Hardware & Technical Set Up Advice / Specs

[sun_tzu]

Hi there,

As somebody who has not used a computer to play games since spending many hours on elite on the BBC Micro I am somewhat uncertain as to what spec I need to run the game aty a good level rather than simply at an ok level or the minimums.

Game is pre-ordered but I am going to buy (or have built) a new PC as I know my work Laptop will struggle - plus I will get very little work done and I was hoping somebody could answer a few questions as so far I have been given advice from several people as to what I need which conflicts with each other plus none of them have actually played the game in Beta.

I'm hoping to place an order for the PC in the next couple of days so I would be grateful if people could have a look and give me any feedback on the following.

I am told that the three core components to get the best experience from the game are the CPU, the Graphics card and the RAM.

I have been advised to get Intel I5 chips at 3.2 or 3.4G as these will be more than sufficient - conversely I have also been told to Get a 4G AMD chip as it will cost about the same so question one is one beter than the other for this game and if so which? (My gut feel is to get the i5 as I have only ever has intel based computers before so i dont know anything about AMD but if it saves me money and does as good or better job then I'm open to that.

Secondly the graphics card - I have been told to get something like a RADION R9 290 or a GTX 690
I have also been advised that a RADION R270 would be fine or a GTX 550
From what I can tell these all have quite different performance and prices so any advice appreciated - I am wanting to run the game on high settings without any problems

So again which advice is correct and do certain cards perform better with intel or AMD?

Thirdly 8GB or 16GB Ram - will 8GB be sufficient - one friend says yes another says Id be daft not to get 16... now I am often daft but i try not to be daft with spending money so is the 16 necessary?

Does it matter what motherboard - provided it is compatible with the above requirements?

Other than that I guess would a solid state hard drive make any difference? and is windows 7 or 8 better for this?

The other thing I would want to check is would any of these work - I assume they all would but not all list ED as a compatible game? (I assumed just because it was not officially released yet?)
the saitek X52, X55 and X65 or Thrustmaster Warthog

Any feedback will be genuinely appreciated as people who have actually played the game are obviousley in a far better position to advise than well meaning friends who are just confusing me.

 

[David Oliver]

What kind of resolution will you be wanting to run ED at? One or more monitors or the Oculus Rift?

An SSD drive will make your system feel snappier in general and decrease loading times.

8GB of RAM would be enough, but at least make sure you arrange things so that you can simply drop in another 8GB in future if you start with 8.

 

[sun_tzu]

What kind of resolution will you be wanting to run ED at? One or more monitors or the Oculus Rift?

An SSD drive will make your system feel snappier in general and decrease loading times.

8GB of RAM would be enough, but at least make sure you arrange things so that you can simply drop in another 8GB in future if you start with 8.

I think I would be using just one monitor rather than multiple or Oculus Rift - as for resolution Im not sure - about what HD TV is I guess rather than full on 4K?

Noted on the RAM that seems like a sensible compromise

thanks

 

[adoredtv]

I have been advised to get Intel I5 chips at 3.2 or 3.4G as these will be more than sufficient - conversely I have also been told to Get a 4G AMD chip as it will cost about the same so question one is one beter than the other for this game and if so which? (My gut feel is to get the i5 as I have only ever has intel based computers before so i dont know anything about AMD but if it saves me money and does as good or better job then I'm open to that.

Stick with the i5 for gaming but there's no need to really splash out on "K" models unless you're sure to be overclocking it.

Secondly the graphics card - I have been told to get something like a RADION R9 290 or a GTX 690
I have also been advised that a RADION R270 would be fine or a GTX 550
From what I can tell these all have quite different performance and prices so any advice appreciated - I am wanting to run the game on high settings without any problems

Forget about the 690. The 290 will definitely run the game on max settings (check out the Sapphire 290 Tri-X OC) and the 270 will at a bit lower frame-rate. The 550 is a bit below the 270 and I wouldn't recommend that for maximum settings.

Thirdly 8GB or 16GB Ram - will 8GB be sufficient - one friend says yes another says Id be daft not to get 16... now I am often daft but i try not to be daft with spending money so is the 16 necessary?

