Will I be able to run Civ V on Max settings with this PC?

SG-17

SG-17

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I've got the extra cash to buy a good PC and this is what I've came up with.

I've been told that I will be able to run Battlefield 3 on High settings so I should be able to run Civ V at max, yes?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-4100 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 EVO ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7770 1GB Video Card ($129.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($74.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($24.97 @ Newegg)
Monitor: ViewSonic VA1938WA-LED 19.0" Monitor ($98.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $817.86
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-05-11 18:36 EDT-0400)
 
Really what you have there will work quite nicely. It is similar to what I have. Sure I could update and make my PC into a monster, but why? There is no need. Not for CiV or Fall of the Samurai. :)

Here is the AMD site for Can You Run It. Just agree to terms. Then simply scroll down to the game you want to check, to see if your pc can run it. It asks you the first time to download software to get the program working. Then you can check on all new games, to determine what you need to update to play them, if you fail the test.

http://sites.amd.com/US/GAME/TECHNOLOGY/Pages/can-you-run-it.aspx
 
I'd definitely change 2 things, the PSU and the GPU. The PSU you've chosen is average at best and you'll be running it pretty hard based on the components you'll be using. While it does meet the (imo) minimally acceptable 80% efficiency standard and seems to make use of high quality capacitors I would still be tempted to pick up something more solid, with a little more wattage overhead. Because in the (admittedly unlikely) event it was to fail it could well take many of your other new parts with it.

As for the GPU I think you should look here before making any final decisions. As an example the computer I am on right now still has an old Radeon 4890 GPU from several years ago and the 7770 is only 2 places and 66 G3D Marks above that. This is unacceptably low considering it's a comparison with a 4xxx series card but unfortunately in recent years the majority of GPUs are simply rebranded older models with incidental features bolted on and the end user should be especially careful not to get caught out by this. Especially in this case since it won't run CiV at max (or BF3 for that matter) unless you are talking about fairly low resolutions with limited AA.

edit: If you are running very close to your budget limit I would suggest seeing what might be reusable from your current build to focus more funds on the key GPU area. Perhaps you could wait a month for a new monitor for example?
 
What about this?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor ($117.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H61ICAFE ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($72.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB Video Card ($139.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($74.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($24.97 @ Newegg)
Monitor: ViewSonic VA1938WA-LED 19.0" Monitor ($98.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $783.42
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-05-11 21:01 EDT-0400)
 
The 6870 is a much improved choice I think man. The only other consideration I would have is perhaps delaying the monitor and investing more in the CPU. The i3 is a fine chip but it's performance will fall off more severely than models with more cores in the years to come as games (and OSes) become better at utilising them. That said, it's a fairly minor consideration and overall I think your assembling a very sensible machine considering how much are getting for the price.
 
I would not use an I3 on that, get the quad core 3.6GHz. I would agrre on the 6870 graphicws card though. If you get a laptop make sure it has a quadcore. I have a nice Asus, great, no problems, and it can be upgraded very easy.
 
That's an interesting choice. The i3 is probably a slightly better chip (it's newer, the underlying tech is slightly better, it uses a lot less power) but the difference in performance is very slight. Realistically as things stand right now I doubt the difference would even be noticable. As you are going for an AMD GPU I would tend to lean towards the 4100 but matching hardware is becoming less and less relevant as time passes. In fact it may already not matter at all although we will probably have die hards on both sides of that issue until the day the internet explodes. There is also the issue that off the top of my head the 4100 uses close to 100 Watts on its own which is nearly 20% of the entire available wattage on the PSU you've chosen. You'll still be fine with what you've posted above but if you started adding a few new components down the line (more HDD's etc) you could run into trouble. It's not a major consideration but definitely worth bearing in mind depending on your future plans.

edit: Just noticed you're thinking about the Phenom; it's a good chip (will outperform the other two) but an absolute beast on power and heat generation. Also, make sure you get the approriately socketed MB for the chip you choose. Easiest thing in the world would be to forget that when placing your order and that would make for a very disappointing delivery day indeed!
 
