1440x900 High Performance

Those wishing to play Civilization V in all its glory at 1440x900 will need a current-gen mid-range graphics card. The GeForce GTX 460, 470 and 480 all delivered virtually the same performance at this resolution, making the affordable GeForce GTX 460 the best choice.

The Radeon HD 5870 was not quite as impressive with an average of 40fps while the Radeon HD 5850 was slightly slower, averaging 37fps. The new GeForce GTS 450 performed surprisingly well, delivering 34fps, making it slightly faster than the Radeon HD 5830. However, cards beyond this point start to dip below 30fps with the Radeon HD 5770 averaging just 29fps.

Although we are testing worst-case scenario performance, we were shocked the Radeon HD 4890 averaged 27fps at this low resolution, while the 4850 could only muster 20fps. The GeForce GTX 200 series appeared to have a serious performance issue caused by the use of Tessellation. The GeForce GTX 285, which is still quite fast by today's standards, displayed a mere 19fps.