one of the best dual cores easily matches the performance of a quadcore and they're cheaper too.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I doubt I'll have to...I'll wait for the system requirements before making any rash decisions.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

I'm curious. What games make best use of quadcores? (i.e. not just 100% of core 1 and 10% of the other 3 cores)

I suspect that in most games still, one of the best dual cores easily matches the performance of a quadcore and they're cheaper too.

Grand Theft Auto 4 comes to mind. Of course it is from a different game engine (RAGE). When that game was released on the PC port, many gamers created an uproar of having to upgrade their dual core PCs. I am certain that Civ 5 will not be the case of what is going on with these other games.

 

[kiwitt]

Civ 5 can make use of 8 threads so can fully utilise my i7's cores and threads.

Faster has now been replaced by smarter. The lowest core i7 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+920+@+2.67GHz
is faster than the fastest previous generation core quad extreme http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Extreme+X9750+@+3.16GHz