Wanted: Computer Recommendations for Civ IV

[Sava]

Originally posted by wgabrie
Hmm... Lots of AMD Athlon people here. For the record I went with the Sempron. :P

As far as Video Cards go, Tom's Hardware Guide did a roundup this Summer of Graphics cards.

AGP: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...705/index.html

PCI: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...524/index.html

I have heard that 256MB cards are overkill because most games don't use them yet. 128MB is your best bet for nowish. For the record I went for the GeForce 6800 128MB 256-bit.

You got a GeForce 6800 but you are running it with a Sempron?

that's like buying a corvette, but getting a 4 cylinder engine in it

your processor is going to bottlebeck your frames-per-second

you should have gotten an athlon 64

[rumpo kid]

Urban Ranger - I have the MSI K8N mobo and can honestly say that it's never given me any problems (mind you, I've only had it for a bit over 6 months). My big problem is that I built the system myself and I didn't check out the fans sufficiently - they keep the system cool enough alright but they do sound a bit like a hovercraft with a megaphone

Steve

[Fidel]

got myself a new comp in honor of civ 4 two weeks ago
amd 64 3000, 6200 nvidia, 1 gig ram
should be enough

[ohdude]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Hm, I have nagging problems with this mobo.

I recommend Asus mobos because they are in fact rock solid.

What kind of problems are you having, and what level of bios are you running?

[wgabrie]

Originally posted by Sava


You got a GeForce 6800 but you are running it with a Sempron?

that's like buying a corvette, but getting a 4 cylinder engine in it

your processor is going to bottlebeck your frames-per-second

you should have gotten an athlon 64

Darn it Sava, I'm a firm believer that CPUs have reached the point where they have more power then is realistic. And, in my experiance, CPU system requirements acually go down with better video cards.

Plus the 64-bit Computing transition isn't complete. Maxing out in the 32-bit era now is just fluff. And human eyes can't really reach beyond 30FPS anyway.

[alva]

You would get he same performance with a cheaper video card, so it's basically a waste of good money to have that card with that processor.


64 bits are a lot more fun. I can hardly hear my PC anymore and that's not only because the fan is a better one.
I can remember my 1400 Thunderbird, I could hear it from outside my appartement.

[Fidel]

exactly. there's even nifty cool'n'queit feature which basically brings down working frequency and voltage when you do not need it. my old athlon sounded like a lawnmowner, now i do not need to shout

[Aeson]

Originally posted by alva
You would get he same performance with a cheaper video card, so it's basically a waste of good money to have that card with that processor.

Actually, a plain 6800 is pretty midrange. Some of the Semprons (performance-wise) would be a pretty good match.

There are other reasons not to buy Semprons though.

[Aeson]

My Athlon XP is virtually noiseless. At 3' you can't hear it above the ambiant noise. It's mostly about the fan/heatsink. $16 fixed my noise problem for the processor. ($35 for a Zalman on the 6600GT...)

I'd still recommend an AMD64... but not because of noise.