Weak performance with GTX 480?

[valfarablaze]

First of all, hello everyone! I must say that it is good to be playing yet another new civilization installment!
So, here is my concern. I believe that my game is not performing as well as it should, but I am hoping an answer which will make me think othewise (reading through the forums, it does indeed seem like the game has terrible coding, thus performs weak overall).
Here are my specs;
Windows Vista x64
GTX 480 stock
4 gigs of ram
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.2

Now I know that my processor sucks, but hey, its been able to run Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, and many other countless games with 'decent' amount of bottleneck.
(Stable 60 FPS with everything maxed out and Nvidia 3d Vision)

So, again keep in mind that the FPS values I am about to give are in 3D vision mode, thus there is already around a 40% penalty compared to a regular 2d mode.

Settings:
DX11
Everything High
8XAA
1920x1080

When zoomed all the way in, I get around 30 FPS. Two steps up from being zoomed in all the way, around 22 FPS. When I zoom all the way out, it is around 8 FPS...

Btw, I am on turn 400 or so, but the turn loads only take 2-3 seconds, so no complaints there.

How does all this look? Terrible or expected? Anything I could do with some magic to make it better?

Thank you all for your time!

 

[Maniacal]

I recommend turning down AA to 2X. Usually the difference above 4X is not terribly noticeable and just uses more resources to run. If that doesn't help enough, I usually try turning down shadows (I find I don't really care a lot about them in games anyways, as long as there is a basic shadow I'm happy) or anything else you can live without.

How is the 3D effect for Civ5? Anything really special? I have a 120hz monitor which can run it (if I put windows 7 on instead of XP) but the price has kept me from getting them.

 

[tokala]

How does all this look? Terrible or expected? Anything I could do with some magic to make it better?

Nothing much to do about it. Civ5 is mostly CPU bound, and has generally pretty low framerates to begin with, which get halved by the 3d setup. Lowering some of the graphics options might reduce CPU load, though AA should have no effect on this.

Your best bet short of getting a i3/5/7 will be overclocking that C2D to its limit.

 

[valfarablaze]

The 3D is very nice and well done for Civ 5, even though you wouldn't expect it to. It looks like your monitor is a window looking down on the globe, and all your menus and graphical interfaces are on top of everything and the world is underneath it all.
Its hard to explain but I hope that makes sense

Well, the thing is it doesn't help me at all to turn down the AA because again, keep in mind that there is a bottleneck going on here, so if I turn down the AA, that will cause for me to have higher framerates, which in turn causes the CPU more work to do since it does it per frame, thus I end up having a worse bottleneck.

This is exactly why whether I have no x2AA or x8AA, the FPS is practially identical, but actually at x8AA, things are a little more smooth and I seem to have a higher minimum FPS, since GPU begins to do more work instead of the CPU.

Nevertheless, I just dont want to feel like I am not experiencing this game well, especially with a GTX480. Are you guys having a lot better FPS in similar settings that I have? (Just nearly double my FPS to match yours...So I get around 12-15 FPS when zoomed out, around 60-70 when zoomed in all the way etc)

 

[Maniacal]

I'd recommend getting a new CPU then.

 

[tokala]

(Just nearly double my FPS to match yours...So I get around 12-15 FPS when zoomed out, around 60-70 when zoomed in all the way etc)

Yepp, that's pretty much how it runs for me with a E5300 @3.3GHz and a GTX260. 1920x1200, medium to maximum settings and no AA at all, as the 260 runs WAAAY worse than a 480 in Civ5.