Can my computer run this game?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by loco43
If Im to buy a RAM, which one should I buy?

More is better. You need at least 512 MB total (so an extra 256), but if you can afford it I'd upgrade to 1 Gig.

And, how much would a Radeon 9800 cost?

The price keeps falling, the longer you wait the cheaper it gets I bought it for €150 a few months ago, I saw it for €110 today. Wait a few months more and it'll be €80ish I'm sure.

some ppl say that geforce is better than radeon, what should I do about it?

Some people say Mac is better than Windows, what can you do? YMMV, just depends on what games you run. I find www.tomshardware.com to be a fair guide for comparing card qualities, but by and large the differences aren't that huge IMO, you have to be pretty hardcore to care (or even notice, in many cases). It just depends on your bugdet but in the €80-€150 range a Radeon 9700/9800 PRO is probably the best you're gonna get (but then, I'm not really following the market that close as I just bought a new one )

[-Jrabbit]

I went to srtest.com and got this result --

Video Card
Recommended: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (Radeon 9800+ / GeForce 5600+)

You Have: Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family (Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Controller)

FAIL: Sorry, your video card does not meet this recommended requirement.

Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card Video RAM: Required - 64 MB , You have - 128.0 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - No

I love this site's functionality and apparent definitiveness --
but the result makes me sad.
Especially since this is a fairly new HP laptop. But I bought it for basic business apps, not specifically for gaming.

Guess I'll have to wait a bit before getting this game. (sigh)

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by Locutus
It ran. That's about it. Well, for the longest time there were serious graphics problems but those were fixed. It's really the absolute minimum card to run this game on, you don't want to go even lower (not like you can), but it looks so much better on a Radeon 9800 PRO Which is a pretty cheap card ATM, no reason not to upgrade to something like it unless you're seriously low on cash.

Thanks for the reply. I'm running with a GF4 mx420 right now. I graduated from school recently and don't have a job yet, so we'll just have to get by for now

[Japher]

I have an integrated video card, but I also have a free AGP and PCI, can I upgrade it?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Japher
I have an integrated video card, but I also have a free AGP and PCI, can I upgrade it?

If you have an AGP slot then certainly you can. I understand that PCI is much slower than AGP, so you don't really want to go that route. A new video card is very easy to install and your motherboard should just ignore the onboard video card. You'll also have the bonus of having more RAM available since the onboard video cards usually share the system RAM.

[Japher]

Thanks... I'm pretty ignorant of hardware, it's been years since I've had to do anything with it. Also, these integrated video cards are stupid.

I'm getting more RAM too, 512MB just ain't enough.

[Sabre2th]

You may need to disable your integrated video in your BIOS, but it shouldn't be difficult to find and is many times automatic, as Willem said.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Sabre2th
You may need to disable your integrated video in your BIOS, but it shouldn't be difficult to find and is many times automatic, as Willem said.

If necessary you can also disable it through Control Panel> System>Hardware>Device Manager. It probably won't be necessary though, most motherboards these days do it automatically.

[loco43]

A friend of mine got CIv 4 and I made him install it on my computer... Yeeeha~

Well, it ran....

great.... (of course every single option to its lowest degree possible)

but... when playing the game, OMG, it was just so awfully slow....Well, playable but very very very uncomfortable...

If I am to run it a bit more smoothly, do you think that upgrading RaM should do enough?

I mean, videocards are a bit expensive but I have some cash for RAM..

can 512 ram run this game smoothly enough? or should I save the best I can so that I could get a VideoCard + RAM altogether...

After experiencing its first look, I'm desperetely in need of a CIV4~

[Willem]

Originally posted by loco43
A friend of mine got CIv 4 and I made him install it on my computer... Yeeeha~

Well, it ran....

great.... (of course every single option to its lowest degree possible)

but... when playing the game, OMG, it was just so awfully slow....Well, playable but very very very uncomfortable...

If I am to run it a bit more smoothly, do you think that upgrading RaM should do enough?

