Hardware & Technical PC Specifications

[bAdbUd]

I would like to start by saying that I originally funded this project with the desire to play it once released (some would say obviously) but I also funded it knowing that the very reason I moved from PC gaming to consoles was because of the ludicrous specifications of new games.

My experience:

The game that finally hammered in the last nail in the PC gaming coffin for me was Crysis. When this game came out in 2007 I had a decently high spec'ed PC in fact I'd just bought the latest Nvidia graphics card for some £350. Not just in preparation for this game, but that's the thing you had to do back then to ensure you could play the latests games with all graphic options maxed out.

Sure some will say its not all about the graphics and I agree in some respect, however this game was different. Not only couldn't I play this game with all graphical options at there highest level, but in actuality no one at the time could, unless you had money to burn and could afford a PC able to run at least two £1000 graphics cards at the same time. Crysis is still used for graphic card performance tests 6 years later.

This to me ruined it, I liked to upgrade various parts of my PC every six months or so, but I'm talking about spending £1000 a year not every six months or so and this was obviously going to be the case from now on, so I got an XBOX and a reasonable laptop instead.

Now:

So what the hell am I rambling on about here? :S

Well; now that I've got *suckered* in to upping my pledge on no less than three occasions I'm now very excited to actually play this game but to do that I'm going to need a new PC. However what kind of specification will it require to be able to run this game?

Looking at the demo's of the game I'm thinking £1500 will just about cut it. I also have over a year to get back up to date with PC specifications and what's needed and what's just desirable. Not really been keeping up with the latests fancy PC toys.

However, it would be great if I (we) could get an inkling of the aimed for top end to middle end specifications that would be required for ELITE: Dangerous.

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On a re-read of my post I sound negative, I'm not. Even that sounds aggressive, I'll shut up now then...

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[Mazhurg]

While I think this is way too early to pin down specifics, I would offer the following:

The game will probably be more CPU intensive than visual, as such a good multicores CPU, and perhaps a phys engine (Nvidia?) would help even more as the game must account and track multiple objects using real physics.

On the graphic side, I would suspect that this will be completely tune-able, so a mid range card should work fine, however candy sparkles will probably require a current card. As a Mac version will come out, I suspect that David may invest in Open GL more than Direct X.

Current sound interfaces should be fine. - storage should also not be excessive based on current titles.

Now, if you are willing to invest, I would not be surprised to see (visually) 3D support (monitors and Ocular Rift) and multi-monitors support. On the controller side, it's already been motioned that both console joysticks and PC HOTAS will be supported.

Hope this help.

 

[jhondidfool]

I'm running a 600€ PC built by myself and I can assure you it can run the graphics we've seen so far at more than 60FPS. I don't know how much that's in pounds, but if you're sepending that much on a PC either you don't know what you're buying or you're getting a PC to last 5 years untouched.

 

[bAdbUd]

I'm running a 600€ PC built by myself and I can assure you it can run the graphics we've seen so far at more than 60 FPS. I don't know how much that's in pounds, but if you're spending that much on a PC either you don't know what you're buying or you're getting a PC to last 5 years untouched.

Precisely I haven't which is why I included this part and hence the question so I can get a feel, thanks.:

I also have over a year to get back up to date with PC specifications and what's needed and what's just desirable. Not really been keeping up with the latests fancy PC toys.

 

[jhondidfool]

Excuse me, but I thought you had already done some digging when you wrote you were thinking on spending 1500 pounds

 

[SuperG]

I would like to start by saying that I originally funded this project with the desire to play it once released (some would say obviously) but I also funded it knowing that the very reason I moved from PC gaming to consoles was because of the ludicrous specifications of new games.

Oh, I so disagree. Got console PS3 Wii and xbox360 even so PSVita. Yes the hardware is fix thats very nice if you take that limitation for granted. If so keep the same standard for PC. Low fixed budged hardware and dito SETTINGS. You aren't suposed to must play on high setting, but if you want that you need the power wich comes with the more expensive hardware. But its optional luxory.
It unreasonable to expect the very extreem for a few cents. If you now settle for crap GFX and many limitation. Well PC can deliver that also with cheap spects. for a long fixed time. With only a few exception wich crysis is not.

My experience:

The game that finally hammered in the last nail in the PC gaming coffin for me was Crysis. When this game came out in 2007 I had a decently high spec'ed PC in fact I'd just bought the latest Nvidia graphics card for some £350. Not just in preparation for this game, but that's the thing you had to do back then to ensure you could play the latests games with all graphic options maxed out.

