Cheap computer that will handle Civ4?

[foudres]

Most game do not benefits from multi core processor and that include CIV4.

There is not benefit at all going dual core right now.


There is oblivion that use dual core and you can hope 5-10% increase.

Quake4 also with at much as 60-100% increase.

Upcoming games like crysis or UT2007 will use multiple core processor..

Other than nearly no game benefits from dual core processors.

It just that even using one core, your new processor is much faster than your old one.

[Kuciwalker]

Civ4 isn't multithreaded AFAIK. In fact, the only game I've heard of that will utilize hyperthreading/dual-core is GalCiv (or was it GalCiv 2?).

[bantams]

go for a amd athlon 64x2 3700 and 2gig ram and say ATI radeon 9600 prom 256mb all should be built either as kit form for less than £300 UK Pounds I have similar spec machine and IT runs CIV4 with no problems

[Overcast32]

Here's a few - I actually just ordered the 512MB card - that should perk up Civ

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Category=38&N=2010380048+50001561+1069609639&Submit=ENE&Manufactory=1561&SubCategory=48

A Co-Worker said he got that card for his wife's PC and they've been happy with it.

If you or a friend can deal with putting the hardware together, I'd highly recommend newegg.com

I put together an entire system for my son for Christmas, for under 500 bucks.

3.2 Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM, 512MB Video, 80GB hard Disk (ya, cut a corner there, storage is cheap now, I'll upgrade soon).

It certainly beat the Dell I was looking at, not in cost, but in performance... Actually, the cost was about the same, but with the one I'm putting together, I'll need a monitor and windows license. But hey, he's not using that old junky laptop now... So I have one of the two accounted for, heh

[Thomas Hobbes]

Originally posted by foudres


Before changing it's computer one of my mate had a laptop with a 2.4 Ghz P4, Radeon 9000 mobility, and 512 MB of RAM.
He after upgraded to 1.25GB of RAM.

(...)

Second observation :

My mate could not really play CIV4 with it's laptop because of the lack of memory. After a while the game begin to strugle no matter what you do and begin to need like 10-20s to react to human order (like go into a city screen or leave it). When he upgraded he was able to play the game just fine.

CIV4 does require more than 512MB to play without problem. Go for 1GB.

My Civ runs on a 2.40GHz P4, Radeon 9000 Mobility 64 MB (with Omega Drivers), 512 MB RAM Laptop just fine (Blue Marble, low textures).

[foudres]

Why don't you add the CPU model along to the frequency ?

with 3.2 Ghz i supose it's a P4 or P4D


But hey beetween a P4 and a core2 duo at the same frequency there is as much as 80% performance increase... (not counting the dual core thing) Frequency is not the only criteria today.

Also if you go for X1600Pro... having 256 MB or 512 MB will change nothing to performance. Anyways it is more than enough for CIV4

[foudres]

Originally posted by Thomas Hobbes


My Civ runs on a 2.40GHz P4, Radeon 9000 Mobility 64 MB (with Omega Drivers), 512 MB RAM Laptop just fine (Blue Marble, low textures).

Glad for you


Many things can influence performance a lot :

- size of the map
- number of AI
- amount of background tasks in you OS.
- amount of time since the game launched
- multiplayer or not
- ...


On normal map, with default number of oponent, after one hour/two hour of game the game was insanely slow. You could try to save, restart the computer it doesn't help.

And we noticed by doing Alt Tab and showing the task panel that the computer was using more than 512 MB of ram in thoses situations.


Likely that you have less memory used by some driver or play only offline.

But if 2GB of memory is not worth it for CIV4, 1GB sure help.