Good enough specs for Odyssey?

karamu

karamu
Although I still love my PS4 account, I recently discovered my laptop has a Thunderbolt 3 port and is therefore capable of utlising an external GPU (I have tried running Odyssey using the built in GTX1050Ti GPU - it runs but at a very poor frame rate). So, I'm thinking about using it to play Odyssey / Live galaxy.

I have done a bit of research and have found people successfully doing this with my laptop model so it seems like a viable option. Speaking to a PC gamer friend he has made a suggestion RE a graphics card to go for. I thought I would ask here if anyone has any experience of a similarly specced set up and if so how well (or not) it runs Odyssey?

CPU:
Intel Core i7-8750H - I think it's quad core running at 2.6ghz
16GB DDR4 RAM

GPU: (as noted will be housed externally and connected using Thunderbolt 3 which I belive is x4 PCIE connection).
Radeon RX 6550XT - have yet to buy this but will hopefully get an 8GB model.

My monitor is 1440 so I want to run at that resolution, could I expect a decent frame rate?

Any thoughts anyone?
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
karamu said:
Really, is Odyssey that resource hungry?! Recommended specs on Steam are 6GB RAM.
Click to expand...
No. It does apparently put more strain on CPU rather than GPU.

I was running a Ryzen 5 3600x which is slightly better than the CPU you've listed and with GPUs either side of yours I was able to run High Graphics on a 4k monitor. I used to get around 40-50fps on foot and well above 60 in space.
This latest update has definitely made some positive improvements for me as with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Sapphire Radeon 6700xt I'm running at stable 60+fps on Ultra in 4k.

The only thing I'd say is you need to be aware there are a few issues with AMD 6000 series cards and Elite. Both Frontier and AMD have tried to sort it out over the years, but neither have fully done it. Some issues with shadows and orbit lines looking strange, there is a thread about it in this sub forum if it bothers you that much (I personally don't use it)
 

Shurimal

Shurimal
karamu said:
Really, is Odyssey that resource hungry?! Recommended specs on Steam are 6GB RAM.
Click to expand...
For 1080p 6 gigs should be OK; for 1440p I'd say 8 gigs is the absolute bare minimum. Bear in mind that Elite uses GPU for terrain generation; if your GPU is not up to the task you'll get geometry pop-ins and lag when flying over the planet surface ate 200+ m/s—that's my main problem with my old 4GB RX570.

As for your specs, I suspect that your CPU will be bottlenecking first. 4 cores at only 2 6 Ghz is not nearly good enough today. 6 cores and 4+ Ghz is much more comfortable. AMD 5600 CPU + mobo is probably the best bang for buck. Get PCIe 4 mobo if you want to use AMD GPU-s below 7700! 7600 and others have neutered PCIe connection at 8x or even 4x lanes that'll be a bottleneck on PCIe 3 mobo.
 

rootsrat

Volunteer Moderator
rootsrat
Note that Elite has minor graphics issue with the AMD cards. Not sure of the exact details, I'm sure someone with more knowledge can share the details.
Depending on how severe it is, you may want to consider nVidia GPU instead.

/ninjad :D
 

Morbad

Morbad
Odyssey is more demanding/less well optimized than the recommended specs would suggest.

That said, the RX 6650 XT (which is about as fast as a 1080 Ti) will handle Odyssey pretty well, aside from the orbit line issues, which have a community fix. 8GiB of VRAM is generally enough for any settings that would be sane on this card. More VRAM would still be nice as Odyssey will allocate quite a bit given the opportunity and any time that a GPU attached by a PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface sees any kind of VRAM contention, you'll feel it.

CPU wise, the i7-8750H is a bit weak. Odyssey isn't hugely well threaded and doesn't need a ton of cores, but 4c/8t is still a bit low (correction, this is a 6c/12t part, which is sufficient in terms of core count). Odyssey's main game loop and main render threads are also extremely demanding and will benefit from the fastest CPU cores one can get. On top of that, the game easily become cache/memory performance constrained and laptops rarely have fast memory out of the box.

