Advice needed: Buying a CivIV Computer

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Willem


You're worrying too much. You have more than enough processing power that you don't need to bother shutting things off in order to play the game. That's one of the advantages of a dual core, while the game plays on one, the other processes use the other. And no, Civ does not use dual-cores it's been optimized only for one.

I disagree - go ahead and shut things down. You probably don't need to, but it doesn't hurt, and can help Not only does windows not perfectly utilize the dual core architecture, but also you have disk access and memory access that are limited; particularly with virus-scanning software, that can significantly slow you down even if you're nowhere near maximum capacity, because of the disk access and such.

[TriMiro]

2. Windows will use page files when it doesn't need to - it's a feature that (theoretically) speeds up windows. Whether it does or not, couldn't tell you, but if you turn off the page file entirely you get a slower response time, even if you're well under your current available memory allocated.

Another example of how inefficient windows is. If there is free RAM, no page file should be used under any circumstances. One of the cool features of Linux is that it will try to use as much RAM as possible (without going into page/swap) even if your applications do not use it. Linux cashes the hard drive and all the HD operations take much less time.

[Willem]

Originally posted by snoopy369


I disagree - go ahead and shut things down. You probably don't need to, but it doesn't hurt, and can help Not only does windows not perfectly utilize the dual core architecture, but also you have disk access and memory access that are limited; particularly with virus-scanning software, that can significantly slow you down even if you're nowhere near maximum capacity, because of the disk access and such.

Well considering I have the exact same processor and the game runs just fine for me without bothering to turn anything off, I'd say he's being a little too concerned. This is playing on slightly larger than Huge maps with 12 civs. My end game turns take no more than 30 seconds to 1 minute to go through, unless I'm at war and I have to wait for all the enemy moves to finish up.

Ooops, my bad. I was thinking about the processor he was considering on getting. Still, the 5600 is not that much slower than the 6000.

[Baldyr]

Well, this dual-core processing makes no sense to me. I've attached two sets of stats from Taskmanager below. In the first one both CPUs are assigned to while only one in the second. It would not make any difference then since I only get 50% out of available computing resources, right? Why is the first set showing both processors working while it really is one of them doing the real work?

[Baldyr]

Yeah, it's not that I'm worrying ( is running without any problems on the other computer, with HEAVY applications running in the background), but I'm rather being pro-active. If I run into a problem someone will hit me with: "You should try shutting some services off", or: "You could always disable those unused ports". If I run into a problem at least I know what isn't causing it.

With that said crashed on me today, right after installing avast anti-virus. I don't know what caused it, but might be possible that anti-virus was either trying to update automatically (and couldn't, since there isn't a network adapter in that hardware profile), or it was scanning files used by . So I've disabled the updating and prevented anti-virus from scanning my BTS folder. I hope it helps. I haven't been able to prevent avast from loading altogether yet. (I tried to move the entry from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the registry but that wasn't gonna happen. Maybe I should try that in fail-safe mode?)

(edit: I just found the avast services and disabled them on my account. Anti-virus still loads on boot but isn't activated and thus shouldn't try to update or scan anything.)

Furthermore, by stripping down XP of unnecessary services and applications I'm also hoping to get the reboot time down as much as possible. Since I fear I'm gonna do a lot of rebooting while I play, either because the waiting time between turns is beginning try my patience, or because of crashes.

Willem: You actually got it right. I ordered and paid for 5600 but got 6000. I never questioned why it was so. Also, I'm gonna mostly play the RFC mod so I suspect there will be some waiting involved as I get into the modern age. (Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have an active Internet connection when playing... Or I could just use the laptop in-between turns.)

[Willem]

Originally posted by Baldyr
With that said crashed on me today, right after installing avast anti-virus.

I've been reading enough about Avast to think that it's not a very good anti-virus program. I've read reports of false positives and other problems. You shjould try AVG instead, if you're looking for some freeware. I use Norton myself and it never gives me any problems, but it's not free. And why are you running anti-virus on a machine that's not connected to the internet or a network?

[TriMiro]

In my experience Av programs should be the first thing installed after windows (or maybe wait for the video driver since 640x480 just sucks as a resolution). If programs are installed before one puts in the AV, there might be problems.

As for the multiple cores, windows would alternate cores, so each core would take a turn working on Civ, not just one core doing everything while the other one stays idle. Yet in total only 50% of the computing power would be in use at any given time.

[Baldyr]

Williem: I only run on a hardware profile that has no active network adapter. I wish I could prevent avast from loading at all, but haven't found a way to do that yet.

I'm pretty happy with avast although we run AVG on the other machine - my fiancée is equally happy with that, so I think she actually upgraded or paid for a license or something... I might also switch if I run into any problems. This far avast has proven to be hassle-free and not all that invasive, although all anti-virus seem to be, more or less.

TriMiro: Yeah, so your telling me now? Someone in here told me to hold the anti-virus, so I did. (It made sense at that juncture.) About the dual-core working order, it kinda makes sense, but isn't it still a waste of resources not to have both CPUs working at, say, 75%? But doesn't support dual-core, right? (Still, someone urged me to go dual-core, go figure. A pre-owned single core PC would have saved me a pretty penny, actually.)

