Best performance possible for maxed out Civ 4 games?

[joncnunn]

Hum, any new machine will have Vista so you'll want a duel-core processor; one of Civ IV to use exclusively the other for Vista.

The graphics needs would be well met by a 17 inch widescreen monitor; say the ones coming on some Toshiba's. Their video cards are certinately up to the graphics text.

Then next would be memory, I'd pretty sure you'd want at least 3 GB if you were buying it for Civ IV huge games, maybe 4 GB.

On harddisk space, that mostly determines how many saved game files you can hold, not performance in the game. So the question is are you intending to change autosave max turns to 999 and save every turn + making a manual save at the end of every turn and keeping all those saves when you start a new game?

[joncnunn]

I kept my previous notebook four years before geting a replacement a month ago. Toshiba L355D-S7815. It runs Civ 4 extermely well, but I haven't tried maps larger than normal on it yet. (And it cost me 20% less than the previous machine)

The prior machine had periodic video crashes realted to no dedicated VRAM (it used the built in RAM) and lack of hardware graphics support (it used software emulation). That machine is still excelent for Civ III. (The desktop machine I used prior to that ran Civ II & SMAC really well, but was slow on Civ III starting around Industrial era)

I'm thinking based on what I read that the new Colonization is probably going to have the same requirements as Civ IV.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Hum, any new machine will have Vista so you'll want a duel-core processor; one of Civ IV to use exclusively the other for Vista.

The graphics needs would be well met by a 17 inch widescreen monitor; say the ones coming on some Toshiba's. Their video cards are certinately up to the graphics text.

Then next would be memory, I'd pretty sure you'd want at least 3 GB if you were buying it for Civ IV huge games, maybe 4 GB.

On harddisk space, that mostly determines how many saved game files you can hold, not performance in the game. So the question is are you intending to change autosave max turns to 999 and save every turn + making a manual save at the end of every turn and keeping all those saves when you start a new game?

None of that really makes sense (other than the RAM part which is pretty basic). He's probably not getting a laptop, so the Toshiba comment is meaningless... Toshiba doesn't make monitors, or at least not good ones.
The HDD space also makes no sense... I keep all 1 year autosaves, and that takes substantially under 1GB for a normal speed game. Heck, I have a 150GB drive most of which is not available for Civ, and have four PTBS games going each of which autosaves once a turn plus once every player's login for the most recent login, one of which is in the modern era, and I'm not hitting any sort of limit... Also, HDD selection (not space per se, but the actual HDD) is quite important for performance, as having a dedicated system disk that is as fast as possible, and relatively unfragmented, for your virtual memory is very important.
Finally, you're incorrect about how a dual core processor works, and at this point it's basically impossible to get a single core processor anyway in the mainstream CPU market, so irrelevant. The question would be whether a quad-core would benefit or not, and while it probably wouldn't help with Civ any, it will certainly in the long run help, so might as well get it if price is no object.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by snoopy369

3 GB/S is normal SATA2 speed (not 300MB/s, which is probably a misread/mistype), that should be normal (but of course it isn't the real transfer speed, as you don't read data off that).

Please double-check this info, snoopy, since i am pretty sure, that 300MByte/s is the transfer rate max of the SATAII interface. Or maybe 3 Gbits/s. Since it is a theoretical maximum, and G is often misused as 1,000,000,000x (instead of 2^30 = 1,073,741,824x, a 4.7 ´GByte´ DVD holds just ca. 4.35 GByte), the difference would be marginal. But i really dont think it´s 3 Gbytes/s.

[Sovereign]

What about solid state hard drives? Would they be better for overall performance with the computer, plus improve the bottlenecks for computer speed that you mentioned earlier, Snoopy?

[jbp26]

Originally posted by Willem


You're dooming yourself to failure then. Moore's law still holds true so basically all computer components become obsolete after 2 years tops anyway. The only saving grace in getting a system that's over the top is that software developers design for a more average system and don't demand the best. At most though that machine you're hoping to make last for ten years will probably only be relevant for maybe only five.

i was going to say the same thing. my brand new computer 10 years ago had a 400mHz processor.

[Sovereign]

Lets take further discussion of this computer / Civ 4 stuff over to the new thread I created here...

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=5397644&t=7539#post5397644

[Willem]

Originally posted by joncnunn
The graphics needs would be well met by a 17 inch widescreen monitor; say the ones coming on some Toshiba's.

I believe he's building a desktop system, not a laptop. 17" on a desktop is puny, especially for a widescreen. In fact I don't even think you can get one that's under 22". I have a 24" myself and just couldn't imagine trying to play anything on a measly 17".