8GB is enough. Generally speaking you should listen to people who give you this advice over "GET MOAR RAMS" (let me guess, the same person who told you to buy the 690 also told you to get 16GB RAM, right?)

Does it matter what motherboard - provided it is compatible with the above requirements?

No. Be aware that if you only have 2 RAM slots and think you might need 16GB in future (you almost certainly won't) then you'll need to buy either a mobo with 4 slots so you can do 4x4GB RAM, or buy an 8GB stick of RAM now and another later.

Other than that I guess would a solid state hard drive make any difference? and is windows 7 or 8 better for this?

Windows 8 is known to produce slightly higher frame-rates than 7, however it's a horrible OS in general (imo). An SSD will help a lot with loading times, though I have one and the loads can still be very long.

 

[Tiamat]

Quad core CPUs at 2ghz are the minimum and my ancient i7 870 at 2.9gz runs pretty well at 1920x1200. I only get framerate dips when inside stations or looking at the galaxy map but I rarely dip under 30fps. Cruising I rarely dip under 60fps. My GPU is a 750 Ti and the minimum is a GTX 285. I would probably recommend the ATI over the 550.

You can use this site to compare GPUs.

http://www.hwcompare.com/16590/geforce-gtx-550-ti-vs-radeon-r9-270/

 

[sun_tzu]

Stick with the i5 for gaming but there's no need to really splash out on "K" models unless you're sure to be overclocking it.



Forget about the 690. The 290 will definitely run the game on max settings (check out the Sapphire 290 Tri-X OC) and the 270 will at a bit lower frame-rate. The 550 is a bit below the 270 and I wouldn't recommend that for maximum settings.



8GB is enough.



No. Be aware that if you only have 2 RAM slots and think you might need 16GB in future (you almost certainly won't) then you'll need to buy either a mobo with 4 slots so you can do 4x4GB RAM, or buy an 8GB stick of RAM now and another later.



Windows 8 is known to produce slightly higher frame-rates than 7, however it's a horrible OS in general (imo). An SSD will help a lot with loading times, though I have one and the loads can still be very long.

thanks -
I dont know enough about overclocking etc to feel comfortable with it so will be sticking with a standard chip
it sounds like getting 8GB ram with the possibility to upgrade is the best solution
Would the reduction in frame rate from a 270 be notable or is it just better to get a 290 which seems to be about £110 more when I looked?
I have windows 8 laptop for work - I dont hate it but it did take some getting used to and I assume if i get a fairly small SSD I can match that up with an external hard drive for anything that Im not that concerned about loading quick - old photos etc?

 

[zhaith]

I may have bee unlucky but when building this PC I wanted a R9 290, went through 3 of them all of them were faulty, 2 due to suspected faulty memory/artifacts (had to down clock them to even get them remotely stable and the other ran so hot it was scary, in the end they were all RMA'd and replaced with a gtx780 which has worked flawlessly.

 

[sun_tzu]

Quad core CPUs at 2ghz are the minimum and my ancient i7 870 at 2.9gz runs pretty well at 1920x1200. I only get framerate dips when inside stations or looking at the galaxy map but I rarely dip under 30fps. Cruising I rarely dip under 60fps. My GPU is a 750 Ti and the minimum is a GTX 285. I would probably recommend the ATI over the 550.

You can use this site to compare GPUs.

thanks - that's a very handy site!

 

[_Flin_]

I have been advised to get Intel I5 chips at 3.2 or 3.4G as these will be more than sufficient - conversely I have also been told to Get a 4G AMD chip as it will cost about the same so question one is one beter than the other for this game and if so which? (My gut feel is to get the i5 as I have only ever has intel based computers before so i dont know anything about AMD but if it saves me money and does as good or better job then I'm open to that.

Whats your budget?

You can find out current benchmarks for processors at Passmark.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

A latest generation i5-4xxx for around 200 € will be a good compromise between power and budget. If you have a high budget get yourself an i7. I don't know about things like an AMD FX-9370 Eight-Core, which is probably an alternative. I have, however, no experience regarding the downsides of it.

