Been working overtime, and got some extra cash that I feel obligated to waste on something non-essential, so I'm thinking of treating myself to a computer upgrade - though there's really no urgent need to do so... other than the desire to play Civ4 on larger maps with shorter delays.
(I already upgraded my graphics card, which was the only component that was really in need of an upgrade in my system)
Accordingly, my "vanity" upgrade decision, should I go through with it, would mostly be dictated by the immediate needs of Civ4.
So I'm thinking of either buying more memory, or upgrading my processor - I found someone selling a used AMD Athlon 64 4000+ processor at about the same price that I could get an aditional gigabyte of memory (I currently have an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor, and 1GB of memory).
I'm conflicted - I don't really know which is the "bottleneck" slowing things down on large maps, the processor or the memory. If it's the memory, and I buy a faster processor, then the benefit will be rather small, and conversely, if civ4 isn't using all of the memory I've currently got, but really stretching my processor to it's limits, then adding more memory would do just about nothing to speed things along.
Any suggestions?
I've also been looking for some system monitor program that I could use to resolve this question - something that would log the CPU usage percentage and memory usage while I was playing Civ4, and display it clearly. The web seems to be full of monitor software that allows you to view your current CPU and memory status, but I want to view the usage of these resources over a time - I can't have a resource meter visible to me while I'm playing Civ4.
If anyone knows of a good application for this purpose, I'd much appreciate it if you pointed me to the right direction.
Please help me before I regain my sanity and decide to sensibly save my money.
(I already upgraded my graphics card, which was the only component that was really in need of an upgrade in my system)
Accordingly, my "vanity" upgrade decision, should I go through with it, would mostly be dictated by the immediate needs of Civ4.
So I'm thinking of either buying more memory, or upgrading my processor - I found someone selling a used AMD Athlon 64 4000+ processor at about the same price that I could get an aditional gigabyte of memory (I currently have an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor, and 1GB of memory).
I'm conflicted - I don't really know which is the "bottleneck" slowing things down on large maps, the processor or the memory. If it's the memory, and I buy a faster processor, then the benefit will be rather small, and conversely, if civ4 isn't using all of the memory I've currently got, but really stretching my processor to it's limits, then adding more memory would do just about nothing to speed things along.
Any suggestions?
I've also been looking for some system monitor program that I could use to resolve this question - something that would log the CPU usage percentage and memory usage while I was playing Civ4, and display it clearly. The web seems to be full of monitor software that allows you to view your current CPU and memory status, but I want to view the usage of these resources over a time - I can't have a resource meter visible to me while I'm playing Civ4.
If anyone knows of a good application for this purpose, I'd much appreciate it if you pointed me to the right direction.
Please help me before I regain my sanity and decide to sensibly save my money.
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