Upgrading for better Civ4 performance?

[MightyTiny]

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.

[zeace]

Windows comes with a program called perfmon that can log these things. From the start menu select run, then type perfmon. The %processor utilization is one of the default counters. Use the '+' button to add some memory counters.

I would say that in general your CPU is worse than your memory.

My guess would be that if you want to play huge maps, the memory will help more but it will still be a little painfully slow at the end. The new CPU will probably not run huge maps very well but will definitely improve your large map experience.

[MightyTiny]

Thanks zeace - using the perfmon pretty much confirms what you say - while additional memory probably wouldn't go to waste, my processor was running at or very near to 100% almost all the time playing Civ4 on a large map.

So it's a processor update then... and regarding that, my appetite just grows looking at upgrade possibilities. I'll probably end up spending way more than I intended, and having to scrape by next month!

[MightyTiny]

Now I'm getting greedy!

I've been staying up way too long tonight, looking at the processors out there and am now seriously considering a bit more... pricy update. After all, a small update just means that I'll have to update again sooner rather than later, right?

So... I thought that maybe a dual core processor would be the way to lighten my wallet - looking at Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or Athlon 64 X2 4600+ makes me drool! That would be an update that would keep the upgrade-bug out of my system for several years, methinks, and it might actually be useful too, because I do quite a bit of multitasking that would benefit from a dual core.

I'm interested in hearing if any Civ4 players have experience with such beasts. I wonder how much Civ4 benefits from essentially having an extra processor. I've also read a few worrying comments that some games may experience problems on dual core systems, while some comment that it's merely a matter of being fully patched up and having latest updates. Civ4 doesn't have any such problems does it?

Enough late-night...er... early morning... browsing, now I've got to catch some

[Underseer]

I upgraded to a 4200+ and was surprised at the results.

Even though the upgrade was fairly slight in terms of clock speed, the extra core helped more than I expected considering that Civ4 is a single-threaded app. I guess all the other processes end up on the other core, leaving Civ4 with a core all by itself.

PS -- Even with the CPU upgrade, the CPU gets a bit sluggish near the end of games on huge maps. This is with all graphics options maxed except antialiasing (turned off) at 1280x1024, and with 5.1 sound enabled. If you can swing more, you will benefit from more.

[MightyTiny]

That's good to hear! So if I buy the 4600+ then maybe it doesn't get sluggish even on huge maps towards the end...

[-SafaN-]

hmm i still play on a old 2000+ with a gforce 6800 and only 1gb ram, and don't feel the need yet to upgrade
i can even play M2:tw and thats a fairly recent game

[Provost Harrison]

I too would like to upgrade my computer at some point, hell, even get a new computer and pass my current one down to my nephew who I think is at an age where he should be starting to use a PC now. But unfortunately it is a low priority, but I may reinvestigate this come the summer.

[gorland]

Duh..I'm only running an AMD 2800+(2ghz)....and a Gforce 6200.....no way im upgrading for faster scrolling except my 768mb of ram I may go to 1.5 gb and see what that does...i'm old and poor so a new CPU is out...Maybe ram this month and a Gforce7600GT. in a month or so..hopefully that will help a little anyway.

Tom