What are you running Civ V on and how well does it work?

[Nutteria]

I`m running it one Radeon 4850 512 DDR3 2-core Pentium E-something(the best of the series as far as I can remember) with 4GB ram win 7 64 bit.1280-1024 resolution everything on High with AA x2. And it runs very smoothly.ONly when I alt+tab and come back to the game it has 10 seconds of "loading" the textures but that is fine IMO.

For 2 years old computer I must say the game runs great.

 

[funkyj]

got a new desktop yesterday:

Intel i7 950 @3G
6GB ram (1066MHz?)
Windows 7
OCZ vertex 120 GB SSD
GeForce GTS 450
​

Civ with the automatically selected video options (2xAA, mostly high quality) flys compared to my old Lenovo T61p (Nvidia FX570M) laptop.

 

[Gwaeren]

Windows vista home premium 64 bit sp2
Intel core I7 920 2,67 ghz
6 GB RAM
Ati radeon HD 4800 Series

Although this seems to meet the recommended requirements, I can only run it with the lowest possible settings. This also means no vsync, no anti-aliasing. Only thing I have checked is 'High Detail Strategic View'.

 

[harry_flashman]

I believe I may have the lowest specs on the thread, without going through 6 pages.
Core2 duo processor 1.8 ghz
1 mb ram
Geforce 7300

The game is running very smoothly with absolute minimum graphics, and only one crash. I'm on a standard map, and currently in the Renaissance. Lookswise at minimum graphics it's on a par with civ 4, though it's hard to tell the difference between terrain sometimes.

Could someone explain to me how I'm able to run the game with every spec below the minimum?

 

[Clammo]

i7 920 OC'd to 3.4ghz
12gb DDR3 1600 RAM
295GTX (2of those)


On normal map sizes it runs acceptably but still some annoying slow down later in game (up to 15 secs in late era).

However I prefer playing on huge maps, and this is a problem as it tends to run like an asthmatic hippo on valium for most of a game (up to 30 seconds), to the point where I've given up playing on anything but standard or smaller maps.

All max apart from leader quality which it hates so that's at medium, and AA is at 2 at the moment, might try 4 and see if that changes things significantly (either performance or visual quality).

 

[tokala]

Well Flashy, it seems you are running a pretty uncluttered windows, though you might run out of RAM later in the game
Worst so far was a single core P4 and geforce 6000 series integrated video chip, compared to that you have a state of the art machine

But it indeed looks like the "minimum" requirements are very conservatively set.

 

[TPQ]

Intel Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz (400x9)
4GB RAM (1600MHz)
HD4850 512MB
1280x1024 Vsync ON
XP SP3 32-Bit (so DX9 & no AA)

 

[Chong Warrior]

E8400 @ 4ghz
nVidia GTX 260 768mb
4gb RAM
Windows 7 64-bit
1920x1080 Vsync on
DX10
4x AA with all details at highest

Plays no problem at all and I've finished 2 full games.

 

[MarkC1]

AMD Phenom 2 x4 925 (2.80Ghz)
AMD 5770 1GB GDDR4?
2GB Ram
Windows 7

 

[BARBEERIAN]

Intel Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
Nvidia 8800 GTX 768 Mb
4 GB of RAM
Vista 32-bit

Runs everything maxed out with no problems (fwiw I get more fps with all cranked in Civ 5 than in 4).

 

[Baer]

I am running a pair of GTX 580's in SLI running the game aross 3 24" monitors at 5760 X 1200. Within 5 minutes my GPU's are up to 90C. I can run other much more demanding games at this resolution and keep my temps at under 60C. What is the deal with CIv 5 that it takes so much GPU power? There is not that much goingh on that it should cause temps to rise that much?
My cooling is fine, I have 12 Gb DDR III, without going into details this rig is high end componnents all the eway with excellent cooling, no compromises on anything. The OS is Win7 Ult.
Is the code used in Civ 5 that poorly written?

 

[aziantuntija]

I am running a pair of GTX 580's in SLI running the game aross 3 24" monitors at 5760 X 1200. Within 5 minutes my GPU's are up to 90C. I can run other much more demanding games at this resolution and keep my temps at under 60C. What is the deal with CIv 5 that it takes so much GPU power?

My GTX 470 also runs quite hot in civ5 and the answer to that can be found from here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31520674&postcount=28

Is the code used in Civ 5 that poorly written?

So as you can see from my link above, the case is quite the opposite of what you were thinking. The civ5 engine (speaking strictly of graphical usage) is absolutely great AND that nvidia really takes full advantage of this dx11 multi-threaded rendering. This article that I linked also explains the poor performance of the ATI gpu's in civ5. It also explains that with nvidia dx11 card (with the latest drivers or at least with 265 drivers) you can really take a full advantage of your multi core CPU when playing civ5. Some people were very skeptical about civ5 multi core usage (maybe they had core 2 duo CPU or some other dual core CPU) so this article proves them wrong IF the GPU that is used is nvidia dx11 card.

