what setting would be best for my pc?

[SilverCord]

ati4850 1 gig, 3 gigs ram, q9450 quadcore 2.66, win64bit, running steam civ5 with plan to buy gk. i realize i cant run at max but what game/card settings/map size/directx would give me the best game experience with my older hardware? i should mention, im not a hardware gamer by any means and if i do play games, its always casual. which is why i really love the 2d tabletop view which is more like playing a board game then a videogame. but the question is, does it actually use less resources in strategic view and, can civ5 be played and won completely in strategic view?

 

[SilverCord]

Originally Posted by 2K Greg View Post
The hex grid is turned off in these screenshots
I really regret forgetting to put that in the article! Yes, the game is completely playable in this view (I personally spend most of my time in this view) and one of the coolest parts about it is that yes, the video card does a lot less work while in this view.

 

[compwiz1202]

I can run Maxxed with the specs below, although it can be snappier and cooler GPU if I turn some things down.
My research shows your CPU is a little better and it looks like my video card might be a little better. I don't know how the RAM compares other than the amount. Your graphics card supports up to DirectX 10.1. I've never experimented with using DirectX 9. Does it run faster even though you can use 10 or 11? You could try just setting video settings all to second best, then if that is good turn things back to highest one by one. Usually Antialiasing, Shadows and Tesselation are the ones to have the most effect on performance. The smaller the map and the less opponents/city states will keep performance up. I don't usually play on Huge and rarely Large, and I haven't really tested since Vanilla where I think I was over two minutes between turns at the endgame. I will have to try a Huge again and see how it goes.

XPS L701X - Intel Core i7-740QM 1.73GHz (Turbo Boost to 2.93GHz/6MB SmartCache) (WEI 7.1)
2x8GB 1333MHz RAM (WEI 7.4)
17.3" 1600x900 - NVidia GeForce GT 445M 3GB Video RAM (WEI 6.9)
SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256N/AM 2.5" 256GB SSD (WEI 7.7) + Samsung 7200 RPM 500GB HDD (WEI 5.9)