Engineers New PC build for ED

[DHMeyer]

I've been playing ED on my laptop for a while (Dell XPS 9550, i5, 16GB RAM, GTX 950M) and that was doing fine, I didn't have any issues with that setup. But I decided to sell the laptop and build myself a proper desktop again, which I will be doing some time next month. I don't want to spend a ton of money, so I was wondering where I can cut some corners. One of them is going for Haswell architecture instead of Skylake (I'll be buying pre-loved hardware), H97 or Z97 motherboard, 8GB DDR3, SSD.
I don't use VR and don't play in 4k, I'm talking about stutter-less gaming in 1080p. Other things I may be playing on the computer may include stuff like Fallout 4, perhaps Osiris: New Dawn and perhaps Star Citizen if they finish that.

So, questions. Is Elite CPU heavy? My options for a CPU are either i3 4150 or i5 4590. Does it give me significant advantage (better frame rates in Elite) to go for the i5 over i3?
Second thing, GPU. I'm thinking about GTX 950 or perhaps RX 460. I'm leaning more towards GTX 950, but I was wondering what experiences people have with both.

Thanks for the answers.

 

[StiTch]

Elite is alas notoriously CPU heavy.

Definitely go for the better specs where you can. I just picked up VR and am looking to upgrade myself.

You can make settings tweaks to get the best performance out of it, and you'd be amazed what ED can run on with respectable/good quality, but to fundamentally answer your question, yes ED is CPU heavy.

EDIT: Also, go nvidia. Just...do it. Please. AMD is like a Saitek HOTAS...it can look as good as it wants, everyone that's used one complains about it falling apart and causing hassle.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Elite is alas notoriously CPU heavy.

Definitely go for the better specs where you can. I just picked up VR and am looking to upgrade myself.

You can make settings tweaks to get the best performance out of it, and you'd be amazed what ED can run on with respectable/good quality, but to fundamentally answer your question, yes ED is CPU heavy.

Is it that CPU heavy. I am using an old i5 2500k in VR and it's fine. And it seems to only get 50% usage at the worst.

EDIT: Also, go nvidia. Just...do it. Please. AMD is like a Saitek HOTAS...it can look as good as it wants, everyone that's used one complains about it falling apart and causing hassle.

This is factualy incorrect and pure ball. AMD cards are very capable with good driver support as well (thier driver support was lacking in the past, but that is well and truely in the past).
The only card that I ever had fall apart and explode on me was an Nvidia card.

OP, the i5 will be better and any of the recent cheaper cards from AMD or Nvidia will do a good job (Nvidia 1060 or AMD RX480). The 950 is a bit weak, there is the new 1050ti coming out which will be better or the RX470.

 

[mossfoot]

Is it that CPU heavy. I am using an old i5 2500k in VR and it's fine. And it seems to only get 50% usage at the worst.

Yeah, I was confused by that as well. As far as I know, Elite is relatively CPU friendly, at least compared to comparable games. I have a mid-range setup and am getting 60fps most of the time at max settings, so I'm happy.

 

[StiTch]

Is it that CPU heavy. I am using an old i5 2500k in VR and it's fine.

I am sure you are I also use older hardware, which currently seems indomitable in terms of what I can throw at it.

ED is CPU heavy though. I can't give you anything precise, but there have been many discussions on it, many of them actually relating to VR.

It isn't to say you can't play the game with a mid range CPU. Not at all. And you can run it well.

Just that of all the work going on, ED seems comparatively more CPU heavy than most other games - frankly these days "most" games though are largely GPU reliant, and put much less stress on the CPU than people seem to think.

 

[theEmohawk]

That's the quite possibly first time I've heard E described as CPU heavy.

I currently play on an 6600K, but before I upgraded my rig I was using an old Core2Duo E6600... that, alongside a GTX960, wasn't often maxed out by ED playing at 1440p. Now I was using that rig before Horizons, but I know people playing Horizons with some aging CPUs. Put your money into the GPU, then go with the best CPU you can afford, I'd be wary about dropping to an i3 (but then again I'll mention that before Horizons I was running on a Core2Duo).

 

[StiTch]

That's the quite possibly first time I've heard E described as CPU heavy.

I currently play on an 6600K, but before I upgraded my rig I was using an old Core2Duo E6600... that, alongside a GTX960, wasn't often maxed out by ED playing at 1440p. Now I was using that rig before Horizons, but I know people playing Horizons with some aging CPUs. Put your money into the GPU, then go with the best CPU you can afford, I'd be wary about dropping to an i3 (but then again I'll mention that before Horizons I was running on a Core2Duo).

May just be a VR thing then. I know that my CPU is doing a fair bit of work these days, and I got some VR improvements with some clever CPU overclocking.

