Looking to Improve Civilization

[DarthDooku]

I tried turning up the graphics in Civilization and my computer just couldnt handle it and the game was too laggy to play on just medium settings. Im thinking about getting a video card and was looking for some advice.

My computer specs are:
Dell Studio Slim 540s
Intel Quad Core 2.33 Ghz
4Gb RAM
running 64 bit Windows Vista

My Graphics Card:
ATI Radeon HD 3400
2Gb
PCI Express 2.0x16

Reccomended Specs for Civilization are:
1.8Ghz Quad
4Gb RAM
512Mb Graphics Card

So my specs are pretty much right on for reccomended settings, but like I said just turning the graphics up to medium settings completely lagged the game. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[PP Mguire]

Your video card is for sure the problem.
The problem with that, is the fact that your PSU can't handle a better GPU, and your case makes it almost impossible to get anything decent for a reasonable sum of money.

 

[Veraster]

Oh man I had this problem a few years ago. I bought a slim, cheap desktop. When it came time to upgrade from my crappy ATI Radeon 3450 card, I had to buy a new psu and case along with the $200 video card.
I moved everything into the new case except the old video card and the old psu. That was a nightmare since I had no idea what I was doing at the time.
Lesson learned. Slim desktops are BAD

 

[DarthDooku]

Yeah, I used to play on a laptop and was upset about the difficulty in upgrading it, now I have the slim desktop and here we are again. Never again will I buy the slim.

 

[PP Mguire]

You can get some ok hardware depending on your budget.

You can get this.
Newegg.com - Athena Power AP-TFX40 400W TFX12V SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

And this.

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100357LP Radeon HD 7750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Video Card

 

[DarthDooku]

Im kinda confused about how the whole thing works. Ive read that you can buy a great video card but if your computer cant handle it than it could wind up not improving the graphics at all. What do you have to look for?

 

[Matt77]

It's basically how the GFX card matches up with the rest of the PC, esp. CPU.

 

[PP Mguire]

Im kinda confused about how the whole thing works. Ive read that you can buy a great video card but if your computer cant handle it than it could wind up not improving the graphics at all. What do you have to look for?

Well in all honesty, what I linked is the absolute BEST you can get for your computer due to PSU and case restrictions. That being said take a look at my thread here to further explain CPU and RAM demands of todays games. I hope it helps you understand a bit.

http://www.techist.com/forums/f76/your-cpu-modern-games-guide-those-building-261626/

Depending on what your Intel quad is I can guarantee it wont hold back the 7750. The 7750 will still be the bottleneck in games.

 

[DarthDooku]

That was a really helpful article. I think I learned a lot. I have a couple questions though. You said most games are 32 bit ports and that extra RAM isnt necassary. Does this go for Civilization. Will my stock 4gb of RAM be enough. And what about the type of RAM like the DDR or SSD or whatever. Does that make a difference. Is the RAM like the GPU where it is limited based on what CPU you have.

And as for the monitor resolution. Is there a way I can look up what my monitors default resolution is. I noticed that when I turned the resolution up and still had all the graph settings on low, my game slowed down considerably.

 

[PP Mguire]

1st question, no game uses more than 3GB of RAM total. If you have a pagefile (Windows caches files to HDD with intense RAM usage) then everything is fine with 4GB of RAM.
2nd question, see first answer. Yes lol.
3rd question, it does make a difference but most everything today is DDR2 or DDR3 which is plenty fast enough. An SSD is a storage drive.
4th question, no RAM is not limited by anything but itself and how much you can have on your board. To just be simple anyways.

You can do 2 things, right click your desktop and click on screen resolution. Whatever the highest is, is your native resolution. Or you can Google your model and that will tell you. Yes higher resolution textures tax the GPU heavier causing your slow down. The 7750 will help with that.