Hardware & Technical Computer Build to run Elite Dangerous

Perseus

Perseus
netshaman said:
My rig is... 10 years old lol !
And it runs perfectly all modern games at 30 fps for now...
It is based on a AMD Athlon 64 CPU ( old heh ) and a HD radeon 3850 on a ... AGP port !
With 2 GB of RAM.
And it runs with Windows seven 64 almost smoothly !
When in the beta i will try to make ED run on it lol, and i will see what' s happen...
BUT... i think i will go for a new brand machine when ED will go out, and with the OR :)
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Let us know how your old machine performs during beta. It would be deliciously ironic if I've spent this money without reason! :)
 

Gully

Gully
There has been much speculation of late about whether to spend most cash on the CPU or GPU.

Regarding the CPU/GPU balance, a couple of points: Given the way most games are made (wire-framed polygon models wrapped with textures and then lit accordingly) the GPU is often the bottleneck, basically because the games makers try to push as much of the rendering down to the GPU as possible leaving the CPU free for AI and game logic. However, the new Elite could be an exception if it is made in a similar fashion to old Elite games (where most stuff is done procedurally in the CPU). The balance of CPU to GPU I would say is slightly in favour of CPU if you are going to spend the bulk of the money somewhere then I tend to prefer to put it into the 'core' machine, as you can easily plug in another gfx card in the future without doing a major rebuild. My personal preference would be to go for an i7 with a 1 year old gfx card rather than a i5 with a brand new gfx card, all things being equal.
 

NeilF

NeilF
Gully said:
There has been much speculation of late about whether to spend most cash on the CPU or GPU.

Regarding the CPU/GPU balance, a couple of points: Given the way most games are made (wire-framed polygon models wrapped with textures and then lit accordingly) the GPU is often the bottleneck, basically because the games makers try to push as much of the rendering down to the GPU as possible leaving the CPU free for AI and game logic. However, the new Elite could be an exception if it is made in a similar fashion to old Elite games (where most stuff is done procedurally in the CPU). The balance of CPU to GPU I would say is slightly in favour of CPU if you are going to spend the bulk of the money somewhere then I tend to prefer to put it into the 'core' machine, as you can easily plug in another gfx card in the future without doing a major rebuild. My personal preference would be to go for an i7 with a 1 year old gfx card rather than a i5 with a brand new gfx card, all things being equal.
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I think you're assuming too much! ie: Assuming lots of excessive procedural calculations consuming more CPU time than other games?

We also have to remember surely, most of the time, we'll be flying in space, with a fairly straight forward background, and a few simple far off polygons being drawn.

It'll be more rare when it's busier. eg: A capital ship battle etc, or flying around an asteroid field. But even then, that's nothing that hasn't been done numerous times before in the past.

I think, until we start seeing peoples results to the alpha/beta we're wasting our time even thinking about specifics. But my guess is any reasonably good CPU and GFX card should be fine. I just cannot fathom this being some uber resource hog like crysis! We're in space, not a jungle.
 

Gully

Gully
NeilF said:
I think you're assuming too much! ie: Assuming lots of excessive procedural calculations consuming more CPU time than other games?

We also have to remember surely, most of the time, we'll be flying in space, with a fairly straight forward background, and a few simple far off polygons being drawn.

It'll be more rare when it's busier. eg: A capital ship battle etc, or flying around an asteroid field. But even then, that's nothing that hasn't been done numerous times before in the past.

I think, until we start seeing peoples results to the alpha/beta we're wasting our time even thinking about specifics. But my guess is any reasonably good CPU and GFX card should be fine. I just cannot fathom this being some uber resource hog like crysis! We're in space, not a jungle.
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Quite agree - I was merely promoting caution with any early upgrade until we have more info.
 

The Flying Gribble

The Flying Gribble
NeilF said:
I will be uber interested to hear from you then, as my system is an overclocked Q6600 with an AMD 7870 graphics card - I'm hoping this will run Elite smoothly! (& can't see why it would not)
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My graphics card is an AMD 6950 which I'll probably tweak to unlock the extra cores to make it a 6970 equivalent. That's just behind your card in the performance hierarchy I think so should give a reasonable comparison.
 