In any case...my point about nvidia still stands. Don't go for the AMD

 

[Jon flint]

That's the quite possibly first time I've heard E described as CPU heavy.

Yeah, I've always thought Elite to be quite light on the CPU. I've got an old i7 4790 (4GHz) and its usually idling around 15-20% usage when playing, doesn't get above 45-50 degrees C even on the stock intel air cooler.

It's possible that if you're trying to hit 144fps for a 144Hz monitor then some CPU bottlenecking might occur on slower CPUs but if you're only aiming for a 60fps experience any old potato CPU will do. My old laptop had a 2nd gen i5 and even that wasn't fully utilised when playing elite.

 

[babelfisch]

What FPS and detail do you want? A 950 and i3 will not be enough to run Horizons at 60 FPS and max settings.

 

[theEmohawk]

May just be a VR thing then. I know that my CPU is doing a fair bit of work these days.

Nah. My 6660K doesn't break a sweat when I'm running the Vive.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

May just be a VR thing then. I know that my CPU is doing a fair bit of work these days.

In any case...my point about nvidia still stands. Don't go for the AMD

I am using VR at the moment and it is fine. And no your point doesn't stand. AMD cards are very good, just as Nvidia cards are.

I am using an AMD Fury and an i5 2500k with my Oculus Rift CV1. It is great and I have zero issues with it, with most the settings on high.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Thrustmaster wins over Saitek.

Get as much memory, graphics card, and CPU as you can afford. It still won't be enough when they upgrade the game some more.

 

[DHMeyer]

Elite is alas notoriously CPU heavy.

Definitely go for the better specs where you can. I just picked up VR and am looking to upgrade myself.

You can make settings tweaks to get the best performance out of it, and you'd be amazed what ED can run on with respectable/good quality, but to fundamentally answer your question, yes ED is CPU heavy.

EDIT: Also, go nvidia. Just...do it. Please. AMD is like a Saitek HOTAS...it can look as good as it wants, everyone that's used one complains about it falling apart and causing hassle.

Thanks for advice. I will definitely not use VR anytime soon, I'm planning to put the whole computer together for less than Oculus Rift DK2 But yeah, I definitely want to have a nice experience playing in 1080 (that's the max my display can do and it has other features I need, so the display stays). As for NVidia, I am more inclined to go with that because of the driver issues with Radeon, however Radeons used to be better for image editing. I have a Radeon in my old laptop, 6 years in use and still doing OK. When it comes to reliability of hardware, I'm not too fussed, most of the components come from just a few factories, but drivers do make a difference for sure. The reason I was thinking about RX 460 is that is has slightly lower power draw than GTX 950, but not that much and it's more likely that I get stronger PSU anyway.

 

[StiTch]

I am using VR at the moment and it is fine. And no your point doesn't stand. AMD cards are very good, just as Nvidia cards are.

I am using an AMD Fury and an i5 2500k with my Oculus Rift CV1. It is great and I have zero issues with it, with most the settings on high.

It's like some people live for contradictions

I seem to be running a different game to y'all.

But no, really, as someone that has previously worked with troubleshooting involving graphical issues, I've heard many many worse things about AMD. The CPU thing on I'll go with because I run a GPU that's considerably overpowered compared to my CPU, but as far as GPUs go, it's like intel vs. AMD CPUs. You can pretty up AMD CPUs as much as you want, they are just not as stable as intel. Same goes for GPUs here.

 

[DHMeyer]

Thrustmaster wins over Saitek.

Get as much memory, graphics card, and CPU as you can afford. It still won't be enough when they upgrade the game some more.

I use Thrustmaster (T-Flight Hotas X) and can't say I love it, it feels cheap and flimsy, but it's actually built pretty well. At least the stick, throttle is a nightmare and the cable connecting them is a stupid idea. Stick is very OK though, especially after some tweaks.

I can afford going for something more expensive, but if I go for completely new equipment, I'm getting a hit from pound exchange rate (should have bought desktop instead of laptop few months ago). Hence the idea of going for Haswell instead. There doesn't seem to be much improvement when it comes to Skylake and DDR4 (more energy efficient, not significantly more powerful), so I decided to save more cash for a rainy day instead and don't repeat mistakes of the past (buying top shelf hardware only).

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What FPS and detail do you want? A 950 and i3 will not be enough to run Horizons at 60 FPS and max settings.

Well, I'm looking for mostly max settings, 1080res, and somewhere around 60fps in space/combat (not necessarily around the stations), except for the stuff that hits hardware the mosth (AA, ambient occlusion etc).

