Civilization 5 Mac System Requirements
Nov 23, 2010 - 28 Comments
Civilization 5 for Mac has been released, but before you grab a copy you should check the system requirements to make sure your Mac can run the game. As usual, the better your Mac the better the game will run. Here are the official Mac system requirements:
Minimum Mac System Requirements:
- Operating System: 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
- CPU Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (Dual-Core)
- CPU Speed: 2.4 GHz
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Hard Disk Space: 8 GB
- Video Card (ATI): Radeon HD2600
- Video Card (NVidia): Geforce 8600
- Video Memory (VRam): 256 MB
- Media Required: DVD-ROM
The minimal settings cover most newer Macs, but if you want the game to play well and have the settings turned up, you’ll need a beefier machine.
Here are the recommended Mac specs for Civ V:
Recommended Mac System Requirements
- CPU Processor: Intel Quad Core
- CPU Speed: 2.6 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Video Memory (VRam): 512MB
These are the officially supported video cards, so the game may run poorly with unsupported hardware:
Supported Video Cards:
- NVIDIA GeForce® 8600, 8800, 9600M, GT 120, 320M
- ATI Radeon HD 2600, HD 3870, HD 4670, HD 4850, HD 5670, HD 5750
If you don’t have it yet, you can buy Civilization 5 for Mac on Amazon and get free shipping
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Got a MBP Retina 13 inch a few weeks ago and installed civ5 last night. 4GB ram, i5, not sure of the graphics card cause all I says is “isis” graphics, but I can run it in max settings even with the entry level retina. The fan is loud as HELL though, regardless of what settings you’re on.
The AMD rig I built in 2009 with a phenom II x6 and a radeon 5850 in it plays this game like a champ at max settings at 1920×1200. Min frame rates can get choppy at times but I’m averaging well above 35 with all of the eye candy enabled. And when I built the thing all the parts cost less than a grand – less than any macbook pro. I’m thinking of upgrading to a radeon 7970 or 7950 so if anyone wants a 5850 hit me up.
Does anyone know of any mac book that will run this game?
I wonder why u all bother apple for this piece of sh* software… apple manufactures great hardware and also great operating systems that handles the highly professional software for design, music and video quiet easy! it´s not apple who made this game and if it would be optimized i´m sure it would even run on my old g4 in the hood!
I bought it after all, and it works.
MacBook, 2.26 GHz
10.6.6
GeForce 9400
so not a fancy machine
Works fine when I play on the hexagonal map setting, but very slow when I play on the graphic/sprites map setting, the time to render the map, terrain, units, etc. takes forever, but I don’t care for that map setting, in fact I find it confusing, for me the hexagon map works well.
We played a 2 players multiplayer game, Large Map (10 civs + 20 City-States and Pangea) up to turn 200, then my MacBook crashed and we couldn’t go further.
But we played many, many, and I mean many hours on a standard map setting (8/16) and it went fine, although some turns take a while to process, especially in the later game (turn 300+) you just have to be patient and let the computer work. We would just let it do all its computation during the AI’s turns) and then play/click when it was out turn, it was working great, but if you clicked like mad all the time, it gets a bit overworked.
It crashes once in a while, nothing too dramatic.
So it *is* playable, in the hexagonal map setting, if you don’t mind it, and are patient: some turn end takes a while to compute, you have to let it work!
Just bought ‘brand new’ MacBook Pro with 2.2 GHz Quad-core i7 processor and AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics card with 1GB video memory…works smoothly at default graphics settings, but wow…within 15min of playing the computer is heating up and the fan is going crazy???
yah, don’t by this. I have a 2 yr old MacBook Pro, which does meet the min. requirements, but the came runs pretty bad, even at the lowest settings.
I also have a window installation on my pro, and the windows version runs like a breeze.
This isn’t about what the game requirements, it’s just awful programming
Do not bother buying this pile of garbage, it pretty much won’t install on a modern mac.
who formats their disk as case-effing-sensitive? it can’t run on a case insensitive file system???
it’s amateur hour at aspyr
MacBook Pro 2009 (Ithink),
Intel Core 2 Duo 2,5 GHz
4GB Memory DDR2 SDRAM
GeForce 8600M GT, 512 mo
Slow as f*ck. I could play for a few hundred turns (biggest world, marathon – the longest game type) and the game would eventually crash 100% of time at the same point. All video settings to slow or inactive when possible.