Secondly the graphics card - I have been told to get something like a RADION R9 290 or a GTX 690
I have also been advised that a RADION R270 would be fine or a GTX 550
From what I can tell these all have quite different performance and prices so any advice appreciated - I am wanting to run the game on high settings without any problems

So again which advice is correct and do certain cards perform better with intel or AMD?

Card choice is AMD or NVidia.
Again, check out the benchmarks.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

If your budget is around 150.- €, I'd go for a GTX 750 Ti. If it is 300.- €, go for a GTX 970.

I'd advise you for a card that can handle 3 monitors at once.

Thirdly 8GB or 16GB Ram - will 8GB be sufficient - one friend says yes another says Id be daft not to get 16... now I am often daft but i try not to be daft with spending money so is the 16 necessary?

You never have enough RAM.
I'd go for 16, 8 is rather low.

Does it matter what motherboard - provided it is compatible with the above requirements?

Definitely.
There are a few things you have to take care of:
- 64 GB possible RAM
- GBit Lan
- Maybe WLAN (or spend 30€ for a separate card)
- SATA 3
- Sound. If you want to hookup to a nice 5.1 sound system you should make sure that there are the right outputs for that, like SPDIF, optical audio or HDMI audio.

Other than that I guess would a solid state hard drive make any difference? and is windows 7 or 8 better for this?

SSD is the way to go. Everything else is just lame. Get 240GB minimum, 500 GB are better.



But in the end it's all a budget question.
Once I made a choice not to spend more than 150.- € on a single part of the PC. That is actually a good guideline. Apart from CPU, there I would go up to 200.- €. Then you get a well rounded, competitive rig that is in the mainstream price range, not in the nerdgasm-pay-30%-more-for-10%-more-power range.

If you spend 150.- € on
- Motherboard (EDIT: there are actually nice barebone motherboards that are a lot cheaper, like MSI B85-G41 PC Mate for around 70.- €)
- CPU
- GPU
- RAM
- HDD/SSD
- case & power
- Full-HD screen, 24 inch, 2ms
- BluRay drive, Keyboard, Mouse and something like a Thrustmaster joystick,
you will spend 1300.- € and have a nice machine

If you want to go for the really high power setup, you will spend 150 more each on CPU and GPU, plus getting 3 screens and a HOTAS. So that will be about 750.- € more for a really good setup.

 

[jhondidfool]

Nothing lower than an i5 4740, 8-gb of RAM and a good motherboard.
IF you're gong the VR route, GTX980, otherwise, a 750TI should hold you nice, but the 970 has a very sweet pricepoint and will enable you for VR as well, albeit with less detail.
Oh! and a 80-certified Power Supply Unit. SSD helps too, but a good HDD fill the bill quite nicely.

 

[Dai]

Regarding the joystick, any of the sticks you mentioned would be awesome for Elite.

I have the X52 pro and it does EVERYTHING I need for Elite, but it may not be quite as techie and snazzy as the more expensive ones.

It all comes down to how much disposable cash you have and what you want.

Personally I would get an X52 and throw the money saved back into your PC build

 

[adoredtv]

Would the reduction in frame rate from a 270 be notable or is it just better to get a 290 which seems to be about £110 more when I looked?

This one is difficult to answer. I have a 7850 OC, which is about the same as a 270 (maybe a little slower but not much). On max settings 1080p I can drop to 30 fps in heavy asteroid fields. It's still perfectly playable but obviously it could be a little better. This is the only place the game runs below 60fps when it matters.

The 290 is still a beast of a card (the Tri-X is about twice as fast as a r9 270) and with the recent price drop it's very good value I feel. I would expect to see 50+ fps in those same asteroid fields, probably even closer to 60 most of the time. You do need a good PSU for it though, at least a 500W with 8-pin PCI-E (preferably get a 550W or 600W).

I have windows 8 laptop for work - I dont hate it but it did take some getting used to and I assume if i get a fairly small SSD I can match that up with an external hard drive for anything that Im not that concerned about loading quick - old photos etc?