My specs:

Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4Ghz Max turbo freguence with Hyper threading: 3.8Ghz
Nvidia GTX 470 1280 MB
4GB 1333 ram
Win 7 64bit
Intel SSD

All the hardware is running on stock freguencys and civ5 is running great even with Large map and all the available civs in the game. I suppose I could easily use even bigger map (huge) but I like the idea that nobody hasnt got any 'extra' room but instead they have 'fair' amount of room in the game.

 

[Securion]

2x 2.66ghz, 2gb ram, 5770 1gb.

The game didnt work at all (crashed in the later parts of the game) until the problem seems to have been fixed in a patch recently. Now the game works as it should. (except for the diplomacy which i dont know if its broken or just stupidly done?)

 

[Boudicca]

CPU: i5 M480 @ 2.67GHz (Samsung laptop)
GPU: Intel HD Graphics - Nvidia 310M chipset
Win7 64-bit
4gb ram
DX11
1920 x 1080

Works fine though

 

[anandus]

I'm running it on:
* Core 2 Quad 3Ghz
* 4Gb
* GTX 460, 1Gb
* Vertex2 SSD

Within 5 minutes my GPU's are up to 90C. I can run other much more demanding games at this resolution and keep my temps at under 60C. What is the deal with CIv 5 that it takes so much GPU power? There is not that much goingh on that it should cause temps to rise that much?
My cooling is fine, I have 12 Gb DDR III, without going into details this rig is high end componnents all the eway with excellent cooling, no compromises on anything. The OS is Win7 Ult.
Is the code used in Civ 5 that poorly written?

I guess so, I've got the same problem, when I play civ the gpu usage jumps to 100% and the temperature goes sky high and I need to remove the side of my case to prevent overheating (even though my case is tidy inside for airflow, it's not enough).
It took me a while to figure out that the black-outs/reboots I had was because of gpu overheating (110C and upwards!).

It's like there's some infinite loop hidden in the graphics code that pushes the gpu to the max or something. Civ 5 is the only game I've seen this with.
It's really odd, as the gpu usage always is at max in civ5, never 30%, 50%, 70%, but always 90% and higher.

No complains about the performance or anything, that's allright and it looks great too, my only complaint is the heat

Edit:

My GTX 470 also runs quite hot in civ5 and the answer to that can be found from here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=31520674&postcount=28

So as you can see from my link above, the case is quite the opposite of what you were thinking. The civ5 engine (speaking strictly of graphical usage) is absolutely great AND that nvidia really takes full advantage of this dx11 multi-threaded rendering. This article that I linked also explains the poor performance of the ATI gpu's in civ5. It also explains that with nvidia dx11 card (with the latest drivers or at least with 265 drivers) you can really take a full advantage of your multi core CPU when playing civ5. Some people were very skeptical about civ5 multi core usage (maybe they had core 2 duo CPU or some other dual core CPU) so this article proves them wrong IF the GPU that is used is nvidia dx11 card.

Sorry, i saw this reply later, I'll read that article now.
Sounds interesting!

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On a completely unrelated note:
Is there a way to patch the Civ5 exe to uses more than 4Gb?

 

[Babri]

Processor : Intel i3 2.93GHz
RAM : 4GB
Graphic Card : ATI HD 6850
OS : Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Edit : As mentioned above I am using an ATI card & I am not facing any heat problems even though the climate in my country is very hot & my computer setting is quite conjested. I usually set my fan to 100% to overcome heat though.

 

[Chong Warrior]

E8400 @ 4ghz
nVidia GTX 260 768mb
4gb RAM
Windows 7 64-bit
1920x1080 Vsync on
DX10
4x AA with all details at highest

Plays no problem at all and I've finished 2 full games.

I upgraded the graphics card since this post. Running an ATI 5850 1gb.

Now running DX11 with all graphics on highest settings. Runs very smooth on Large Maps, never had any problems.

 

[Blue Oyster]

As below. Graphics turned up full.
After about turn 1000, some triangles can be seen painting if I scroll to a far-away point on the map.

 

[Glassmage]

I have a question, can someone post a pic of no antialias and 8xx antialias because I can't tell the difference. Currently I have 2xx antialias because I thought more would crash in late game.

 

[The Mad Russian]

Dell XPS 17 i5 Core L701X x4 560 @ 2.67 GHz with 6 GB RAM, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and 1 GB GeForce 435M GFX Card.