Gateway Drug

Old Duck

Old Duck
My introduction to Elite: Dangerous has been the PS4. Until recently, I was really enjoying this game! I've been experiencing some serious graphical bugs since version 2.4 dropped, and so my eye has wandered to different platforms (though I do hope Frontier eventually figures out the PS4 issues). So I've got a couple of questions for PC gamers.

First, would someone post a screenshot of your graphics settings page? One of the things I miss about PC gaming is the ability to fine-tune the graphics options. If you have any additional commentary to add regarding these settings (like "Option A kills framerate but looks beautiful"), that would be great.

Second, how customizable is the PC version? I know you can change your HUD color, and I've read there are custom shaders that allow you to clean your dirty windshield and visor, as well as get rid of all the "snow" in space and around planets. What else?

Third, what kind of horse power do I need for a nice 1080p experience? Let's shoot high - ultra settings at 60 fps. Would this gaming laptop (or one similar) meet those requirements?

Forth, is the DS4 fully supported on the PC? I absolutely love all the features Frontier squeezed into the DS4 on the Playstation. Gyroscopic head look, corner-sensitive touchpad, etc.

And finally, how do I convince my wife to allow me to spend $$$$ on a gaming laptop (really needs to be a laptop for reasons) when I just bought a new PS4 last year?

All of this may come to nothing, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask.
 
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Old Duck

Old Duck
anyone-anyone-meme.jpg
 

Deleted member 110222

D
1050Ti would do great for 1080p... At least now. With the lighting overhauls next year... Well I'm saving for a 1060.
 

PashPliskin

PashPliskin
If it really has to be a laptop it will cost you a lot in order to play Elite well. A desktop with the same horsepower would probably cost you half as much.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
PashPliskin said:
If it really has to be a laptop it will cost you a lot in order to play Elite well. A desktop with the same horsepower would probably cost you half as much.
Click to expand...

It is more about size and power consumption than portability. This is one of the reasons I went with the PS4 Slim. Are there gaming "cubes" that are similar to a console in this area while offering the power of a gaming PC and the flexibility of ED on Windows? Or am I basically better off waiting for XB1X or PS5?
 

Deleted member 110222

D
Old Duck said:
It is more about size and power consumption than portability. This is one of the reasons I went with the PS4 Slim. Are there gaming "cubes" that are similar to a console in this area while offering the power of a gaming PC and the flexibility of ED on Windows? Or am I basically better off waiting for XB1X or PS5?
Click to expand...

Micro-ATX, ITX, etc....

Look into format factors. Yes, it is possible to make a pretty small system.
 

rrobes

R
Since size is not an issue for my PC, I have a tower tucked into a desk compartment specifically made to hide the case.

It is super quiet and this is air cooled, I close the door to the compartment and it's a slight hum. It has a 1070 running on ultra game settings w/o a hiccup and not even overclocked. My CPU isn't one of the new ones but it's a i7 4790 and works just fine.

I have found that when you try to run hi graphics on laptops, they are hot and loud. From reading various accounts on gaming laptops, you do have noise and heat and unless you output to an external monitor you are limited on screen size. If you go VR, not an issue.

I have had good luck w/ NVidia cards, very much so over AMD (have been bitten twice w/their cards). NVidia is also pushing VR ready cards.

Unless you build one yourself, those small factor PC can be expensive if bought finished.

Also, those items you mentioned you wanted to customize are outside of the game, so it's a little involved.

Lastly, something breaks in my tower, I can tear it down easily and fix with lots of options for components. Laptop, not so much.
 
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ForeverN00b

ForeverN00b
As for the DS4, I don't think it is natively supported by windows, because XBox. You can use it with windows, but it doesn't have native support (there's an app that fools windows into thinking its an xbox controller).
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Cheers.

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dByOXMD.jpg


In the ini file you can change HUD colors, increase galaxy/neblua resolution and some such. The setting that mostly kills your FPS is supersampling, which basically forces your pc to render at a (much) higher resolution and then downsample to your monitor's resolution. Still, with an 1070 or some such you can go very far as long as you dont do VR. Finally, you get to use gemFX, ReShade and such. These are post-processors that allow you to add all kinds of additional effects and change how it makes the game look for little performance impact. Generally works on all games using D3D and its amazing (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/108/?).
 
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Ashnak

Ashnak
To throw in my .02 € about the laptop you linked - nope.

The 1050 chipset might do it in 1080p/60fps, maybe require you to turn down a couple of the more demanding graphics options by a notch, but the 2 GB graphics memory won't cut it. The 1050ti 4G version (strangely, just 1$ more, at least for me) should do it.
I'm just a teensy bit suspicious about there being no mention of any OS on that page.

Edit: forget the last sentence. Just found Win10 Home in the small print somewhere down the page.

Edit 2: If you can trust yourself to build one, or want to look around for someone to build it for you, this is an example of what you can get out of a mini-ITX system, both in performance and size. Unfortunately, a custom built mini ITX system (at least those I found) won't come cheaper than the above laptop (although the few reviews I found for this laptop aren't exactly enthusiastic - performance is ok, display s***s), but would be expandable.
 