Yes you want to check out the Crucial MX100 (either 128GB or 256GB - I bought the 256GB version and I would recommend that also if you want to run some games off the SSD). You should be able to get a 1TB or 2TB hard drive for £40-£50. I currently run Elite on my SSD and all my Steam games off my hard drive. Basically if you keep the game you're playing most on your SSD it'll help nicely with loading times, and more importantly Windows starts up way faster and is a lot more responsive in general.

 

[sun_tzu]

Whats your budget?

You can find out current benchmarks for processors at Passmark.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

A latest generation i5-4xxx for around 200 € will be a good compromise between power and budget. If you have a high budget get yourself an i7. I don't know about things like an AMD FX-9370 Eight-Core, which is probably an alternative. I have, however, no experience regarding the downsides of it.



Card choice is AMD or NVidia.
Again, check out the benchmarks.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

If your budget is around 150.- €, I'd go for a GTX 750 Ti. If it is 300.- €, go for a GTX 970.

I'd advise you for a card that can handle 3 monitors at once.



You never have enough RAM.
I'd go for 16, 8 is rather low.



Definitely.
There are a few things you have to take care of:
- 64 GB possible RAM
- GBit Lan
- Maybe WLAN (or spend 30€ for a separate card)
- SATA 3
- Sound. If you want to hookup to a nice 5.1 sound system you should make sure that there are the right outputs for that, like SPDIF, optical audio or HDMI audio.



SSD is the way to go. Everything else is just lame. Get 240GB minimum, 500 GB are better.



But in the end it's all a budget question.
Once I made a choice not to spend more than 150.- € on a single part of the PC. That is actually a good guideline. Apart from CPU, there I would go up to 200.- €. Then you get a well rounded, competitive rig that is in the mainstream price range, not in the nerdgasm-pay-30%-more-for-10%-more-power range.

If you spend 150.- € on
- Motherboard (EDIT: there are actually nice barebone motherboards that are a lot cheaper, like MSI B85-G41 PC Mate for around 70.- €)
- CPU
- GPU
- RAM
- HDD/SSD
- case & power
- Full-HD screen, 24 inch, 2ms
- BluRay drive, Keyboard, Mouse and something like a Thrustmaster joystick,
you will spend 1300.- € and have a nice machine

If you want to go for the really high power setup, you will spend 150 more each on CPU and GPU, plus getting 3 screens and a HOTAS. So that will be about 750.- € more for a really good setup.

thanks thats a pretty comprehensive answer...

I dont have a budget in mind - I wanted to get something that would do the job but in reality I will probably only use it for elite D and some work bits and bobs so it does not make sense to spend more than I need to.

I have a monitor already thats HD plus a decent keyboard and mouse and a blu ray RW in my laptop so probably just get a DVD RW- (and I think I will buy an X55 HOTAS or similar as well)

Based on what you and others have said I am thinking
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-haswell-pc/
I5 3.2 G processor
Gigabite Z97X Motherboard
8GB Kingston Ram DDR3 (1x8GB) - presumably if needed I could then slot another one next to it??? (advice please)
Radeon R9 290 Graphics card
a 120GB SSD Hard Disk (I have a TB external gard disk I can plug in if required)
DVD RW
Super quiet Intel fan cooler
Asus Xonar DGX 5.1 Gaming sound card
300MPS wireless card
windows 7 64bt

in a nice minamilist white case all together coming in at £880 including delivery and 3yr warenty

does that sound like it would work and is ok value?

or should I be looking to change some of the things mentioned?

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

@ dai yes I was leaning towards the X52 or X55 - it looks awesome, now the thrustmaster looks a little more awesome imo but at around double the price Im not sure I see that much difference between them.

 

[Elan]

Pcspecialist are fairly ok, they built my laptop a couple of years ago and I've no major complaints.

The spec looks like it'll handle the game well enough. Maybe try popping the those components into a search engine and see how the prices compare.

I recently built my 1st PC, which wasn't too tricky to be honest and saved me a packet on the build.

 

[Saetan]

As somebody who has not used a computer to play games since spending many hours on elite on the BBC Micro I am somewhat uncertain as to what spec I need to run the game aty a good level rather than simply at an ok level or the minimums.