To get the CPUs working over 50% would be over-clocking, or am I totally lost here? And why exactly was over-clocking a bad thing, might I ask?

[sowings]

Originally posted by Baldyr
About the dual-core working order, it kinda makes sense, but isn't it still a waste of resources not to have both CPUs working at, say, 75%?

That depends upon the scheduler. A process (program) says "Hey, I'm ready to do some computation, can I have a turn, please?" and the operating system (OS) says either "not yet, there's other requests" or "sure, it's your turn to run". The program runs a bit, does some computation, and either says "ok, that's it, I'm done" or is told to shove off by the OS. In any case, a CPU is either working or its not. If there's nothing to do, you'll see 0% utilization, because nothing is running "on CPU".

(Oversimplified just for illustrative purposes. I don't really know enough about the Windows scheduler to understand how it allocates time slices to waiting programs, but the basic idea is there.)

Originally posted by Baldyr
To get the CPUs working over 50% would be over-clocking, or am I totally lost here? And why exactly was over-clocking a bad thing, might I ask?

Overclocking and 50% CPU are completely different things. The physical CPU chip has to "CPU" cores on it. The acronym stands for central processing unit, and for decades, the CPU was a monolithic beast. The physical packaging and the notion of a "CPU" were identical. Now, that gets a bit fuzzy because of the whole dual core thing. Or quad, or eight-way, etc. Now there are two "brains" for lack of a better term on the same physical chip. The OS sees those as two separate CPUs, despite the fact that it's one chip. The 50% measurement just means that you're making use of half of your overall CPU resources, which in this case means one processor working all the time, one processor idle. In a single core system, this would mean one CPU working half the time, etc. I once ran a system that had three CPUs, so 50% would have been an interesting measurement!

Overclocking is a different beast. A processor has a notion of a "tick" or "cycle", sometimes called the clock frequency. Cycles are related to the work done by the machine, like "read a bit of information from memory", "compare two numbers", etc. The "speed" of a CPU is the number of cycles it performs a second. Hence, "3.0 gigahertz". Some users, in order to get the most of the chip, try to get more hertz (say, running that 3.0 as 3.2) out of the chip. Pushing it beyond the redline, so to speak. The usual consequence of this is extra heat, which if not dealt with (fans, CPU coolers, etc) can cause damage to the chip.

CPUs and other electronic components tend not to work as well when you let the magic smoke out of them.

[TriMiro]

According to independent tests, dual core CPU is better for pretty much any application, regardless if it takes full advantage of all cores simultaneously. Dual core is just better and is better not only for games, but also for other everyday tasks. I also don't think they make single core CPUs anymore.

As for the over -clocking, I will never do it and I don't recommend anyone to do that. Every computer component works on a frequency, i.e. actions per second. How many things the CPU or the GPU or the RAM can perform per second. Computer components always make mistakes, which are then automatically corrected (for every byte of memory you have you actually have some extra bits to check for errors). The faster the component works the more likely it is to make a mistake. All components have a safety margin, i.e. all of them can on theory work a little faster, but would make more mistakes (and then waste some cycles to fix the mistakes). People go into the safety margin and force the CPU or GPU or RAM to work faster, however, there are side effects. First, there is more heath, thus for over-clocking one needs better fans. Second, mistakes in general happen more often to the point where system can just crash (because of hardware not software). If you take a 3.0Ghz CPU and force it to work at 3.3Ghz, there is no way on Earth that you will see 10% improvement in performance. With proper setting and proper cooling, you may get reasonably stable system, but even if everything is done perfectly the life-expectancy of the chip would decrease.

The hotter the computer component, the more mistakes it makes, and thus performance suffers. Because of that, an over-clocked CPU could rum much slower than a regular one.

[Blaupanzer]

Trimiro, I don't think I'd hire you to work with overclocked equipment. Not that I favor overclocking, but your explanation is out of whack. Overheating is a problem because it affects the contacts between the chip and the motherboard, causing intermittent interrupts. Overclocking, even with proper cooling, does not always deliver proportionly increased speed because the other components may not interact with the cpu to take advantage of the theoretically increased speed.

As to the dual processor issues, the chief advantage of dual CPUs is that processes can run in the background on one CPU while the other handles the primary program. For example, Vista (not yet a good replacement for XP) will run on one CPU while Civ will run on the other. Once a program establishes it addresses on the various devices, it tends not to jump between CPUs all that much. This setup only causes problems if a particular program creates huge, sudden demands. Of course, Vista does just that causing rapidly slowing operations. Microsoft would claim that's a feature, but it's bad resource allocation/utilization.

Yes, TriMiro, they do still make single core computers. Whom they sell them to is not clear, but they are still out there.

[TheStinger]

I haven't posted on-topic for ages

Any way

I have just got a new laptop

Turion X 64 TL 60
4Gb Ram
Vista
Nvidia 9300 GM

I assume it will play civ 4 ok, but I notice on the windows experinace stuff (i'm new to vista so I'm at the moment impressed with this sort of thing) that I have a score of only 3.1

Will I be able to play the game well

[snoopy369]

You should be able to play it well enough, yes. The specifications of your 9300GM (what ram it has) would determine how well.

[Blaupanzer]

TheStinger, welcome to this side of Apolyton. Been a while since we've seen the "International crime fighting playboy" over here.