Computer requirements

[Ming]

Has anybody yet seen what we are going to need to play Civ V.

Every time a new civ game comes out, I end up buying a new computer. Last time, I had to not only buy a new machine, but add a far better video card than what comes with standard machines.

I hope they don't go over the deep end this time.

[wodan11]

I got off with just a new card for cIV, but I had just bought a new pc the Xmas before.

[Krill]

We going to start a pool on the min specification graphics cards that will run the game?

Put me down for an ATI 26xx and nVidia 9600 (both 512MB recommended)

[wodan11]

Well Firaxis got so much grief for underestimating last time that I expect they'll shoot high. It'll be a careful balance between killing sales by requiring too much.

[Ming]

It is a careful balance... because frankly, there are a lot of people who won't buy a 50 dollar game if they have to go and buy a new video card as well

[Quintillus]

We going to start a pool on the min specification graphics cards that will run the game?

Put me down for an ATI 26xx and nVidia 9600 (both 512MB recommended)

Maybe for recommended, but certainly not that high for minimum. My guess on the minimum/recommended's:

Minimum

2.0 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent
256 MB video card w/DirectX 9 support
1 GB RAM/2 GB Vista
DVD Drive
Windows XP SP2/Vista SP1/7

Recommended

2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 or equivalent
512 MB video card with DirectX 9 support
2 GB RAM
DVD Drive
Windows XP SP3/Vista SP2/7

Practically, what do those video card requirements mean? It'll probably play well enough on the latest Core i5 Intel integrated graphics, or roughly an 7600 GT/ATI X1600. I'll go with the 9600 GT corresponding roughly to recommended, with ATI equivalent at 4650 (if there were a 3700 I'd probably choose that).

I'm also betting against seeing dual-core in the recommended requirements - in other words, my guess is there won't be dual-core support. It'd be great if I were wrong, but I'm not too optimistic about that.

I'd also like to see 3 GB RAM, or even 4 GB, recommended, as that would indicate a 64-bit version being likely, huge maps being possible, and Memory Allocaton Failures likely being a thing of the past. But I'd bet against that, too - in all likelihood we'll see 32-bit only.

Finally, we might see Windows 2000 support or CD media. The former probably wouldn't be too difficult, but isn't supported much these days to avoid any potential support costs. For the latter, I'm hoping it's time to move on to a single DVD and abandon CDs, and I think that change probably will be made.

So there's my hat in the ring.

Last time the vintage 2003 PC I had could play Civ4, but it was terribly slow until the memory was upgraded from 512 to 1024 MB. Then it wasn't actually that bad. This time I hope to get decent performance without any upgrades. If not, there's always Civ3 and Civ4 to keep me entertained.

[SpencerH]

Has anybody yet seen what we are going to need to play Civ V.

Every time a new civ game comes out, I end up buying a new computer. Last time, I had to not only buy a new machine, but add a far better video card than what comes with standard machines.

I hope they don't go over the deep end this time.

yeah it must have been tough finally giving up on that PII with the 64Mb of RAM

[Dubhghlas]

I've never had to buy a new computer or card for Civ games, though I might have been lucky in terms of when I purchased my new computer relevant to Civ IV.

But I went through hell getting a computer able to play Europa Universalis III, so much so that I've never bothered to really master that game, after having been an EU2 addict for years. So I hope that ciV doesn't ramp up the requirements too much from cIV, or I may not bother playing.

[KaiserIsak]

I've never had to buy a new computer or card for Civ games, though I might have been lucky in terms of when I purchased my new computer relevant to Civ IV.

But I went through hell getting a computer able to play Europa Universalis III, so much so that I've never bothered to really master that game, after having been an EU2 addict for years. So I hope that ciV doesn't ramp up the requirements too much from cIV, or I may not bother playing.

Lol, this sounds exactly like me. I don't understand why they believe that we want all this fancy-pancy graphics. If I want a great looking game, I play Crysis, now, if I want a deep game, I play civilization, and in such a game gameplay and performance should ALWAYS be more important than water effects or leader animations. Hopefully they learned their lesson after Civ 4, which is a nice-looking game, does have very unfunctional graphics and is pretty slow late game with a lot of civs. How i miss the less-than-a-second loading times of civ2

[giblets]

I hope they go easy on the graphics because the one unit per tile rule might mean some scenarios will be much better with large maps.

[TriMiro]

When Civ IV came out, I couldn't play for 2 years because of the graphics (I was still in school back then and I had no money, but I would hate to see it happen again).

A question about the Directx 9 vs 10. Do we know which one would be required? It is important for me because I am using Linux and don't know if I will dual-boot just for civ (probably not).

[CanuckSoldier]

Well Firaxis got so much grief for underestimating last time that I expect they'll shoot high. It'll be a careful balance between killing sales by requiring too much.

I don't think they underestimated at all. But they were too vague in the description. Not all people are computer geeks and understand that full Dx9c support means a video card with shaders v2 support in hardware.

That was the problem most people had. I seen posts in forums from people getting mad that their Geforce2 MX card would not run Civ4 when clearly with a short google search they would know that that card was nevr going to run Civ4, a radeon 9600 pro and equilivant were the minimum for Civ4, and better to have a 9800 pro. In order to meet full dx9c support.

So I definitely hope that Firaxis is clear and detailed on the nin and max specs. And unfortunately that is going to have to mean going into depth in a description of what single/dual/multi core CPU are supported, and what video chip paired with what CPU is the minimum and what is the recommneded.

It's a good thing that Civ5 will take advantage of multicore CPU's and multithreading, but that will make communicating the specs for the game to the masses more difficult. But hopefully it will mean that if you have a multicore CPU that Civ5 will actually run on a slower CPU and video card than civ4 did.

And of course they have stated that Civ5 will support DX11, hopefully meaning that it will be able to take advantage of the improvements of DX11, but will run on DX9c with just less speed or less eyecandy.

Time will tell

CS

[CanuckSoldier]

And just to do some speculating based on the fact that Firaxis was looking for programmers with Unreal engine experince, this is the specs for Bioshock2 which uses the Unreal3 engine, and is also a 2K product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_2#Development

Official system requirements

Windows

Operating System Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7

11 GB space on HD

Internet connection required for activation

Minimum

AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ 2.4Ghz or better, Intel Pentium 4 530 3.0Ghz Processor or better

2 GB memory

NVIDIA 7800GT 256MB graphics card or better, ATI Radeon X1900 256MB graphics card or better

Recommended

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Dual Core 2.60Ghz, Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Dual Core 2.13Ghz

3 GB memory

NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB graphics card or better, ATI Radeon HD4830 512MB graphics card or better


Now this is a FPS, and so likely is heavier on the eyecandy than Civ5 will be, but it's better to get more hardware than have less.

CS

[wodan11]

Lol, this sounds exactly like me. I don't understand why they believe that we want all this fancy-pancy graphics. If I want a great looking game, I play Crysis, now, if I want a deep game, I play civilization, and in such a game gameplay and performance should ALWAYS be more important than water effects or leader animations. Hopefully they learned their lesson after Civ 4, which is a nice-looking game, does have very unfunctional graphics and is pretty slow late game with a lot of civs. How i miss the less-than-a-second loading times of civ2

The "water effects and leader animations" are not the reason CIV4 has high graphic requirements. It's the 3D polygon-based in game graphics, mostly for units, that cause the game to be "pretty slow late game with a lot of civs".