Hardware & Technical How minimum are the minimum specifications?

EvilJonUK

E
After having a quick go at a friends house I am interested in buying Elite, but I'm not sure my laptop has the guts to run it and I would rather not spend £40 on something that I can't run. So if anyone has anything similar to the spec below can you let me know if it works.

1.6 GHz AMD A6-3410MX (Quad Core)
8GB DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6490M (512 MB GDDR5 dedicated)

The A6 has its own onboard graphics as well which I believe helps out the 6490M

Any advice would be great.
 
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Cody

Cody
You should edit the first post, in that case. I know very little about laptops, but I reckon yours would struggle to run ED.
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
It will probably struggle.

The minimums are the very least. Mine is a little above the minimum and I get frequent screen stalling. Especially problematic when I leave Hyperspace and find myself belting toward a star, unable to pull out for a few secs.

I do wish the designers had written a few power saving options, such as turning off some of the superfluous graphics, or even reducing the overall resolution, somewhat more than the rather limited options that are available.

But still. There's loads of other outstanding priorities, including implementing a few of the more interesting features. Even putting in a few more, such as a players market for example. Even some engineering. I mean to say, after a while, being preposterously wealthy does wear a bit thin.
 

huwthomas

huwthomas
You could get your friend to log in and install/validate the game on your laptop, then see how well it works. Of course it would be his game licence and his commander, so he must obviously keep his login credentials secret! I also think he'd have to revalidate his computer again afterwards.

I believe the above would be acceptable in licensing terms -- given the always-on nature of the DRM it's not a mechanism whereby the game could be pirated.
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
azdour said:
The minimum are not the least - it was the specs of the machines Frontier use. There are plenty of people on running the game on less - me for one (E8600 core2duo 3Ghz, Vista 64bit)
Click to expand...

Good to hear that.

Do you get much screen stalling?
 

EvilJonUK

E
Managed to use a friends account to give it a try and it all seems fine, so have now purchased :)

Unfortunately he had bought it through Steam and I got it through Frontier so now I have to watch the download bar again :(
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
EvilJonUK said:
Managed to use a friends account to give it a try and it all seems fine, so have now purchased :)

Unfortunately he had bought it through Steam and I got it through Frontier so now I have to watch the download bar again :(
Click to expand...

Personally, I think Steam is not the best choice when you can download it on its own. The bandwidth is tight enough, can't see a lot of point sharing it with Steam, plus their advertising, then paying for that privilege.

Good news about the game working on your machine though.
 

PaleGringo

PaleGringo
Just saw this and it piqued my interest. I found out that I cannot run it on my home laptop, and that was a bummer. Here's my spec:

Samsung R510
Intel i7 Quad Core (1.6GHz)
4GB RAM
nVidia GeForce GT 330 (2GB)
1366x768 (32-bit @ 60Hz)

Similar to EvilJonUK, I figured it would be pushing the requirements. The game does install, does load, and does recommend Medium settings, but my laptop has thermal issues from pegging all four cores at 100% utilization. I can't even get the ship out of the dock without the game grinding to a standstill.

If I keep pouting at the screen, though, I might convince the Mrs. that an upgrade to this laptop is in order. Go figure, it works great for "normal" use, just not ED.
 

JeffRyan

JeffRyan
PaleGringo said:
Just saw this and it piqued my interest. I found out that I cannot run it on my home laptop, and that was a bummer. Here's my spec:

Samsung R510
Intel i7 Quad Core (1.6GHz)
4GB RAM
nVidia GeForce GT 330 (2GB)
1366x768 (32-bit @ 60Hz)

Similar to EvilJonUK, I figured it would be pushing the requirements. The game does install, does load, and does recommend Medium settings, but my laptop has thermal issues from pegging all four cores at 100% utilization. I can't even get the ship out of the dock without the game grinding to a standstill.

If I keep pouting at the screen, though, I might convince the Mrs. that an upgrade to this laptop is in order. Go figure, it works great for "normal" use, just not ED.
Click to expand...

What worries me there is your graphics card. I have a 650 GTX which seems to be the minimum to get a 'good' fps going with decent settings. Your machine is fabulous, much better than my i3 machine, but your graphics card is going to let it down. More RAM would be nicer too I think.
 

PaleGringo

PaleGringo
JeffRyan said:
What worries me there is your graphics card. I have a 650 GTX which seems to be the minimum to get a 'good' fps going with decent settings. Your machine is fabulous, much better than my i3 machine, but your graphics card is going to let it down. More RAM would be nicer too I think.
Click to expand...

And, of course with any laptop, that's an integrated feature. I know my NEXT one will have a 1080p or better screen on it for sure. If you could feel the heat coming off the exhaust side of this thing when I have ED though... no wonder they said a Quad 2GHz is 'reasonable'

Thankfully, my office computer can run this just fine, so I'm not out $60 to play altogether. Bad news is lower productivity and only getting 5 or less hours in a week! >_<
 

Loetmichel

Loetmichel
I have ED running on an old Dell Precision M4400

Core2 duo 2,4 ghz,
4gb ram,
Quadro 770M 512mb GPU

Althoug it runs only at minium Grapics and slows down to about 13 fps in stations it works well outside stations, even in RES, wit up to 30fps.

 
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