NeilF

NeilF
The Flying Gribble said:
My graphics card is an AMD 6950 which I'll probably tweak to unlock the extra cores to make it a 6970 equivalent. That's just behind your card in the performance hierarchy I think so should give a reasonable comparison.
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Very close!

So very very very interested on how you get on!
 

SnowGhost

S
Cody said:
The i5 4670K seems to be well liked - it's the one I'm hoping to get, anyway.
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No real reason to get the 'K' version unless your planning on overclocking the thing. It costs extra, and if you're not planning on overclocking, it's extra expense for nothing.
 

Squicker

S
Cody said:
<nods> Mind you, when I looked earlier, the price difference was marginal.
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Indeed, why would anyone not OC?

I'm at 4.4 on a 3770k with no voltage change and my CPU Never breaks a sweat. Haswell is reputedly less clock able however, hence all the dislike for Haswell.
 

Gingerpride

Gingerpride
Indeed, why would anyone not OC?

I'm at 4.4 on a 3770k with no voltage change and my CPU Never breaks a sweat. Haswell is reputedly less clock able however, hence all the dislike for Haswell.
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Heat
Fan Noise
Reduced component life expectancy
System stability

To be fair these can all be managed if you know what you are doing, but they are all issues that need to be considered before OC'ing IMO.
 

NeilF

NeilF
Squicker said:
Indeed, why would anyone not OC?

I'm at 4.4 on a 3770k with no voltage change and my CPU Never breaks a sweat. Haswell is reputedly less clock able however, hence all the dislike for Haswell.
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As gingerpride has said, there are various reasons, but the most obvious is some people are not that comfortable doing it. As overclocking such a machine will most likely give you no tangible benefit in games, then why suggest these individuals need to?

If someone isn't clued up enough to do it, or doesn't feel comfortable doing it, then there no problem them not doing it. They will most likely get no noticeable benefit anyway...
 
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Squicker

S
NeilF said:
As gingerpride has said, there are various reasons, but the most obvious is some people are not that comfortable doing it. As overclocking such a machine will most likely give you no tangible benefit in games, then why suggest these individuals need to?

If someone isn't clued up enough to do it, or doesn't feel comfortable doing it, then there no problem them not doing it. They will most likely get no noticeable benefit anyway...
Click to expand...

Indeed, a mild OC - 4.4 in my case - is a non-issue in all of those areas. And it's automatic anyway if you get XMP memory, so you don't need to do anything or know anything, just select the correct XMP profile and you are done.

You are correct in that the gain in games is small, perhaps 10% FPS if that, that point is entirely valid.

But then I am the sort of person who buys a 480BHP car and immediately gets it remapped, so I clearly have performance issues ;-)
 

Comandante

Comandante
I haven't owned a desktop PC since '05, and since then have enjoyed not having a windows machine in my house.

Well, that's all about to change. I just ordered a pre-built PC (too much going on with other things ATM), so I will be paying the extra that I'd prefer not to pay. But March is not that far away (like 12 weeks!), so here's what I got:

Case: Zalman Z3 Plus Black
Processor: AMD FX 6300 3.5GHz 6 Core
RAM: 8GB Corsair DDR3 XMS3 1600MHz/PC12800
Motherboard: ASUS M5A97 R2.0
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 500GB Hard Drive 7200rpm 16MB Cache
Sound card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B5ST 24x DVD/CD ± Re-Writer Black
Network card: Integrated 10/100/1000Mbps
Hard Drive Dampening: UKGC Antivibration System
OS: Windows 8.1

Looks like it will run E: D nicely. I really, really, really wanted to spec and build this myself; however, family commitments and other things (work) have meant I've had no time.

I'm seriously considering the Saitek X52 flight stick, and Oculus Rift? Let's wait and see...
 

nick_j_bacon

nick_j_bacon
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Now if only the alpha was ready for testing.....
 
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