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Shiro Akai

Shiro Akai
Old Duck said:
First, would someone post a screenshot of your graphics settings page? One of the things I miss about PC gaming is the ability to fine-tune the graphics options. If you have any additional commentary to add regarding these settings (like "Option A kills framerate but looks beautiful"), that would be great.
Click to expand...

Not on my gaming PC right now so no screen shot, sadly. But doesn't ED have auto-detect feature that adjusts its settings to fit your specs? My current rig is somewhat below what is considered the average these days and I don't have any performance issues. Game looks awesome, runs smoothly and I can't say a bad word about graphics.



Old Duck said:
Second, how customizable is the PC version? I know you can change your HUD color, and I've read there are custom shaders that allow you to clean your dirty windshield and visor, as well as get rid of all the "snow" in space and around planets. What else?
Click to expand...

What kind of customization you exactly expect. No official mods available, what is available is shop related, other things require file modding.


Old Duck said:
And finally, how do I convince my wife to allow me to spend $$$$ on a gaming laptop (really needs to be a laptop for reasons) when I just bought a new PS4 last year?
Click to expand...

Aah... peaking from under the heel, aren't we? :D If you need an argument then ask yourself first:
- does your wife ask you for permission to buy new dress or shoes?
- does your wife ask you for permission to buy new lot of cosmetics?
- does your wife ask you for permission to spend any amount of money towards the things that makes her happy?

Rest I'll leave in your hands...
 

colprice2002

C
Couple of thoughts:-

I had a pc system customised from "standard" - I chose water cooled CPU, Fractal case (more cooling fans), and an overclocked nVidia GPU.
The CPU runs at max 40C, the GPU will idle at 45-50C, then as I run Elite/Dishonored etc, its cooling fans spool up to keep it around 80 .
Any laptop has to have serious cooling to keep everything from cooking.

As an example of the types available
[URL="https://www.chillblast.com/desktop-pcs/choose-by-task/gaming-pc"/URL]

Do choose a reputable motherboard and power supply. It also helps if the motherboard has a good onboard sound system.
 

ajg74

ajg74
I run a PC mostly hacked together from old bits we had being unused.
i7 2600 on an old Dell XPS 8300 motherboard with 16gb of ram
Artic Freezer CPU cooler that was sat in a box not being used
MSI GTX770 4GB (
new Samsung Evo 250gb
random laptop HDD found in a draw for data storage, 7200rpm
Fractal Design Core case that used to house our old homeserver
new Corsair 650w psu (on sale at Currys PcWorld)
5 BeQuiet fans for the case
Cheap manual fan controller from Scan.

I have everything set to Ultra\high apart from shadow quality which is medium as I sometimes got fps dropping to 50 in station, (tbh I could have just left it at high and not have the fps monitor on!) at 1080p

My rig runs cool and quiet and have no performance issues, PC also runs Slack, Discord, has various webpages open such as ED forums, Inara etc etc.
 

Jonny Shiloh

Jonny Shiloh
Apart from graphics, the other brilliant thing about playing E D on the PC is that you have access to the great 3rd party tools via the API for recording your discoveries etc..., things like ED Discovery, EDSM and EGO.

My PC is pretty highly spec'ed but it's a desktop, not a laptop - I just prefer the horsepower and the larger screen of a desktop/monitor combo. The one thing I need is a better monitor capable of 4K but the Minister for Finance would likely go mental if I came home with a top of the range monitor just at the moment - the PC itself was a bone of contention for quite a while and any more tech purchases are definitely off the radar at the minute...

System Information as follows:

Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: 0310
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7600K CPU @ 3.80GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.8GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16318MB RAM
Page File: 6621MB used, 12128MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
DxDiag Version: 10.00.15063.0000 64bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 1080
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device
Display Memory: 16245 MB
Dedicated Memory: 8086 MB
Shared Memory: 8159 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: ACER S271HL
Monitor Model: S271HL
Monitor Id: ACR02CA
Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)
Output Type: HDMI

-------------
Sound Devices
-------------
Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0887&SUBSYS_104386C7&REV_1003
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Type: WDM
Driver Name: RTKVHD64.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.7910 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
Date and Size: 16/08/2016 00:00:00, 5276168 bytes
Other Files:
Driver Provider: Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
HW Accel Level: Basic
Cap Flags: 0xF1F
Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000
Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0
Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0
HW Memory: 0
Voice Management: No
EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No
I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No
Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No

Anyway, good luck with your search! o7
 

Snarfbuckle

S
just compare your wife's expediture in shoes, clothing, makeup and the rest and compare it to your meager expenses. Why do you really have to ASK? A good computer is always useful. But a stationary is both cheaper, better and upgradeable.
 

uliando

uliando
New terrain gen + my 970GTX, winter is coming! Brace yourselves. I thing I will end up lowering details. :(

Like what the hell is going on? Are planets CPU or GPU limited? I have many unused cores I think we should use them :)
 
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