Civ V on Mac drives CPU fan hard, overheats, graphics glitches start showing

[dchang0]

As soon as I start up Civ V on my 2016 Macbook Pro with i7 and 16GB of RAM, it cranks the CPU to max and the air coming out is uncomfortably hot. After some amount of play time, there will start to be glitching on the screen.

Shutting down Civ V returns the Mac to normal.

I found a really old thread here where someone else with a Mac had the same problem (didn't say which model it was, but the post was in 2015). I'm guessing that any Mac is going to have this problem, meaning I can't really play the game without toasting my hardware.

Are there tricks to reduce the load that Civ V puts on the system beyond reducing the resolution and changing all the Video settings to Low or Minimum or Off? Any hidden settings?

Is the PC/Windows version capable of running on a Windows laptop like the Dell XPS 13 9370 without also cranking the fans? I'm thinking about buying one for work but would like to know if this game is going to work before buying anything.

If no laptop will run it without cranking the fans, I guess I'll have to stop playing (I can't buy a desktop, have to be mobile).

Too bad it's too late for a refund.

[Heimeri Klein]

get a pc that isnt a mac.

[dchang0]

Originally posted by Heimeri Klein:

get a pc that isnt a mac.

What's the point if Civ V will peg the CPU on a PC too? I need to be sure that it will work before spending >$1800 on a new Dell 9370 laptop.

[Heimeri Klein]

use a pc not a labtop

[dchang0]

Originally posted by Heimeri Klein:

use a pc not a labtop

Sadly that's not an option. Any machine I buy has to be portable for my job. It can be a Mac or a PC, but it's got to be a laptop for travel. I like to play Civ V and other strategy games while waiting in the airport/on the plane.

[dchang0]

A buddy just sent this to me--it says the Macbook Pro 13 slays the Dell XPS 13 in performance: http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/07/the-ssd-in-apples-updated-macbook-pro-is-in-a-different-league-of-its-own-blowing-away-dell-and-all-others.html

Thus, if Civ V for Windows is not much more efficient than Civ V for Mac, it will likely drive the fans hard in the Dell XPS 13 too.

[Nintonito]

I've used Civ V on Mac and I can say what you are describing sounds like a software bug. Specifically, it sounds like your Macbook is not throttling correctly (which does normally occur during gaming on Mac's). That is what is causing the glitching. If fan noise is an issue, well have fun, you bought a thin laptop. Should have bought a thick gaming laptop if you wanted to play games with minimal disruption. That part occurs either way, the fans max out due to heat build up. I'm not saying your case isn't a bit abnormal, it certainly is (Civ V is pretty lightweight, even at 2880 x1800 on my 2014 macbook its perfectly playable at maximum settings). But temper your expectations. Confirm the laptop is operating and throttling normally.

[ForevaNoob Wonemorturn]

I currently play Civ 5 on both, PC and Mac, and both work fine.
My PC is a laptop, for the very reasons you mentionned I only use laptops. And I play games even more demanding on one of the latest MSI Windows 10 laptop without a single problem... but the heat.
Just wear gloves...

[CouchNerd]

Try tweaking the graphics settings.
Civ5 works right out of the box for me: iMac 2013 27", 3,5GHz i7, 24GB RAM, GTX780M 4GB VRAM, ElCap 10.11.6.
While I'm typing I watch 1080p Sat TV on 2th screen, play Civ5 and have around 20 apps open: max 30% CPU usage.

[dchang0]

Thanks for all the great responses!

@Nintonito: fan noise isn't a problem. It's actually pretty quiet even at full speed. The heat and video glitching is the only problem.
Does your 2014 Macbook get hot or run its fans at max when playing Civ V?
You did give me an idea, though. I'll try to run Civ V on my ancient 2009 Macbook Air with Core 2 Duo CPU and see what happens. IIRC it has a non-Intel discrete GPU.

@ForevaNoob
Re: "games even more demanding" Yeah, I have other Steam games that seem like they should be more demanding than Civ V (fancier graphics or faster-paced action) that don't do this CPU fan maxing, so I'm pretty sure this is a Civ V specific problem. Do you experience high heat on your PC and Mac laptops when running Civ V? From the gloves joke, I suppose you do, but I'd like to confirm.

@CouchNerd
Thanks very much for mentioning specific specs! It gives me a baseline to aim for.
I have all my video settings turned down to minimum, and performance is definitely better than when they are maxed-out, but the heat is still alarming and the fans run all the time.
I AM able to run other things in parallel with Civ V, such as leaving my browser/email/video player open behind it. So it's not necessarily that the CPU is pegged at 100%. It's more of just a heat dissipation problem.

[dchang0]

I just checked my CPU % in Activity Monitor and it is running at 44%, so yeah, it's not that the CPU is pegged at 100%.

