Civ 4 Computer Spec Quiz

[Capt Dizle]

Okay, now that the game has been out a little I would like somefeed back from you all on exactly what you would recommend to someone who was going to by a new system that would be used to play Civ.

Three levels, high end, midrange and economy:

1. A system that would absolutely play the game to the nuts.

2. A system that would play well but is a partial tradeoff in performance to cost.

3. The minimum system that would allow play without unreasonable slowness.

Please be exact in specification and feel free to proffer both package systems and build it yourself systems for each of the levels. Please include costs.

I realize this will change a bit post patch but I want to start considering it. The game sounds better than I expected and I am still on a P2 350 system runing 98se so yeah, I am way overdue on a major upgrade.

[nbarclay]

Do you care anything about multitasking? If you do, and if the cost isn't too big a problem, an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system might be a good option. I seriously doubt that a faster processor would offer enough performance advantage to be worth the extra cost to you, but the X2's dual-core processor should make multitasking a lot smoother than on cheaper processors. (My old dual Athlon MP 2000+ system seemed to multitask a lot smoother than my new Semperon 3000+ system does.) Note that my reason for suggesting an Athlon X2 over an Intel offering isn't blind AMD fandom; AMD's architecture gets significantly more performance advantage out of a second core than Intel's does.

You'll definitely want at least 512MB RAM, and 1GB or maybe even a bit more would be better. You'll have to wait a few days before I can offer any thoughts regarding video since I just ordered a new card a couple days ago and am still waiting to see how well it will work.

[Dr,ape]

Your P2 -- definitely no.

Wait for the patch to come out. Otherwise, my P4 3.4 is not doing well on a huge map in 1990s. I don't think it matters what machine you get pre-patched.

[Cambo67]

Civ4 seems to need plenty of memory bandwidth and graphics bandwidth, so the integrated memory controllers on the socket-939 Athlons would be best, along with twin PCI16x slots containing GeForce 7800GTX cards, to ensure plent of texture memory (each card has 512Mb). Oh, Athlon X2 CPU, as suggested by nbarclay. 2 Gb RAM (DDR400) would seem to be about right, though more wouldn't hurt. Of course, Windoze XP can only address 4Gb RAM, so it's not worth going over that unless you're getting the 64-bit version, which will probably have issue running Civ4, anyway!

Probably worth looking at the Alienware website for a more detailed spec, and an idea of price. It wouldn't be cheap ;-)



Cambo

[Dr,ape]

the term "bandwidth" has a different meaning.
that's a misuse.

[Cambo67]

I used the term to refer to the movement of texture data into video RAM. There seems to be quite a bit of that needed for Civ4 - loads of 3d models. I was not refering to rendering performance, just data handling.



Cambo

[Dr,ape]

bandwidth does not mean GPU rendering performance or CPU processing power. It means the carrier potential of a bus at a specific range of frequences (band). The width of the chosen band, along with the existing noise on the line, limits the capacity of signal being transmitted on the given bus (or transmission line). It has to do with capacity, and nothing to do with performance. It has to do with performance only in terms of communication media.

Of course it's no big deal here, and way off topic... just FYI...

You meant "utilization", not bandwidth.

[Cambo67]

Heehee. No probs. What you said is what I meant - just didn't word it right.

It seems that Civ4 is using system memory for textures for many people (AGP Aperture), so AGP/PCIe bandwidth will have an impact.

OT: Made me just think back to ye olde CGA and EGA cards, on 8MHz 8-bit ISA slots ;-)



Cambo

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dr,ape
bandwidth does not mean GPU rendering performance or CPU processing power. It means the carrier potential of a bus at a specific range of frequences (band). The width of the chosen band, along with the existing noise on the line, limits the capacity of signal being transmitted on the given bus (or transmission line). It has to do with capacity, and nothing to do with performance. It has to do with performance only in terms of communication media.

