Civ IV with expansion packs

Is the Intel X3100 going to be able to handle Civilization IV with it's expansion pack? I have 4 gigs of ram and a core 2 duo t7300, so I'm sure those are more than capable.

 

Yes, it can handle that game. Civ IV isn't a very graphical game to begin with.

 

It will play, but don't push the card too hard enabling the eyecandy options. Your CPU should be fine running the game but expect slowdowns if you enable the AI moves option and have lots of civilisations in play during the game.

 

i would NOT recommend playing civ 4 on the x3100. When you zoom out, the fps drops under 20 fps. After 50+ turns into the game, it is too choppy to be enjoyable. Unless of course you enjoy slide-shows.

 

Frames per second isn't that important in strategy games, though. They're a lot more at your own pace - no really quick response needed. 20 FPS should be plenty. Civ IV isn't that graphically demanding. It runs fine on low-midrange desktop GPU's from 2002, so I doubt you'll have any trouble on an integrated laptop card from 2007.

The real thing about Civ and specs is that is very memory-demanding. If you don't have enough memory, it will become very choppy the further the game gets. With XP and 512 MB of RAM and a huge map, slide-shows is not an inaccurate description at times. It took more than 50 turns for that to occur for me, but it will happen without adequate RAM. Graphics settings do affect RAM usage pretty significantly, even with a dedicated video card, so that may be creating the illusion that the X3100 isn't powerful enough to run CivIV when the real problem is not having enough memory. The 50+ turns decrease sounds just like an inadequate memory problem. You really need 1 GB with XP, or 1.5 GB with Vista, to avoid these problems. 4 GB is more than enough, so I don't think you'll have any problems.

18 civilizations on a Huge map will yield about 30 second AI turn times (not counting animations) in the mid-1800's on a Pentium 4 2.66 GHz - probably just over 20 seconds with the T7300. That'll increase with more civilizations or a larger map of course, but in my experience CivIV isn't too bad at in between turn times. It certainly seems better than CivIII.

 

Have you played this on the x3100? You might get 20fps early in the game, but when you zoom out mid to late game, you will get 10 fps or less.

This is not a memory issue. In early to late game, there is a dramatic drop in FPS when you zoom out. These graphics are already loaded onto the ram while you are zoomed in, the x3100 just cant process all of the stuff on the screen mid to late game.

I have 2 gigs of ram and a t7300 proc.