Hardware & Technical CPU & GPU help!

[Hellcat3105]

Hi everyone,

I had to sell my 4690k and 390x to help my wife out financially and now I need cheap replacements to run Horizons. Wanted to see how it runs on other people's set ups similar to what I am looking at. Need to spend as little as possible, new as I'll have pay monthly on finance, and I'll be upgrading in a year or so.

So does anyone run Horizons on a G3258 overclocked or an i3 4170? With a GTX 960 4gb or r9 380 4gb at 1080? What settings do you use to get 60fps? Or will this setup not give 60fps? Any advice would be great.

Thanks all

 

[MickyG1982]

I use an Athlon 860k, A88X based motherboard, 16Gb DDR3 and a 2GB Asus 960 Strix. The processor is in the ballpark of an I3, performing most tasks as well as a higher end one and closing in on a lower end i5 for others(though for other things a Pentium can outperform it) .

It manages to run Horizons on mostly high and ultra settings with 60fps in space, 55-60 in stations and 40 plus on planets. The 4gb model of the 960 should perform about the same but is less likely to run out of memory and display low res textures on planets.

Frame rates will be lower in crowded systems such as the starter ones but that is to be expected with the way the current game engine works and will happen with any setup.

If you really want to go cheap then your best bet is to buy the components and assemble it yourself. It also helps when you are short of available funds as you can buy the setup bit by bit over a couple of months. You might find that you can build a better system in this way rather than buying one outright.

*edit* looks like that is what you are planning to do anyways.

 

[Hellcat3105]

Thanks. How does the Athlon 860k perform in general? I had considered selling my z97 motherboard and going for an 860k with an A88x motherboard and clocking the nuts out of it. I've looked at benchmark reviews but they aren't as useful as opinions from owners. Would work out about £20 cheaper than just buying an i3 after I've sold my old board. To be honest I only really play E, Grid and World of Tanks, so good fps in those at high 1080p for as cheap as possible and I'll be happy.

 

[MickyG1982]

Basically, for anything that relies on multicore processing the 860k will be better than the i3 4170 (it does have 2 more of them) but, the i3 beats the 860k on anything that relies on single core processing. The 860K overclocks really well on stock cooling too, mine is currently sat quite happily at 4.2 Ghz & could easily be pushed up to 4.4 with an aftermarket fan & heat sink. If you don't want to buy a GPU just yet consider the 7850k or the 7870k if you go down the AMD route. Those are both APU's by which I mean they both have on board graphics on the processor die itself (for these two it is around about AMD r7 250 level) and would be able to run ED & EDH without an additional graphics cards at lower settings, leaving you the option of upgrading the card at a later date. The i3 would not be able to do the same.

All that said there is one huge glaring problem with any FM2+ processor at the moment, there is no upgrade path from it. In a year or two, once you are back up & running & can afford some upgrades you'll find yourself having to buy a whole new rig rather than just change the processor. I can't wholeheartedly recommend the AMD over the core I3 (my reply was just for a comparison) for that very reason.

As for the i3, a very good processor, especially for single core performance, it's also very cheap on amazon at the moment so well worth looking at, especially since you already have the rest of the kit. It also has one very major advantage over the AMD processor, it can be changed for something better further down the line. As much as I am an AMD fanboy for processors (I have been since they actually were faster than Intel at everything) it would not be a good idea for you to make that jump to the dark side at the moment even for the saving of £20.

 

[GammaZ]

Well, i tried to run ED on pentium G2130, it did not end well. High hyperspace/supercruise transition times and inconsistent framerates everywhere with the exception fo the empty space (in solo). With constant 100% CPU load. Also anything running in backgroud (like a browser, or skype) reduce performance even more. That system had GTX750 2Gb, 10Gb of ram and 1920x1080 screen.
Just changing back to old phenom II 955/8Gb made things a lot better with the same gpu, i can get 60 FPS everywhere except planets and stations.
And while i3 has slightly higher frequency than those pentium and has HT i do not think it will change things that much... i think it will be a good idea to buy either low-end i5, of go AMD, but instead of using FM2(+) to use AM3(+), something like FX6300 would be more than enough IMO.

 

[AceFlares]

My FX6300, cheap MSI 970a chipset mobo and 8gb ram plus an Asus GTX 950 OC 2GB run ED64 at max settings (except for shadows I haven't tried them on max yet) at 1080p 60fps. With v-sync off it manages 60+ in station & res sites. Cheap as chips and runs other games like BF4 on a reasonable mix of medium/high/ultra. I recently gave up and RMA'd my R7 370 OC. The difference between the 370 and 950 is quite staggering considering the small price difference and a 120gb SSD was bundled with the GTX950 also. No down clocking or third party clock fixing software required. Elite almost looks like a different game with the Nvidia card.

 

[4gui4]

I planned on these settings to fit my computer, with your response I see that works well