Computing power and Civ III - Page 2

OneFootInTheGrave · November 25, 2001, 21:24

I guess buying 256 MB ram stick for 25£ should do the trick for you. Maybe another 25£ for a TNT2 32 meg. I guess the prices in Greece are similar.

NeoBlade · November 25, 2001, 22:11

Ok guys, I haven't got the game yet but I'm going to put u[ my system specs just to show you how bad off I am. (please note I AM poor and can't afford all that fancy stuff you guys have.)

233mhz AMD something or other processor
32mb RAM
Rage Pci video card

It was made in 98, has windows 98.

So, do you guys think I should buy the game?

Bereta_Eder · November 25, 2001, 22:29

I don't know Neoblade... You might have big speed problems..

BTW I just checked the prices of Ram and they are DIRT CHEAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tommorow I'm gonna get two 2 256MBs, I hope the game will run faster then.

The advisor screens are driving me nuts.

And the hard drive is working non stop. The game also hangs up completely from time to time when the hard drive workd like a maniac. (it does it every 20 minutes or so - it's like its writing cache or something

Someone said that if you hear the hard drive working a lot it means you need more RAM?

deafhawk · November 25, 2001, 22:41

Do not laugh but.. okay go ahead and laugh. For playing Civ III I'm using PII 266 with just 64 MB, windows 95, ATI rage pro 8 MB i think. I know it says minimum is PII 300 but I did have more than the minimum requirement for RAM and I believe that more than make up for the slow processor. I believe people tned to underestimate the speed advantage of extra RAM. I do not run anything but Civ III and I have completed a few games on tiny and small maps accomplished different kinds of victory spaceship, culture, dominion, conquer, united nations. Turn delays are not bad even in the modern age for that size of maps. No slow map scrolling. only 1-3 seconds delay for advisors and sometimes that screen just pops up almost immediately and other times it does take a bit more than usual, I do not know why.
For the heck, I tried a huge map with 16 civs to see how far in the game I can stand. Boy, I am not going to do that again , not with my pathetic computer! I lasted until the 1700s and gave up as turn delays were starting to get to the four minutes mark per turn even though I was holding on well and two or so turns from researching space flight, a dozen techs way ahead of the pack. I started a game using the standard map with 8 civilzations and I'm in late middle age with little waiting between turns.
It does make a big difference if you have to wait for a large numbers of units of some AI civ to finish parading forth and back by your borders. But it is not too bad for me as I do not tolerate that for long. If that civ are massing a large number of units at your border then the civ is up to no good inhmo. Time for a sneak attack.....

Bereta_Eder · November 25, 2001, 23:09

thing is with my PC (PII Celeron 433, 96MB, crap 4 MB video card) everything is smooooth (sort of) except for the damn advisor screens which take EONS to load (5-10 seconds).

Flandrien · November 26, 2001, 07:54

I installed it on an ancient P200 system, with 96 MB ram. (EDO ram can you imagine ! not even SDRAM)

Of course this processor is too slow. It cannot even play the intro movie right.
But, if I play on a small map, with animations swicthed off, it works.

opaque · November 26, 2001, 08:21

My PC:

Opens DxDiag (I can never remember my specs!)

P3 600MHz
128MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 256 31.5 MB
Win98 SE

Game runs fine except for on huge map with 16 civs (horrible wait between turns).

My laptop:

P3/4 800MHz
256MB RAM
Some system graphics card (actually very good)
Win2000 Pro

Runs slightly faster than PC but it annoys me because the processor fan makes an infernal whirring sound whenever I move a unit. Haven't tried huge map 16 civs but probably the same as the PC.

Dev · November 26, 2001, 08:46

Runs about the same on both my systems.

#1
K6-2 450Mhz
128Mb Edo
Matrox G200 (PCI~)
Couple of old 5400rpm 4/5GB Harddisks.
SBLive
W98SE

#2
P3-1Ghz
256Mb SD
Matrox G200 (AGP~)
Couple of IBM 7200rpm 30Gbs
SBLive
W98SE

Only slowdown is loading the advisor screens which takes 3 or 4 secs, I haven't played far enough into large/huge maps to notice any major difference between the two yet.

- Music and animations are off on both.

/dev

Lemming · November 26, 2001, 09:08

I started Civ3 with a PII 400 MHz, 256 MB RAM and ATI Video Card 4MB...it was slow like hell i can tell ya. on standard maps it took about 20, 30 secs for a turn (industrial age). moreover animated moving was very slow and consulting the advisors was also very laggy.

since yesterday i have a PIV 1.9 GHz, 512 MB RAM, same gfx...and now it runs like a charm even on huge maps (well, with that system i can expect that, i think)...