Best CPU (Intel) for Elite Dangerous?

Hi there Commanders. I happen to have MSI MEG Z490 ACE MoBo on my hands and I'm planning to build my next PC on it. I'm not using my computers for any heavy stuff, gaming and watching movies by the most part. I wander which of the Comet Lakes would do better for Elite Dangerous? From what I know some games prefer higher clock speed and not requiring too many cores and some games would love more cores rather than clock speed. I could probably slap in it i9 10900K and call it a day but I'm not sure if it worth buying it these days. They rather overpriced right now, besides Rocket Lakes should be out in 4 - 5 month or so and I would probably get one of those for this kind of cash. I'm looking at highest quality graphics settings at 1080p. Any ideas appreciated.
 
For the game as it stands today, if you are not looking to play in VR, almost anything you can buy today will be fine. If you have extra headroom in your budget you'll get more graphics quality oomph by putting it into a better GPU, anyway.

That said, Odyssey is coming out sometime next year, and we don't know yet whether or how much the hardware requirements will increase. The new planetary tech they're previewing certainly looks like it will take more cycles than what we have today, but nothing known for certain.
 
1080p isn't very demanding. Neither is ED.

I always build to the capability of the monitor I'm going to use. Remember that if you have a 60Hz monitor, then you're not going to exceed 60FPS no matter how much you spend on CPU/GPU.

If you're only going 1080p 60Hz then I'd likely just go with the cheapest CPU I could find for that board as long as single core performance is decent.

Depending on your budget I'd probably go with the fastest Core i5 LGA 1200 I could afford to give yourself a bit of headroom.
 
I'm not using my computers for any heavy stuff, gaming and watching movies by the most part.


Gaming IS the heavy stuff. It will stretch both your CPU and GPU to the limit at some point, especially if you start playing one of the newer games. ED currently isn't too bad since it is a few years old now, but who knows what Odyssey will bring.

With most of the "heavy stuff" it won't matter if it takes a little longer to render something, or the program stutters a bit, but you will matter in pretty much any game.

So like GJ51 says, go for the fastest CPU you can afford, but also leave yourself enough cash to get a decent GPU to go with it as well
 
1080p isn't very demanding. Neither is ED.

I always build to the capability of the monitor I'm going to use. Remember that if you have a 60Hz monitor, then you're not going to exceed 60FPS no matter how much you spend on CPU/GPU.

If you're only going 1080p 60Hz then I'd likely just go with the cheapest CPU I could find for that board as long as single core performance is decent.

Depending on your budget I'd probably go with the fastest Core i5 LGA 1200 I could afford to give yourself a bit of headroom.
I'm actually shopping for the monitor as well. When I bought my current monitor long time ago priority #1 was its size, so it is maxed out at 1440x900 at 65 Hz or so. LOL. What I want is proper 1080p monitor with high refresh rate (something like this https://www.microcenter.com/product...-hd-240hz-hdmi-dp-freesync-led-gaming-monitor). I was actually looking at i5 10600K as one of the options.
 
Gaming IS the heavy stuff. It will stretch both your CPU and GPU to the limit at some point, especially if you start playing one of the newer games. ED currently isn't too bad since it is a few years old now, but who knows what Odyssey will bring.

With most of the "heavy stuff" it won't matter if it takes a little longer to render something, or the program stutters a bit, but you will matter in pretty much any game.

So like GJ51 says, go for the fastest CPU you can afford, but also leave yourself enough cash to get a decent GPU to go with it as well
I see. GPU is also in my shopping list. Right now I'm going to plug GTX 1070 Ti in it just because I have it laying around and it should be OK for transferring all the programs from the old PC and setting things up and such. later on, when this new PC goes into service I'm looking to get RTX 2080 Super, it should do the trick.
 
Unless you manage to get a really, really good deal on the RTX 2080 Super, I would look at the new RTX 3000 series.
 
If you intend to use the monitor and CPU you've listed above, the 3070 should be more than enough to drive that monitor at full native specs and be more than enough for ED with plenty of room for just about anything else you throw at it.

For ED - I'd probably look for something in the same price range at G-Sync 144 MHz and higher native resolution.

A few $ more


From what I've read most casual players can't see the difference in the refresh rate and only professional FPS gamers might get a slight edge at 240 or more.

I'd go for better resolution at 144Hz on a larger screen unless you have desk size issues to deal with.

Even give "Curved" some consideration.


Size matters...
 
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ED is far more likely to be GPU limited than CPU limited and any fast 4c/8t or 6c/6t CPU will be more than sufficent for most scenarios...though VR can benefit from a little more.
 
If you intend to use the monitor and CPU you've listed above, the 3070 should be more than enough to drive that monitor at full native specs and be more than enough for ED with plenty of room for just about anything else you throw at it.

For ED - I'd probably look for something in the same price range at G-Sync 144 MHz and higher native resolution.

A few $ more


From what I've read most casual players can't see the difference in the refresh rate and only professional FPS gamers might get a slight edge at 240 or more.

I'd go for better resolution at 144Hz on a larger screen unless you have desk size issues to deal with.

Even give "Curved" some consideration.


Size matters...
I like those monitors very much and you're right, higher resolution is better. Unfortunately there's no way I can fit 27" display where I need it to be without replacing some furniture around and I'm trying to avoid it. Have to stick with something smaller. I think 24" or so is my limit.
 
You certainly don't need an i9 to game.

Maybe if you where aiming for that new 360hz monitor and trying to reach 200+fps at all times.
But any 6 core cpu of the last few years can handle at least 120fps easily in 2d.

I'd much rather recommend an i5 or an i7, than an i9 unless you really needed the extra for a workstation build to justify the cost.
Put the difference into a 3080.
 
You certainly don't need an i9 to game.

Maybe if you where aiming for that new 360hz monitor and trying to reach 200+fps at all times.
But any 6 core cpu of the last few years can handle at least 120fps easily in 2d.

I'd much rather recommend an i5 or an i7, than an i9 unless you really needed the extra for a workstation build to justify the cost.
Put the difference into a 3080.
Yea, makes sense. I'm leaning towards i5 10600K so far. i7 10700k is my second choice but considering rather small performance gain it is too expensive.
 
You can measure that difference but It will not be noticeable. likely 1-2%
And it will not have an impact on your graphic performance as you CPU is likely not a bottleneck in your system. It might be with other games which use a lot of AI like Planet Zoo with all its 'visitors'

You never mentioned your current CPU so it is hard to estimate your potential CPU power improvement. This 10600K costs like 250 dollar/euro. You could guestimate your cpu power increase to see if that investment is worth it. Tho I would suggest to invest this money in eye candy as stated before. A monitor upgrade is what you really need. This is what you are looking at and 1440x900 is.. Well.. Ancient?
 
If you've got a GTX 1070Ti you've already won the battle. Stick it in anything it fits and it will do everything you need for ED.
 
What about RAM speed? From what I see i7 10700K supports DDR4-2933 and i5 10600K supports DDR4-2666. Wouldn't it make some difference or it is also negligible?

The official support here is irrelevant. The vast majority of either of these parts can handle memory speeds well in excess of 4000MT/s and you need huge differences in memory performance to register any perceptible difference in gaming performance, in most cases.

Anyway, the sweet spot for memory price vs. performance is in the 3200-3600MT/s ballpark.
 
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