At least for now I don't have problems with my setup:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2,66GHz (overclocked @ 3,2GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX260
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Gamer
6GB RAM
SSD-Harddrive
Win7 HP 64bit

.... the only noticeable stuttering seems to come by network issues, as they only appear well below average and most of the time the game runs fluently. So your mentioned hardware selection should be doing fine too, as mine is quite outdated but still working well. Once appeared complete crashes of my whole PC, I could lead back to network problems (uTorrent overburdening my router with to much connections) too.

 

[zhaith]

I'd recommend building your own as well it isn't difficult at all, plus you know exactly what's in it and how it's build should anything ever go wrong.

 

[_Flin_]

Based on what you and others have said I am thinking
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-haswell-pc/
I5 3.2 G processor
Gigabite Z97X Motherboard
8GB Kingston Ram DDR3 (1x8GB) - presumably if needed I could then slot another one next to it??? (advice please)
Radeon R9 290 Graphics card
a 120GB SSD Hard Disk (I have a TB external gard disk I can plug in if required)
DVD RW
Super quiet Intel fan cooler
Asus Xonar DGX 5.1 Gaming sound card
300MPS wireless card
windows 7 64bt

- This rig will handle the game very well. Personally I'd prefer an i5-4690 to an i5-4460, it's 15% more power for 10% more money.
- I'd prefer G-Skill RAM to Kingston. Or at least go for the Hyper-X Kingston to get a quality component, instead of the cheap stuff. You should see that the RAM matches your CPU in speed (1600). And I'd go for 16 GB, so you don't have to rebuy in 2 years.
- The graphics card is a beast. IMHO it's almost two levels above everything else in this machine.
- 120 GB of disk space are not enough, unless you really do nothing else with this machine than Elite and Operating System. You want 240 GB. Furthermore there are quite some differences in SSDs. Is it a PCIe? A SATA3? What are the read/write speeds?
- Motherboard doesn't look right (not bad, just not right). Has a maximum of 32GB RAM, should be 64GB. If your computer becomes slow, you want to put in maximum RAM in 3-4 years. Don't think you need SLI and Crossfire, since I suspect you run only 1 card. It has a graphics chip you don't need, but you pay for it. While it's probably a good board, it has stuff you don't need and lacks stuff you want. Sound looks nice so, SPDIF exit should be great.
- Soundcard - You have a motherboard with an SPDIF exit. why a soundcard?
- Cooler... is this a cooler from a boxed CPU? A CPU that comes "boxed" has a cooler in it.
- Windows 7 64-Bit is a good OS. Won't say anything against it, never had problems with it.

IMHO you could save 50€ on the board, and get 16GB quality RAM instead. Plus you definitely need a bigger SSD, which will be 60€ more. But once you run out of hdd/ssd space, you will encounter a slow system and spend hours upon hours to tweak it, or hours to port your system to a bigger drive.


EDIT: I'd not recommend building your own PC if you can order single parts at a dealer and let them build the rig for a small fee of 50 - 75€. You won't have a guarantee, you will make mistakes, you will buy wrong stuff (like wrong cooler, too small a case, etc.; all happened to me before, and I am rather knowledgeable).

 

[sun_tzu]

- This rig will handle the game very well. Personally I'd prefer an i5-4690 to an i5-4460, it's 15% more power for 10% more money.
- I'd prefer G-Skill RAM to Kingston. Or at least go for the Hyper-X Kingston to get a quality component, instead of the cheap stuff. You should see that the RAM matches your CPU in speed (1600). And I'd go for 16 GB, so you don't have to rebuy in 2 years.
- The graphics card is a beast. IMHO it's almost two levels above everything else in this machine.
- 120 GB of disk space are not enough, unless you really do nothing else with this machine than Elite and Operating System. You want 240 GB. Furthermore there are quite some differences in SSDs. Is it a PCIe? A SATA3? What are the read/write speeds?
- Motherboard doesn't look right (not bad, just not right). Has a maximum of 32GB RAM, should be 64GB. If your computer becomes slow, you want to put in maximum RAM in 3-4 years. Don't think you need SLI and Crossfire, since I suspect you run only 1 card. It has a graphics chip you don't need, but you pay for it. While it's probably a good board, it has stuff you don't need and lacks stuff you want. Sound looks nice so, SPDIF exit should be great.
- Soundcard - You have a motherboard with an SPDIF exit. why a soundcard?
- Cooler... is this a cooler from a boxed CPU? A CPU that comes "boxed" has a cooler in it.
- Windows 7 64-Bit is a good OS. Won't say anything against it, never had problems with it.