The system will run Odyssey at 1440p, but will be CPU/memory subsystem limited to well below 60 fps at times in on-foot CZs and likely GPU limited below 60 in station concourses and some complex settlements. Space will be entirely fine, but that's pretty much a given.

rootsrat said:
Note that Elite has minor graphics issue with the AMD cards. Not sure of the exact details, I'm sure someone with more knowledge can share the details.
Depending on how severe it is, you may want to consider nVidia GPU instead.
Click to expand...

If two cards were otherwise identical in performance and price, I might edge toward NVIDIA for this game, but I don't have any problems recommending an AMD GPU at this point, even for the RX 6000 series, which is the last one with orbit line problems. The fix works well and is not hard to apply. Everything else works without particular issue.
 
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karamu

karamu
OK, thanks for the feedback folks - getting the message that the CPU is the weak link of my proposed set up.

I have no budget to buy a whole set up - the thinking was that this is a laptop I currently own and an external GPU would be a relatively cheap way to upgrade it.

I'm not about to rush out and buy anything anytime soon so will need to give the matter some thought.
 

Morbad

Morbad
I'm not sure an external GPU is a particularly cheap way to go about things, unless you already have the GPU enclosure and power supply for it. The cheapest enclosures I'm seeing are as expensive as an RX 6650 XT itself.
 

martin77

M
i play fine here @2560x1440:
CPU intel I5 4690K @3.5 Ghz
16 GB RAM (DDR3!!) @2400 Mhz
NVIDIA GTX1080 TI with 11 GB VRAM

so my Core system is nearly 7 years old now (the gtx is the newest) and it runs well.
I plan to upgrade a new system in the next months but yeah, i can play even high ground combat zones well
 

Morbad

Morbad
martin77 said:
i can play even high ground combat zones well
Click to expand...

I've had much more powerful CPUs produce performance I don't consider acceptable in large settlement ground CZs.

"Well" is pretty subjective and I think the OP will need to quantify their performance target to get useful feedback.
 

karamu

karamu
Morbad said:
I'm not sure an external GPU is a particularly cheap way to go about things, unless you already have the GPU enclosure and power supply for it. The cheapest enclosures I'm seeing are as expensive as an RX 6650 XT itself.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you *can spend several £100s on just the enclosure but there are cheaper options. I've found a PCIE to Thunderbolt adapter on Ali Express for around £50 which has been reported to work with my laptop on an eGPU forum I've been reading. Power supply doesn't look expensive then the card itself.
 
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Morbad

Morbad
karamu said:
Yeah, you *can spend several £100s on just the enclosure but there are cheaper options. I've found a PCIE to Thunderbolt adapter on Ali Express for around £50 which has been reported to with my laptop on an eGPU forum I've been reading. Power supply doesn't look expensive then the card itself.
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound too bad.

You can always try the external GPU solution, and if your CPU holds you back to an unacceptable degree, move that GPU into a new desktop build, or use it with a new laptop, at some later point. In any case, your experience would certainly be improved over than laptop 1050 Ti.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Northpin said:
the i7-8750H is a 6c12t CPU
Click to expand...

So it is. My mistake.

That will help, slightly, but the main render thread and game loop are still going to be constrained by the performance of the two fastest cores in the system and how quickly they can access memory.
 

karamu

karamu
Morbad said:
So it is. My mistake.

That will help, slightly, but the main render thread and game loop are still going to be constrained by the performance of the two fastest cores in the system and how quickly they can access memory.
Click to expand...
To be fair I said I *thought it was a quad core CPU so my mistake too.
 

karamu

karamu
OK, apologies, I have given you the wrong CPU - I was quoting from the spec page of what I thought was my laptop model but I seem to have to got the wrong one. Have used the OS About function and discovered my CPU is actually:

Intel Core i7-7700HQ, 4 core, 8 thread, 2.8ghz

Which is worse than I thought which presumably means it will be even more of a bottleneck?
 

Morbad

Morbad
karamu said:
Which is worse than I thought which presumably means it will be even more of a bottleneck?
Click to expand...

Yes. The architecture is similar, but it has 2 fewer cores, 50% less cache, and a boost clock a full GHz lower than the i7-8750H.

The 1050 Ti is still the overwhelming limiting factor of the system, but the CPU would be the bottleneck for a lot of Odyssey content if you had an RX 6650XT or something faster.
 
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