Advice needed: Buying a CivIV Computer

[Willem]

Originally posted by snoopy369
"RAM Card" is not terminology I've ever heard used. RAM module is the proper term

Yeah it is kind of a private name I've come up with I guess. It seems pretty self-explanatory to me though.

[Dale]

Originally posted by Targonis


While you don't necessarily need to upgrade in pairs, because of the dual-channel memory controller, you can suffer some pretty serious performance penalties if you don't upgrade in pairs(because dual-channel mode may be disabled).

As for the names for memory modules, a common term is "sticks of memory". I don't know if the term DIMM applies at this point, though you may see people use it.

Bull. There is zero requirement for needing pairs. That's just sale's hype. Literally!

You get BETTER performance for all-in-1 RAM that pairing now. EG: It's better to have a 4GB stick than 2 * 2GB's.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
(That said, Civ4 is far more GPU-intensive than almost any FPS... quantity matters as much or more than quality, to the GPU.)

I'm almost certain this is wrong.

[snoopy369]

You're almost certain of a lot of inaccurate things

Civ4 tends to overheat GPUs that handle most FPSs fine. That's not really debatable...

Crysis is another story, of course, but, well, that's Crysis ...

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Willem


Yeah it is kind of a private name I've come up with I guess. It seems pretty self-explanatory to me though.

You might be careful using it technically ... a lot of folks will confuse it with a Flash or flash-like memory card, which is the more common usage of the term. Obviously not in this context, of course ...

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Baldyr
Snoopy369: Exactly why/how is more GPU intense than a real 3D game? I like to think it's either because of poor design choices or because of bad programming. I'm no programmer but know a little about design. It all boils down to marketing I suppose...

As I said before, I really don't understand what 3D graphics adds to a turn based strategy game. is only superior to its predecessors as a strategy game. is, IMHO, a better product, although far from perfect. The interface is simply better suited for what the game does. 3D only distract from the game.

That said, I truly wish there were a way to turn everything 3D off and just enjoy the game for what it is. A turn based strategy game, that is. Wanting to play the game as is seems to be too much to ask for.

It is intensive because it is animating a LOT of little animations. An FPS has to handle what, ten enemies at a time, plus whatever atmospheric effects you have around? Civ has thousands of units in the game, plus tiles with animated improvements. Of course, at the start of the game it's not bad ... but when you're on a Huge map in AD 1900, with 18 civs and several hundred units each (and of course, you have the whole map revealed by this point), it is VERY intensive. Don't be fooled; Civ4 IS a real 3D game, powered by a real 3D engine.

You can turn the animations off, and several other things; it doesn't look as good, and sadly it doesn't save as much as one would like, but such is what it is.

Lots of people have said, as you did, they'd prefer 2d ... but unfortunately, 'lots' are probably a few hundred or a thousand people. The Civ4 developers are not going to give up MILLIONS of sales for a few thousand stalwarts... and most of those sales wouldn't have been there if it were 2D.

[Dale]

Or if they did go 2D they would not get the coverage from the Press, since to the press everything is about 3D!

[Unimatrix11]

Oh man... And i thought i was the only one occasionally having such bad luck... As for your alternatives - all 3 look okay to me... Just watch out, that they come with a legal OS.

I still wonder tho... So your comp played GTA fine, but not Civ ? Thats just wierd and would normally totally fall under the category which i use to call ´my personal luck´ - seems like not being that personal after all... I´d really like the hardware-freaks here to elaborate further on this.

[Unimatrix11]

OOps on my last post i missed an entire page...

Originally posted by snoopy369
You're almost certain of a lot of inaccurate things

Civ4 tends to overheat GPUs that handle most FPSs fine. That's not really debatable...

Crysis is another story, of course, but, well, that's Crysis ...

overheat ? overheat ! Maybe thats it ? If Civ tends to overheat GPUs more than FPSs, like, say, GTA:SA, that would fit in the pattern, uh ?

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by snoopy369

Lots of people have said, as you did, they'd prefer 2d ... but unfortunately, 'lots' are probably a few hundred or a thousand people. The Civ4 developers are not going to give up MILLIONS of sales for a few thousand stalwarts... and most of those sales wouldn't have been there if it were 2D.