[Nintonito]

Originally posted by dchang0:

Thanks for all the great responses!

@Nintonito: fan noise isn't a problem. It's actually pretty quiet even at full speed. The heat and video glitching is the only problem.
Does your 2014 Macbook get hot or run its fans at max when playing Civ V?
You did give me an idea, though. I'll try to run Civ V on my ancient 2009 Macbook Air with Core 2 Duo CPU and see what happens. IIRC it has a non-Intel discrete GPU.

@ForevaNoob
Re: "games even more demanding" Yeah, I have other Steam games that seem like they should be more demanding than Civ V (fancier graphics or faster-paced action) that don't do this CPU fan maxing, so I'm pretty sure this is a Civ V specific problem. Do you experience high heat on your PC and Mac laptops when running Civ V? From the gloves joke, I suppose you do, but I'd like to confirm.

@CouchNerd
Thanks very much for mentioning specific specs! It gives me a baseline to aim for.
I have all my video settings turned down to minimum, and performance is definitely better than when they are maxed-out, but the heat is still alarming and the fans run all the time.
I AM able to run other things in parallel with Civ V, such as leaving my browser/email/video player open behind it. So it's not necessarily that the CPU is pegged at 100%. It's more of just a heat dissipation problem.

Oh you have the integrated GPU only? that explains a bit. I have a 750M in my Macbook so the device works a lot less to run games. Heat I could expect, its frankly a problem with macbook's. The glitching is suspect. Should not happen period. Its also possible that the video glitching is Intel driver issues. That sort of thing is not uncommon when dealing with games that haven't been updated (and Apple's OpenGL drivers suck royally). What exactly does the glitching look like?

[dchang0]

Originally posted by Nintonito:

Oh you have the integrated GPU only? that explains a bit. I have a 750M in my Macbook so the device works a lot less to run games. Heat I could expect, its frankly a problem with macbook's. The glitching is suspect. Should not happen period. Its also possible that the video glitching is Intel driver issues. That sort of thing is not uncommon when dealing with games that haven't been updated (and Apple's OpenGL drivers suck royally). What exactly does the glitching look like?

Yes, in my 2016 MBP, it is an integrated Intel GPU.

The glitching is like this: imagine a square (not hex) floating in the air above the ground. Depending on the perspective of the map, it therefore looks like a parallelogram. The glitches are colored black, white, and red and flash when the map is moved. They are spread out across the screen, maybe 5 or 6 hexes apart, usually in a grid pattern (still floating over the landscape, respecting the 3/4 perspective). They might be badly-rendered clouds, but the clouds are hex-shaped.

Luckily, it doesn't happen too often. The heat is always present, but it seems that the glitching happens only once in a while. I am not able to reproduce the glitching on demand, but the heat is always reproducible (just start playing = fans spin up and heat starts building).

[ForevaNoob Wonemorturn]

The heat is always present on high end PC laptops as well, talking about the very last games I played, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Witcher 3, and Civ 5 of course, but a bit less for that last one.
I read CPU are fine until 90°C.
Anyway, that's what I heard on the road...

[Nintonito]

Originally posted by dchang0:

Originally posted by Nintonito:

Oh you have the integrated GPU only? that explains a bit. I have a 750M in my Macbook so the device works a lot less to run games. Heat I could expect, its frankly a problem with macbook's. The glitching is suspect. Should not happen period. Its also possible that the video glitching is Intel driver issues. That sort of thing is not uncommon when dealing with games that haven't been updated (and Apple's OpenGL drivers suck royally). What exactly does the glitching look like?

Yes, in my 2016 MBP, it is an integrated Intel GPU.

The glitching is like this: imagine a square (not hex) floating in the air above the ground. Depending on the perspective of the map, it therefore looks like a parallelogram. The glitches are colored black, white, and red and flash when the map is moved. They are spread out across the screen, maybe 5 or 6 hexes apart, usually in a grid pattern (still floating over the landscape, respecting the 3/4 perspective). They might be badly-rendered clouds, but the clouds are hex-shaped.

Luckily, it doesn't happen too often. The heat is always present, but it seems that the glitching happens only once in a while. I am not able to reproduce the glitching on demand, but the heat is always reproducible (just start playing = fans spin up and heat starts building).

That could be a rendering bug, its hard to say. I can say this, if you are really concerned you could run diagnostics. If nothing shows up though, I can't imagine you'll have much luck getting apple to replace it given its still application specific.

[dchang0]

Thanks for the confirmation, ForevaNoob.

@Nintonito: Yeah, given that the squares are in the perspective of the clouds, it probably is a rendering bug. And yeah, Apple isn't going to help me with it; they have ignored other bug reports I put in where I could prove and reproduce the problem and found other people reporting the exact same problem (Bluetooth audio on High Sierra stutters in some cases).