callan said:
That's an interesting choice. The i3 is probably a slightly better chip (it's newer, the underlying tech is slightly better, it uses a lot less power) but the difference in performance is very slight. Realistically as things stand right now I doubt the difference would even be noticable. As you are going for an AMD GPU I would tend to lean towards the 4100 but matching hardware is becoming less and less relevant as time passes. In fact it may already not matter at all although we will probably have die hards on both sides of that issue until the day the internet explodes. There is also the issue that off the top of my head the 4100 uses close to 100 Watts on its own which is nearly 20% of the entire available wattage on the PSU you've chosen. You'll still be fine with what you've posted above but if you started adding a few new components down the line (more HDD's etc) you could run into trouble. It's not a major consideration but definitely worth bearing in mind depending on your future plans.
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Power supplies are so inexpensive though and the 4100 does not even run DX11. It is obsolescent. The thing is you are better off spending the money now to be in a better position to upgade later. I3s are also yesterdays news, they may stack up to some quadcore cpus, but they are going by the wayside. Do what you want, but think before you do.

SG-17 said:
My other build is a laptop, so I don't have a monitor to use.


Now how about a Phenom II with the 6870 GPU?
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This would work just fine.
 
nokmirt said:
Power supplies are so inexpensive though and the 4100 does not even run DX11. It is obsolescent.
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Dx11 is largely independent of your processor. While on-die CPU support for DX11 calculations, something that in my own personal view is almost a complete waste of time outside of laptops (which have inherent GPU limitations and thus benefit much more from this kind of load-shifting) given the industry trends in development and how that relates to their usage of the DirectX 11 APIs (very technical & not related to thread so I won't expand on that), isn't included in the Sandy Bridge technology anyway. It's first appearance is in the new Ivy Bridge series of chips which are most definitely out of price range here.

I do accept your point that both the i3 and 4100 are borderline technologies at the moment but I believe their price/performance ratio is more than adequate for the enthusiast on a budget, which I suspect this chap is or else his list would already be a lot more fancy. Most importantly, both of them are capable of playing CiV5 maxed when paired with an appropriate GPU, which is ultimately the point of the thread.
 
I've been recommended the following set-up on both Reddit and Steam.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor ($117.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Intel DH67CLB3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB Video Card ($139.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 520W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($74.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($24.97 @ Newegg)
Monitor: ViewSonic VA1938WA-LED 19.0" Monitor ($98.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $800.86
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-05-11 22:24 EDT-0400)

I've been told that the i3's superior performance in gaming and the ability to upgrade later to i5s or i7s makes it the better choice overall than an AMD CPU.
 
The Phenom is certainly the most powerful processor of the 3 you're interested in but I would agree that going with the i3 will provide more upgrade potential as Intel are still using the LGA1155 socket for even their new Ivy Bridge range while AMD have recently changed to the AM3+ spec for their newer chips (Bulldozer series iirc) which would require a MB upgrade if you should decide to switch to one later. Overall I think the system above is good enough to play the current generation of games with no trouble whatsoever and so maintaining a clean upgrade path is probably more important than the slight performance edge offered by the Phenom. Good luck with it man and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts once everything's arrived and been tried out!

edit: As an afterthought, an alternative would be to buy an AM3+ board now as it will still run old AM3 chips but this may be an unnecessary expense for something you may not use for quite some time, if ever.
 
I'll be placing the order soon. I'll update this thread once I've gotten everything assembled and working.

I just hope that Firaxis announces a Complete Edition of Civ V soon!
 
callan said:
Dx11 is largely independent of your processor. While on-die CPU support for DX11 calculations, something that in my own personal view is almost a complete waste of time outside of laptops (which have inherent GPU limitations and thus benefit much more from this kind of load-shifting) given the industry trends in development and how that relates to their usage of the DirectX 11 APIs (very technical & not related to thread so I won't expand on that), isn't included in the Sandy Bridge technology anyway. It's first appearance is in the new Ivy Bridge series of chips which are most definitely out of price range here.

