This Is What You Need To Run Civilization: Beyond Earth PC

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On Friday, 2K Games and Firaxis Games announced the launch of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth for the PC, the latest installment in the Civilization series. The Mac and Linux version won't be made available until this holiday season, published by Aspyr Media.

So what kind of hardware will you need to run this game? The list of minimum specs shows that PC gamers will need an Intel Core 2 Duo clocked at 1.8 GHz or an AMD Athlon X2 64 clocked at 2.0 GHz. They'll also need an AMD Radeon HD 3650 or better, a Nvidia GeForce GT 8800 or better, or an Intel HD 3000 or better. PC gamers will also need 2 GB of RAM along with Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7.

The recommended set of specifications includes a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.8 GHz (Intel or AMD) and 4 GB of RAM. On the GPU front, gamers will need an AMD Radeon HD 5000 or better. However, to take advantage of AMD's Mantle API, gamers will need an AMD Radeon R9 series GPU or better. Otherwise, Nvidia's GeForce GT 400 series or better will do, as will Intel "Ivy Bridge" integrated graphics or better.

Unlike previous Civilization games, this installment has players exploring and colonizing an alien planet. The game has plenty of side-quests to keep players hooked into the overall story while also allowing them to collect resources, upgrade units and more. Players will also face new technology, encounter dangerous terrain and hostile alien life, dig up ancient alien relics and so on. Players can even build satellites to deploy into a new orbital layer.

"Unlike its predecessors, players are no longer bound by historical context in Civilization: Beyond Earth," said Sid Meier, Director of Creative Development at Firaxis Games. "The game challenges players to make interesting and fun decisions bringing together future science, technologies and ideologies as you explore mankind's future on an alien planet."

So far Beyond Earth has earned a Metacritic score of 82 and a user score of 6.6. Early scores come from notable gaming sites including Game Informer (90), Polygon (90), Destructoid (90), PC Gamer (87), Eurogamer (80), Joystiq (80), IGN (79), GameSpot (70) and The Escapist (60). Click on the link to see the full list of 45 critics.

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Kevin Parrish
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • shadowsdeath
    Wow a new game..... im I the only one who played alpha centaury ????
    Reply
  • ChrisNH
    Thank you for sharing what you were able to learn by reading the Steam page.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    Bought and downloaded from Steam last night. I know what I'm going to be doing the rest of the weekend! :lol:
    Reply
  • yumri
    What will it require to play it on max graphics with a 45fps or higher frame rate is my question as the recommended is most likely based on using medium or just high settings and not maxing out everything.
    Reply
  • IInuyasha74
    Thats some really constrained system requirements compared to the other game releases. Though for the recommended requirements I kind of question of doubt Intel HD 4000 is going to max out this one or Intel HD 4400 or 4600 will do too much better. Though I do like that they point out virtually any Ivy Bridge or better CPU architecture will work since the amount of advancement has made fast dual-cores that can out perform some of the old original quad-core CPUs.
    Reply
  • Thaisnang
    I'm still playing civ 5 would buy this after one half year or so when more expansion of it is out.
    Reply
  • the_brute
    a new game I can play.... at low settings. Looking forward to getting this in the future probably next year. Hopefully I will have a little bit better system.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    Hey, imagine that. A game that has very reasonable requirements, and still looks perfectly fine. It's almost like developing games exclusively for $2,000 PCs is a terrible idea.
    Reply
  • Smallfilou
    I strongly doubt CIV5 is playable in a smaller environment than "medium", if you stay on a 1,8GHz core 2 Duo... When I play it on my 3,5GHz quad, I still got the impression I can make myself a cup of coffee between some turns (that is playing solo mode of course!).
    Reply
  • Brainaic
    I have been playing this, it sure stresses out my 770 Classified, but I would say its more CPU intensive. It really good imo
    Reply