70% of the map was still hidden, Only 4 civilizations revealed.
This is ridiculous. I can play Dragon Age on this machine…
Tested on MBA 11″ 1.4Ghz, GT320M, 2GB RAM – very very very very very slow !!! – even the intro clip doesn’t play – only sound play
Tested on my MBP 15″ 2.53Ghz Quad, GT330M, 4GB RAM, better but very unplayable – slow slow slow
Aspyr did a bad job on porting this game, probably they are using Transgaming or some kind of technology to emulate DX9. I hope they give us a native port in the near future.
Civ 5 mac *unplayable*, small map, all settings LOW or OFF, only 5 cities. Using the following machine config:
Macbook Pro
Mac OS X 10.6.6
2.5GHz Core 2 Duo
4 GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
GeForce 8600M GT 512MB
Not worth launching atm, runs faster in a windows VM using Parallels (LOL)
I have a bandnew Macbook Air with 4GB Ram and 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, just wonder if it meets the min. requirements for CIV 5
Couldn’t get it to work on mine
My spec:
Processor: 2.4 GHz intel Core 2 duo
Memory: 4 GB 1067 Mhz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
Snow leopard 10.6.5
And the game runs painfully slow… at low settings. Got not other program running, just the OS and Steam.
That’s not cool.
Also considering buying it – GeForce 9400, MacBook 6,1, just below the minimum recommended. I don’t mind the ‘fancy’ graphic, as long as I can play.
From what I read above, the game is playable, no? No in high-res, but it’s playable, isn’t it?
Just received Civ 5 as a present. Will not run on my MacPro 1,1 – Quad Core 2.66 with a Radeon x1900 (512 MB)
3-4 Years after manufacturing, this machine is STILL a beast – I cannot believe that it won’t run this game.
Lets ust face it, mac is underpowered and expensive. just get windows instead and then we dont have to deal with all these ridiculous problems all the time
That means I need to buy a brand new Mac for this game??!
I am wondering My MB (Leopard, 2G RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo 2GH, OS 10.5.8)
Oh.. com’on…. give it up then…. :(
Steam is required and a connection is required the FIRST TIME you play, after that you can play in offline mode.
Just so everyone knows. The GeForce 9400M is not
supported graphics card. The game will run just not optimally and frankly the graphics take a hit. I find this baffling since only the newest MacBooks have the 320M. The vast majority of mac laptops in the field are essentially underpowered. And aspyr has no plans to patch.
It’s ridiculous and shocking.
How can I play without steam on mac. is there an option to change somewhere?
On the mac, do you have to run steam in the background, while it’s connected to the internet? I really need to know cause I don’t have network access at home… help?
Good grief, Civilization is now recommended to use a quad core processor? What in the world could it be doing to use four processors?
I’m thinking of getting a new iMac to run this on.
Anyone have any ideas what model I should get? Do I have to get the most expensive model? I’m not really an expert in these things.
My MacBook (mid 2007) has a 2.13 intel c2d with 4mb ram, 2 hard drives ( took out the optical drive, 1 for OS X AND 1 for Bootcamp/win 7) and geforce 9400 video.
I have civ v running on window 7 and it plays fine. I run most things on low or med graphics quality and the game is very playable.
Just my 2 cents.
Anyone tried it with the mid 2009 13″ MBP? I upgraded the RAM to 8GB, and I wonder if it will run at all if I set everything to the lowest settings
I’ve got it running on my 2009 MBP with 8 gig ram, it runs but far out! its running hot of lowest settings
Looking at ways to optimise it to run better and more importantly, cooler.
It’s under spec—and apparently unsupported—but I’d be really interested to see if this would run on a 2.13ghz Macbook Air with the GeForce 9400M.
I think you will run into trouble with the video card, it might not even launch. I had this happen with TF2 earlier in the year on an old Mac Mini.
The new MacBook Air should run it OK with settings lowered. It might not look it from a few screenshots, but Civ V is really graphically intense and the frame rate dips at times even on my gaming PC.