IMHO you could save 50€ on the board, and get 16GB quality RAM instead. Plus you definitely need a bigger SSD, which will be 60€ more. But once you run out of hdd/ssd space, you will encounter a slow system and spend hours upon hours to tweak it, or hours to port your system to a bigger drive.


EDIT: I'd not recommend building your own PC if you can order single parts at a dealer and let them build the rig for a small fee of 50 - 75€. You won't have a guarantee, you will make mistakes, you will buy wrong stuff (like wrong cooler, too small a case, etc.; all happened to me before, and I am rather knowledgeable).

Thanks...

Would I be as well off going for the R9 270 Graphcs card (saving me quite a bit of money) and then putting the money into a larger SSD and a 16G Ram?

Also what Motherboard would be good if i was to do it this way??? (and if it saves me having to get a soundcard etc then great)

Regards

 

[_Flin_]

Thanks...

Would I be as well off going for the R9 270 Graphcs card (saving me quite a bit of money) and then putting the money into a larger SSD and a 16G Ram?

Also what Motherboard would be good if i was to do it this way??? (and if it saves me having to get a soundcard etc then great)

Regards

The R9 290 is more than 50% better than the 270. 270 has nevertheless a lot of bang for the buck.

Will you be better off with 8 GB RAM more, a larger SSD and a 33% worse GPU? For playing Elite?
Probably not.
It would be the more well rounded machine, that will have a generally longer "life", because SSD and RAM will be valid for 1-2 years longer.

If you 100% only play Elite on it... then by any means, choose the big GPU.

But as soon as you start do download a few HD movies, or do some screencapturing, making videos from your elite exploration or whatever, those 8GB RAM and 120GB will soon start to feel very very tight. I'd just add 150€ on top for 16GB and a 250 GB. And you will have a machine that will work nicely for about 4-5 years. Then upgrade the RAM, maybe put in a better CPU for the same socket, if possible, and go another 2 years.

Every board nowadays has a soundcard, afaik. I mentioned an MSI board on top of the thread, which will be perfectly o.k. The boards at pcspecialist seem all to be on the high prices side. Just look for one that has no graphics, but USB 3.0, enough PCIe for your GPU, SATA 3 (6GB) and 64 MB RAM. Won't look them all up now.

 

[adoredtv]

Flin, you're way off on the RAM - more really doesn't matter. You can run most games on 4GB unless you have a bunch of browser windows and Skype etc running. Note that in the pic below, the actual "free" amount is Free + Standby, so 4.7GB RAM even though I have browsers and Skype, Steam etc running.

View attachment 1835
http://i.imgur.com/9Ixjk15.jpg

8GB is fine for "future proofing" though even that would likely just be overkill. 16GB is a waste unless you are planning on running certain types of software like virtual machines. Another thing - we are on DDR3 now but heading towards DDR4 soon, so more DDR3 is doubly a bad idea as it'll be going obsolete within a couple of years.

Sun-tzu, if I were you I'd keep the card and go with a less expensive mobo and even CPU. The graphics card is still 90% of gaming performance in the vast majority of cases.

GPU and CPU are what matters with gaming. Everything else is completely secondary. However, do not overspend on a couple hundred MHz on CPU that will only have a few small % improvement in performance.

You can always get a 280X or R9 285, they should be somewhere in the middle of your graphics choices. For me, that 290 Tri-X OC is a beast of card at a ridiculously good price. I may pull the trigger on one myself. The only issue is with reference 290's - do not get one of those as the fans are really loud.