I do accept your point that both the i3 and 4100 are borderline technologies at the moment but I believe their price/performance ratio is more than adequate for the enthusiast on a budget, which I suspect this chap is or else his list would already be a lot more fancy. Most importantly, both of them are capable of playing CiV5 maxed when paired with an appropriate GPU, which is ultimately the point of the thread.
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Interesting on the first paragraph. Except, that my Asus laptop does have sandy bridge tech and does play DX11 (If I misunderstood, that you did not mean that, then I misinterpreted what you wrote.). I like the performance of DX11, when playing the game. Although, it is harder on my graphics card. DX9, does give the better performance, DX11 gives you better eye candy. I like that part. But, that is just my personal preference.

On the second paragraph, I agree as well, for someone on a budget. It's just like I said earlier, you don't need a monster pc to play these games. I am all for getting what is affordable.
 
Ah, I see where the confusion exists here. The Sandy Bridge series of chips (with some exceptions) included an on die GPU to aid with graphics calculations when not using a separate, discrete GPU. This is primarily aimed at allowing smooth HD video playback and the like on lower end systems, laptops in particular. While it would be technically possible to utilise this functionality in combination with a discrete GPU this would have to be coded for independently using CUDA, a practice that is essentially non-existent in the games industry because of it's cost/benefit ratio which considers the fact it would only be of benefit for customers with Intel hardware, essentially forcing 2 separate coding paths to also optimise for AMD hardware. On Sandy Bridge these inbuilt GPUs supported Dx10.1 with the move to Dx11 support only made with Ivy Bridge. I strongly suspect I would be right in saying that your laptop is not at this level and includes an additional discrete GPU that is DX11 capable hence making the GPU core of your chip somewhat redundant.

In the future I think Intel would like this technology to replace low end GPU's altogether but I don't think they've convinced the industry of that quite yet. Time will tell but personally I believe that while the hardware and engineering principlas behind this are sound (if not brilliant) the current developmental focus in the games industry is not following that direction with an ever increasing priority on simplifying cross-platform development over optimisation for any single platform. In effect almost the opposite of what Intel would like to happen.
 
I'd be very interested in what kind of settings that system is able to do, especially at late game with lots of units moving around.

If you're building a new system, why not add an SSD to the mix? A lot of the times when I click on the mini-map to go to a different area, there's about 1-2 sec lag before the best textures are shown. I'm supposing that is due to hard-disk access bottlenecks. I'm guessing an SSD will help with the responsiveness a lot.

I'm also building a new system, but it'll most probably be based on Ivy Bridge, since I only upgrade/rebuild my system every four or five years.
 
I've actually been thinking and this is a build that has been recommended by several people.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock 970DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($74.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Hard Drive: Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 1GB Video Card ($166.97 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair 600W ATX12V Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($17.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer S201HLbd 20.0" Monitor ($108.98 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $782.43
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-05-12 11:57 EDT-0400)
 
The new motherboard you've selected looks fine. I strongly suspect it's not as overclockable as your CPU but that's not an issue for the vast majority of people. Surprised to see you change to the 560, which is a fine card, but then so was the 6870 you had earlier which was cheaper and possibly even fractionally better. The new PSU has a little more headroom and at a price which seems almost too good to be true. Must be a rebate with it or something. I hate those.

Overall I think both setups would be fairly equivalent, with the Phenom having the slight edge. If it was me I think I'd go with the 6870 rather than the 560 while keeping the Phenom. Then in ~18 months when I found a game it couldn't max I'd consider replacing the board, getting aftermarket cooling to bring your Phenom up to ~4GHz and slotting in a second 6870/560 which would give a very cost-effective performance bump and keeping you at max settings for close to the next 3 years in my estimation.
 
In every benchmark I looked at the 560 outperformed the 6870 and the 6870 costs more upfront (it is only cheaper after a rebate) and the upfront cost is what matters most right now.
 
If I was in that position I can honestly say I wouldn't hesitate getting the 560 then.
 
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