Will these system requirements be okay?

[DMOC]

I was looking for the system requirements and found this:

Full version of Civilization IV
Mac OS X version 10.4.11 (10.5.6 or higher recommended)
1.8GHz PowerPC G5 or Intel processor (2GHz recommended)
512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
128MB video RAM (ATI Radeon 9600 or Nvidia GeForce FX 6600 or higher)
2.5GB hard disk space

My only question is that the mac I'm abotu to buy will have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 330 M with 256 MB - is that "higher" than the GeForce FX 6600?

 

[AlanH]

I recommend you tell us what you are about to buy. Is it second hand?

Those system requirements look a bit old to me. For example, I wouldn't dream of trying to run a recent OS X and Civ4 in less than 2 GBytes.

 

[DMOC]

Those system requirements I posted were on a website that was selling Civilization IV on the MAC. I assumed they were correct. (They are not my future laptop's system - they are what was recommended to be the minimum requirements to play the game.)

Anyway, the laptop I'm about to buy. Click HERE. I plan on getting the 17-inch version or the 15-inch version 2.53 ghz or 2.66 ghz. Do you think they will be able to run Civ 4 Mac?

 

[AlanH]

I was concerned that you *might* be using those requirements to specify a second user Mac to run Civ4.

Civ4 was first released for the Mac in 2006. High end new Macs then were able to run it, but many existing systems struggled at that time. Since 2006, Moore's Law has increased the performance and capacity of new Macs by a minimum factor of four. You can't buy a new Mac today that is anywhere near as bad as those early system recommendations.

Any new Mac you buy now will eat Civ4 with absolutely no problems (apart from the fact that you have to turn anti-aliasing off, but that's a software bug, not a performance issue).

 

[DMOC]

Okay, just checking.

I'll come back here if I can't figure out how to turn anti aliasing off but otherwise thanks.

PS: When you say Civ4 does that apply to BEYOND THE SWORD as well?

 

[AlanH]

They all run the same game engine, so yes, BtS, Warlords and Civ4 all work well on modern Macs. Anti-aliasing is a setting on the Graphics Options screen. Set it to zero samples.

 

[Diatsub]

Hello
I am using a MacPro 2x2.8 Quad-Core Intel Xeon with NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Do you think that works fine?
Thanks

 

[AlanH]

I have almost the same specification. Mine is slightly slower at 2.66 GHz. It has 2 dual-core Woodcrest Xeons (made in 2006), and the same graphics card as yours. It works very well.

Set anti-alias samples to zero in Graphics options because there's a bug in the code that causes leader-heads to lose bits of skin on Nvidia cards. Otherwise it will be fine.

 

[Diatsub]

Thanks, the information is very useful for me.

 

[civ_king]

I was concerned that you *might* be using those requirements to specify a second user Mac to run Civ4.

Civ4 was first released for the Mac in 2006. High end new Macs then were able to run it, but many existing systems struggled at that time. Since 2006, Moore's Law has increased the performance and capacity of new Macs by a minimum factor of four. You can't buy a new Mac today that is anywhere near as bad as those early system recommendations.

Any new Mac you buy now will eat Civ4 with absolutely no problems (apart from the fact that you have to turn anti-aliasing off, but that's a software bug, not a performance issue).

Yup, look at the 2006 Mac Pro vs. 2010 Mac Pro