And i am one of those. Now, of course i totally see your point. But for the next time, i´d like to have an option for a 2D interface. It´s really just the user interface, and a quite simple one at that (civ1 style for all i care), so the effort would be minimal (well, though thats the part i´d hate doing the most - drawing little icons... ugh) and each player could choose what he/she prefered individually even in MP (with 3D of course being the standard option).

[Baldyr]

Well, the PC is at the vendor right now and I'll just have to wait and see. Until then I really can't do anything or even buy another machine, since there's a chance the problem is easily (or not so easily) fixable. So I'll just use this day to catch up with everything I've been neglecting lately. (I was planning on doing just that, but the idea was to play a game and not do work I'm not qualified to do in the first place.) The local computer shack has the BTS disc so I don't have that distraction anyway.

TriMiro: I really haven't installed any other applications on the new PC since it would all be in vain if didn't work. (How did I know it in beforehand? I'm I psychic? .) From what I can tell the computer worked impeccably none-the-less, but what do I know? (:ci4: has only crashed once, and I'm pretty sure that was because of my own tinkering.)

(The second PC I owned was a P166, I believe, and I assembled it all by myself. I have not had a computer with fewer issues since... I haven't caught up with the hardware side of things since that time, as you might well see from my posts. I bought that machine in order to play by the way, and it cost me a pretty penny. Those were the days...)

snoopy369: So you're saying that renders (or whatever it's called) the entire world map at every point in time? You can't even view the entire map in globe view, for crying out loud! That's the sort of bad decision-making I believe has been going on at Firaxis. If they make a game that overheats (i.e. destroys) peoples hardware they should be held accountable for the costs of repair/replacement, right?

I realize that even most customers would opt for 3D instead of 2D (as long as it works, at least), but someone really should create a 2D or semi-2D interface for . Would it be possible to do without making mods and scenarios incompatible? (As I understand it the interface/3D engine is separated from the rest of the XML files and whatnot.)

Unimatrix11: There weren't any overheating issues going on as far as I could tell. (I was monitoring things while I was testing.)

The worst thing about the 3D interface is that, while one can mod just about everything in the game, you need to be a graphics designer to create custom units/buildings/whatnot. It was already an issue with and made me initially very uninterested in getting . (I ended up buying it to just play the game as is, but even that hasn't given me much else than grief for the past four years or so.)

[TriMiro]

I would like to see an option to mod the interface to civ iv and so that people can come up with a 2D interface. The 3D interface is good, but it is a lot like the animated battles in Civ III, you enjoy them the first 20 times and then you turn them off because they just slow down the game. 3D is fun only until it starts to slow the real game (my video card is not that up to date, so it upsets me). Besides, when civ iv came put I had to wait couple of years before I could buy a machine that would play it (and got a discount copy of civ rather than a full priced one).

I don't know how many people complain that they want a 2D interface, however, another question is, if there is a 2D interface, how many people would use that. My guess is that the second number is larger.

[Dale]

You have to be careful with custom-built PC's and CPU's. These types of PC's are notorious for having heavily overclocked CPU's so the store can rip you off by installing a CPU two levels under what they're advertising.

They know in 99% of cases they will get away with it, because for the majority of games the most intensive component is not the CPU (ie: graphics card, RAM paging, etc). So they slip this in knowing that the 1 in 100 PC's that get returned with problems and need the real CPU put in, they've made heaps of money on the ripped off ones.

So your Civ4 which is very CPU intensive, would cause overheating in a heavily overclocked CPU. This would also cause the "slow on calculating" observation you made on page 3.

[Baldyr]

That would indeed explain it, but I guess I'll never know. If they do fix the problem they'll just look like the heroes and not the villains. I'd like to think these guys aren't trying to rip me off, though. They've been very helpful this far and taken care of severeal other minor issues (like a fan that was vibrating a bit, a DVD-player that acted up and such). It could, of course, all be because they're selling me sub-standard equipment from the get-go...

[Blaupanzer]

Dale is correct. The symptoms described do sound like overclocking -- especially the "it works fine for the first 30 seconds, then slows w a y d o w n." Hopefully, the folks can help you, Good luck!