Civilization VI PC Performance Review

Introduction

Civilization is one of the PC’s most popular and well-known franchises, spanning back all the way to  1991 with the release of the original Civilization. 

Today, Civilization is a series that needs to be accessible, with the game being played by both high-end PC gamers and entry level notebook users alike. This means that Civilization VI will need to scale well with hardware, with the ability to push modern hardware hard but also be able to run on low-end PCs. 

Today we will be looking at the PC performance of Civilization VI, showing gamers how achievable a steady 60+FPS is in this empire builder. Does an Empire need a powerful machine behind it to succeed, or can even a Civilization be forged with more humble beginnings? 

 

 

Drivers 

For this game, we will be using the newest drivers that were available when the game released, which is Nvidia’s Game Ready Geforce 375.57 driver and AMD’s 16.10.2 driver, both of which are the most recent GPU drivers for either company. 

 

Test Setup  

We will be testing this game on our dedicated GPU test rig using both high-end and mid-range GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia. 

 

Game Test Rig
Intel i7 6850K
ASUS X99 Strix
G.Skill Ripjaws 4x4GB DDR4 3200MHz
Corsair HX1200i
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10 x64 

         

Nvidia GTX 980Ti (Left), AMD R9 Fury X (Middle) GTX 1070 Founders Edition (Right)

 

For the high-end, we will be testing AMD’s R9 Fury X, the GTX 980Ti and Nvidia’s new GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GPUs.  

For the Mid-range offerings, we will be testing the new RX 480 and GTX 1060, both of which will be the ASUS Strix Gaming models.

 

     

ASUS GTX 1060 Strix (Left), ASUS RX 480 Strix (Right)

 

To represent AMD and Nvidia’s lower-end GPU offerings we have decided to use the AMD R9 380 and the Nvidia GTX 960. Both of these GPUs will be the ASUS Strix models. 

Both of these GPUs offer very similar performance in most scenarios and come in at very similar price points, so it will be very interesting to see which GPU will come out on top. 

 

            

Nvidia GTX 960(Left), AMD R9 380(Right)