Only? The bandwidth of communications between the various components of a computer is an extremely important factor in a computer's performance. The reason AGP slots were invented was to provide a higher bandwidth for communications between the main memory and the video card. Higher bandwidth between the computer's main memory and the processor is why we've moved from the 66MHz SDRAM of a few years ago to today's dual-channel Double Data Rate 400MHz memory. Without those bandwidth improvements, we couldn't get anywhere near as much performance as we do out of modern processors and graphics cards because bottlenecks communicating between the computer's components would prevent the processors and graphics cards from getting data anywhere near quickly enough to operate somewhere reasonably close to peak efficiency.

[Dracon II]

How well would Civ IV run on a P4 3.2GHz, ATI Radeon x600 (256mb), and 1gb ram?

[Dr,ape]

Originally posted by nbarclay


Only? The bandwidth of communications between the various components of a computer is an extremely important factor in a computer's performance. The reason AGP slots were invented was to provide a higher bandwidth for communications between the main memory and the video card. Higher bandwidth between the computer's main memory and the processor is why we've moved from the 66MHz SDRAM of a few years ago to today's dual-channel Double Data Rate 400MHz memory. Without those bandwidth improvements, we couldn't get anywhere near as much performance as we do out of modern processors and graphics cards because bottlenecks communicating between the computer's components would prevent the processors and graphics cards from getting data anywhere near quickly enough to operate somewhere reasonably close to peak efficiency.

What you are refering to is not "bandwidth".
A "band" is a segment of the EM spectrum.
What you are refering to is called bus width and clock rate improvement. Higher data rate does not automatically mean higher "bandwidth".

Example: Does a 28.8kbps analog modem have a higher bandwidth than a 14.4kbps modem? No. Both modems use exactly the same band (and width) on the telephone line (150~4KHz). The 28.8 can achieve a higher data rate because of higher baud rate. Both use the same voice band on the same type of line. A DSL modem, on the other hand, has a higher "bandwidth" -- they generally use the 8KHz~1.5MHz (last checked). The "width" is the range of frequencies.

In the bus data rate we were talking about can be achieved in 2 ways: either by increasing the clock cycle per second (Hz) rate, and/or by increasing the amount to be transfered per cycle. Many different technologies have been used to achieve either or both objectives, but these buses are generally using the same "band" on the copper wires. Remember, in computer buses, we are talking about purely digital transmissions. All we are doing is transmitting high and low voltages across the buses. It's almost irrelevant to talk about band. The xMHz indicates how many times can a device change from low to high (or vice versa) per second on the line; "32bit/64bit" is how many such lines exist (the bus width, not bandwidth).

In summary, the measurement between the processor and the memory (and the AGP or whatever) is called the data rate. "Bandwidth" is something completely unrelated in such context.

[rev9of8]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Do you care anything about multitasking? If you do, and if the cost isn't too big a problem, an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system might be a good option. I seriously doubt that a faster processor would offer enough performance advantage to be worth the extra cost to you, but the X2's dual-core processor should make multitasking a lot smoother than on cheaper processors. (My old dual Athlon MP 2000+ system seemed to multitask a lot smoother than my new Semperon 3000+ system does.) Note that my reason for suggesting an Athlon X2 over an Intel offering isn't blind AMD fandom; AMD's architecture gets significantly more performance advantage out of a second core than Intel's does.

Nowt wrong with a bit of fanboyism when it's correct. Anandtech.com demonstatred quite conclusively here that the X2 3800 is a better part than it's price-point competitor from Intel, the D 830.

Unless you're buying a laptop, there is no good reason to go the Intel route at the moment (and for the immediate future as well).

[Capt Dizle]

slack jawed...hard to wrap my mind around the idea that I might actually decide to buy a dual processor on the basis of being better able to play a strategy game?

no, surely not...someone please tell me i am getting the wrong impression

insanity

[Dis]

Originally posted by Dracon II
How well would Civ IV run on a P4 3.2GHz, ATI Radeon x600 (256mb), and 1gb ram?

great!. That's better than my sytem.

Here's my rig:

Athalon 2600+ processor. 512 Megs of RAM. Radeon 9600 XT video Card. Audigy 2 ZS soundcrd.

I can run large terran worlds, but they are kind of slow. And load games take a while.

I run standard sized maps great.

[Dr,ape]

Just don't run huge maps.