Thanks for the info guys, looks like i5 would be something to look for.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

It's like some people live for contradictions

I seem to be running a different game to y'all.

But no, really, as someone that has previously worked with troubleshooting involving graphical issues, I've heard many many worse things about AMD. The CPU thing on I'll go with because I run a GPU that's considerably overpowered compared to my CPU, but as far as GPUs go, it's like intel vs. AMD CPUs. You can pretty up AMD CPUs as much as you want, they are just not as stable as intel. Same goes for GPUs here.

AMD CPU's are not very good at the moment, but I am sorry, the GPU's are prefectly fine. Nvidia has had it's fair share of driver issue as well.

I know a lot of people who use AMD GPU's with zero issues like me.

My old AMD CPU was incredible stable, but that was a long time ago, have no idea what they are like now apart from the fact that they are underpowered.

I am not too sure you know what you are talking about when it comes to AMD GPU's.

My previous GPU the 270x was perfectly stable as well and played loads of different games without issues including this one before horizons came out.

 

[StiTch]

AMD CPU's are not very good at the moment, but I am sorry, the GPU's are prefectly fine. Nvidia has had it's fair share of driver issue as well.

I know a lot of people who use AMD GPU's with zero issues like me.

My old AMD CPU was incredible stable, but that was a long time ago, have no idea what they are like now apart from the fact that they are underpowered.

I am not too sure you know what you are talking about when it comes to AMD GPU's.

My previous GPU the 270x was perfectly stable as well and played loads of different games without issues including this one before horizons came out.

I don't like talking about previous work, but I was recently troubleshooting a batch of issues related to some rendering/printing.

I won't go into detail about that and the following wasn't the main area of work, but we basically had some stability issues with low-mid end AMD GPUs. The quality was fine but any application or rendering crashing always came from the folks with the AMD cards.

Of course, shortly after the whole issue was resolved when the core network architecture changed and they decided to lose the desktops in favour of high end laptops (a disaster story for another day )

Also had bad accounts of them through several out of work "acquaintances" (shady thing to put on a forum, I know)

I won't say they're the worst thing since mouldy bread...I don't intrinsically have something against them. But I would struggle to find a reason you'd pick them over nvidia.

 

[Robert Maynard]

AMD's Zen CPUs are just around the corner - offering significantly improved IPC compared to Bulldozer / Excavator and 8 true cores with simultaneous multi-threading (analogous to Intel's Hyper-Threading).

I plan to use an 8C/16T Zen in my next build (if its performance lives up to the leaks so far).

Currently running an FX-8350 / RX 480 / 32GB / 990FX build (that the basis of is quite some age now) and it's giving up to 60FPS at 2560x1440 Ultra.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I don't like talking about previous work, but I was recently troubleshooting a batch of issues related to some rendering/printing.

I won't go into detail about that and the following wasn't the main area of work, but we basically had some stability issues with low-mid end AMD GPUs. The quality was fine but any application or rendering crashing always came from the folks with the AMD cards.

Of course, shortly after the whole issue was resolved when the core network architecture changed and they decided to lose the desktops in favour of high end laptops (a disaster story for another day )

Also had bad accounts of them through several out of work "acquaintances" (shady thing to put on a forum, I know)

I won't say they're the worst thing since mouldy bread. But I would struggle to find a reason you'd pick them over nvidia.

Cost really. My AMD Fury cost less then £300 a year ago and it has as good a perfomance as a GTX1070 in most DX12 games. So pretty happy with it really.
To get something as good would have cost me over a £100 pounds on top with Nvidia.

As stated, I have no issues with any of my AMD cards and only had issues the an Nvidia card, but I know that is a one off. I have really no preference and have no issues with either vendor and I certainly wont tell someone not use an AMD or Nvidia cards for gaming purposes, they just as good as each other.

I can't talk about your personal experiences, just my own and others I know. Maybe you where just unlucky.

 

[StiTch]

Cost really. My AMD Fury cost less then £300 a year ago and it has as good a perfomance as a GTX1070 in most DX12 games. So pretty happy with it really.
To get something as good would have cost me over a £100 pounds on top with Nvidia.

As stated, I have no issues with any of my AMD cards and only had issues the an Nvidia card, but I know that is a one off. I have really no preference and have no issues with either vendor and I certainly wont tell someone not use an AMD or Nvidia cards for gaming purposes, they just as good as each other.

I can't talk about your personal experiences, just my own and others I know. Maybe you where just unlucky.

I don't know why, but I just laughed out loud at the thought of referring to that office as "unlucky". Unlucky it certainly was :')

Am hoping AMD step up in any case, especially in the CPU area. I actually dislike these decisions being one sided, because a brand monopolising on area of technology disagrees with me on many many levels.