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Mac Gaming News - Aspyr Issues Civilization IV System Requirements
by , 1:30 PM EDT, May 26th, 2006
Aspyr Media on Friday issued final system requirements for the upcoming strategy game Sid Meier's Civilization IV, which will ship in late June with a US$49.99 price tag. It will be a Universal Binary. The Mac Observer has a Beta of the game and will offer a preview soon.
The title builds on its predecessors by introducing a new 3D world as well as such gameplay improvements as an enhanced interface geared toward making newcomers more comfortable, a flexible tech tree that offers more strategic choices, the ability to grow bigger empires, locked alliances, a map editor that supports XML and Python, new civic and religious options, and more.
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Minimum System Requirements
- Mac OS X 10.3.9
- 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5, or an Intel-based Mac
- 512MB RAM
- 3.5GB free disk space
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 or ATI Radeon 9600 with at least 64MB VRAM
- DVD-ROM
Recommended System Requirements
- Mac OS X 10.4.6 or higher
- 2.0GHz PowerPC G5 or an Intel-based Mac
- 1GB RAM
- 128MB VRAM
Aspyr's list of supported video cards includes the NVIDIA GeForce 5200, 6600, 6800, 7800, and ATI Radeon 9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X600, X800, X850, and X1600 cards.
Observer Comments
Remember when games were the quintessential thing that didn't have steep hardware requirements? Man, I miss those days. It's hard to believe game designers can survive targeting only the best machines on the market. Oh well... I loved Civ3, but I guess I won't be playing Civ4 any time soon. Bummer.
Sat May 27, 2006 9:43 pm Subject:
Sun May 28, 2006 8:13 pm Subject: Re: Will it run on the Macbook
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
What I want to know is whether this will run on a Macbook, or do I need to go for a MBP or iMac.
According to the specs listed, this game will run much better on an Intel iMac or MacBook Pro than a MacBook. The MacBook uses the Intel GMA 950 graphics accelerator which utilizes 64 MBs of DDR RAM shared with the main memory.
Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:24 pm Subject: That'll teach me to buy before looking at requirements
Just wondering why the system requirements are much higher on the Mac than on the PC platform.
On the PC hardware requirements are:
1GHz CPU
256 MB RAM
32 MB Video Memory
These are *significantly* lower. Is OS X really that inefficient at gaming? (posting from a 12" powerbook, so save the flames)
As an owner of Civilization IV for PC, I can say that the minimum and recommended system requirements for PC should be what they are for Mac. My computer meets the recommended requirements, but becomes very sluggish later in the game on anything larger than a small map, or with above low graphics. Based on my results, I would venture that the higher requirements for Mac stem from a more realistic view of the performance users want rather than system inefficiency.
Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:46 am Subject: Re: Won;t work on new imac 24
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
How ridiculous - Apple release an iMac with huge screen a great graphics capability. Upgradeable to boot. BUT - CivIV won't run on the iMac 24! Graphics card (both) not supported. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
Consider yourself corrected. I have a 24" iMac (3 GB RAM, 7600 graphics card) and Civ IV/Warlords runs beautifully. Oh, and FWIW, even though the Macbook isn't OFFICIALLY supported, it will run Civ IV nicely if you absolutely MUST have your fix. I would have 2 GB of RAM though.
Fri Apr 27, 2007 5:33 pm Subject: Re: imac "24 and civ 4
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
Do you have any problems with glitches etc? I am having numerous problems such as flickering, blacked out units etc. Some crashing as well.
No, no problems at all. I am running 10.4.9 wih all available patches/updates to all the software (both Apple and non-Apple).
Sat Jun 09, 2007 4:25 pm Subject:
Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:34 am Subject: Re: macbook and video games
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
I just bought macbook with specification of:
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2GHz
667 MHz FSB
4 MB Cache
1 GB RAM
120 GB Hard Drive
SuperDrive (DVD RW Drive)
13.3" TFT Display
MAC OS X v10.4 TIGER
64MB Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
will games like civilization 4 and sim city 4 work?
Actually, yes ... and no. SimCity 4 requires a Universal BInary updater, which is only in beta form. I've downloaded it only to discover that my SC4 installer disk is corrupt, so I can't vouch for it. Try it out, but don't bother running the PPC version of SC4 on your MacBook. It ain't worth the pain.
As for Civ IV ... it's been some time now but I think my Civ IV installer rejected a MacBook I was trying to install it on. Something about insufficient video support. Perhaps you could d/l a trail version of Civ IV to test it out?
I think it would be worth doing some further research.
Me? I play SC4 under Boot Camp. Screams along on a 24in iMac.
And I'v been meaning to install Civ IV for a while on this machine. Might just do it now.
Sun Jun 10, 2007 4:36 am Subject: Re: macbook and video games
Tue Sep 18, 2007 9:46 pm Subject: tryin to install civ 4 and it say nt enuf disk spc
Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:02 pm Subject:
I think you'll find that it actually says something along the lines of:
QuoteNot enough disk space
How about posting:
"It's saying 'Not enough disk space', when I have 126gb free."
That would be readable, and make you look just a little bit better.
Are you sure you're installing it on that particular drive?
Tue Sep 18, 2007 10:43 pm Subject:
Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:51 am Subject: Re: tryin to install civ 4 and it say nt enuf disk spc
Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:38 pm Subject:
Fri Oct 19, 2007 5:19 am Subject:
Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:11 am Subject:
What is it with the guest posts in this thread that they almost all seem to have "language issues" - that is, they can't write legible English?
To answer what it is I think you're saying, I have no idea. You haven't said what machine you're running it on, what version of the OS you're using, what font you're seeing…come on, try harder!
Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:26 am Subject:
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