I mean, videocards are a bit expensive but I have some cash for RAM..

can 512 ram run this game smoothly enough? or should I save the best I can so that I could get a VideoCard + RAM altogether...

After experiencing its first look, I'm desperetely in need of a CIV4~

More RAM always helps, but video cards aren't as expensive as you might think. They can be if you want to go top of the line, but you don't need to for this game. Middle of the raod should be good enough, and those types of cards are fairly cheap, like $50-100.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by loco43
A friend of mine got CIv 4 and I made him install it on my computer... Yeeeha~

Well, it ran....

great.... (of course every single option to its lowest degree possible)

but... when playing the game, OMG, it was just so awfully slow....Well, playable but very very very uncomfortable...

If I am to run it a bit more smoothly, do you think that upgrading RaM should do enough?

I mean, videocards are a bit expensive but I have some cash for RAM..

can 512 ram run this game smoothly enough? or should I save the best I can so that I could get a VideoCard + RAM altogether...

After experiencing its first look, I'm desperetely in need of a CIV4~

I have a configuration that is somehow similar to yours, maybe a bit better.

Pentium 4 1,6 GHz
512 MB RAM
GeForce 3 Ti200 with 128 MB RAM

As you can see, the processor is even slower, even though the graphic card is probably better. The game runs fine on my machine, just a tad slow (I should mention here that all graphic details are on HIGH). I think 512 MB RAM can make a huge difference on your configuration.

[snowstorm]

Upgraded RAM and Graphics Card, STILL no Luck

I had the same exact computer hardware as Loco43 precisely. The game only gets you into the main menu, plays the tutorial (with a few minor bugs), and starts to load your first selected game but then stops just as it finishes! The mouse moves around, but nothing else happens or can be done with it.

So....I went out and upgraded my RAM another 512 to a total of 768 RAM, and replaced my GeForce 440MX, APG 8X with a Radeon ATI 9550 for AGP.
What happened? Now the game will not even load initially, it will get as far as INIT EGINE, then removes the game screen to just desktop and stops. Nothing.
I tried the "fix" for Radeon advertised on the Civfanatics site, but that didn't work either. What should I do now?

[calarrick]

...it ran fine on this sytem... I expected it would run but that I this would be at the lower end of the spectrum...

Athlon XP 1700+ (running at default/standard mhz)
512 MB Ram
Radeon 8500

I thought the graphics card and processor might both be borderline...

...it defaulted to "high" for all the graphics settings and seemed ok... I turned them down to "medium" because I didn't care that much and wanted to see if it ran faster - it is actually hard to discern the difference either in appearance or speed/performance...

I figured my RAM would be ok, but ordered up another 512 anyway since a second stick of DDR333 has gotten so cheap - that will likely come at the begining of the week and I'll see if it makes things work even better. (I could up the processor to a 2500 or so on my MB, but that seems unlikely to be enough diff. to be worthwhile if those processors are even still on the market -- and I'd rather just get a second PC and keep this one as is than deal with a MB change that would require an OS reinstall etc.).

Videocard.... maybe....

I've always been loath to spend any real money on them because I don't much play what I've always thought of as the "graphics intensive" kind of games.

[Apocalypse]

I have a crap laptop.

They (well, Asher did) said it couldn't run World of Warcraft, but it did.

So I just bought the game anyway.

[Japher]

Went to Best Buy today took my computer for them to do the upgrades to the VC.,.. they are complete morons.

I have IE disabled, or close to it, and wifey got some trojan on it that wants you to buy their registry cleaner so when you boot it up it says you have a bazillion viruses and such. I hadn't ran stinger or the like in ages. So, they tell me that it would cost $160 for them to get rid of all the viruses on my computer, viruses that don't exist mind you. Also, they say since I have an integrated VC that it would take some time to figure out had to install a new one, despite the open AGP port. They couldn't even get their mouse to work on my computer.

I told them to stuff it.

I now have a Geforce 6200 with 256MB. Haven't done anything with it though, I've been too busy.

Which is why I wanted them to do it.

That fewl was an idiot. Perhapse it was because he was old.