You are the problem, because for this unreasonable demand
"to ensure you could play the latests games with all graphic options maxed out."
Well I play BF3 the crap version on PS3 and PSN. So I know consoles and PC. But if I would settle for that. I could and even did play on low setting on a 8600GT wenn Crysis was out. Also I played Farcry 2 on it int this setting. 1920x1200 on low. it looks great.
But My R600 based XT2900XT for €380,- Did a nice job rendering Crysis 1 in a mixed medium/high setting. But I do remember those 8800Ultra whiners with there $800,- card that didn't cut it in extreem setting. But Crytech devs have before release warned it can stress hardware that isn't around yet. So 8800Utra stick with high settings.
But my R600 did a fine job with Vista in 2007. A game console could even can handle.

Sure some will say its not all about the graphics and I agree in some respect, however this game was different. Not only couldn't I play this game with all graphical options at there highest level, but in actuality no one at the time could, unless you had money to burn and could afford a PC able to run at least two £1000 graphics cards at the same time. Crysis is still used for graphic card performance tests 6 years later.

No I played the game with a midrange 8600GT also in Editor mode because I got two game PC simmilar with 2GB AMD hammer one with a 8600GT and other with HD2900XT. 8600GT I run in medium and didn't handle it well but medium is a nice good loking setting beating many games of that time still. But little to much for midrange. But the uper midrange to lower high-end HD2900XT run it well with good GFX. So lot of people can play that game but more likely are into complaining and bashing crytech. For delivering a game with setting ment for the future hardware.

This to me ruined it, I liked to upgrade various parts of my PC every six months or so, but I'm talking about spending £1000 a year not every six months or so and this was obviously going to be the case from now on, so I got an XBOX and a reasonable laptop instead.

I upgrade because I don't need to but I want to play in luxory settings.
I replaced my HD2900XT with a 5870 1GB for DX11 games
I replaced my 8600GT with a GTX285 wich is replaced by a GTX580 3GB special edition. You just go from high to medium to low settings and console time span is doable.

Now:

So what the hell am I rambling on about here? :S

Well; now that I've got *suckered* in to upping my pledge on no less than three occasions I'm now very excited to actually play this game but to do that I'm going to need a new PC. However what kind of specification will it require to be able to run this game?

First games aren't made for the rich alone. But with enough settings to be run on mainstream hardware of release time wich is 2014. So my old stuff will certainly run it even if it is 3 years old by then. If you use a somewhat medium setting and tweak of the very heavy options. It very much doable if your where reasoanble. Game on medium to low setting. And even then out shine consoles.

Looking at the demo's of the game I'm thinking £1500 will just about cut it. I also have over a year to get back up to date with PC specifications and what's needed and what's just desirable. Not really been keeping up with the latests fancy PC toys.

Well I decide in 2014 what to do,

However, it would be great if I (we) could get an inkling of the aimed for top end to middle end specifications that would be required for ELITEangerous.

As a gamer from the 80386 and up I can say this. Even the devs don't know it. Only that the aim for mainstream and that's very fussy enough for gamers and dev's. It will run even on APU from 2014.

=====

On a re-read of my post I sound negative, I'm not. Even that sounds aggressive, I'll shut up now then...

=====

I will give you this to take in mind. The mainstream and maintarget will shift wenn the nextgen consoles comes out. DX11 will be common because Crossplatform wil be DX11 OpenGL4.x level on nextgen consoles and PC. Consoles will not holding back PC ports any more at least for a while.
Also the raw Gflops of power comes from dieshrinks. So I hope or even wait till the next architecture switch to next dieshrink. and look out for the high-end of that kind. wich wil do for next 3 to 5 years.

What I do. Put most budged in Power unit case and monitor. BEcause that often reusable. I use lots of memory to handle future OS'es and heavier software. for game shift more budged to Gcard then CPU.

BF3 PC I play on my old 5870.
Farcry3 I play on my GTX580 3G also a old card
No need to upgrade so have a WiiU

 

[bigjizzy]

I too ran Crysis on xfire'd 2900XT's.. it looked amazing, in 2007 as it happens when i built my pc, it cost £1200.00 but that was with a 24" monitor and cutting edge dual core cpu and ram. not to mention the psu.... as the power consumption was ridiculous.

to give you an idea, a friend of mine recently just bought a pc from one of those online build your own websites, he paid £650.00 and it outstrips my 5 year old pc no problem at all.

As i mentioned in another post, that pc sadly is dead... I was due a new one anyway....

I plan on waiting until xma time next year then in Jan, spending £500.00 on the best spec i can buy... im assuming by then FD will have told us which architecture they are basing the gfx on, which will no doubt help me make my choice....

 

[Abysinth]

Well, with the game over a year away, we could put £50 per month into our "new computer for Elite" savings account and that should be enough for a fairly decent computer at the time.

I would like to see Elite hide any graphic options that would not be 'playable at a decent frame rate' on my computer so that I would not have to worry about not being able to choose them but offer me the lower options in case I was playing on a smaller screen, then, when I upgrade my graphics card: "Woo, better Elite "

I'm hoping to have bought a bigger TV by then which means my current TV will be looking for something new to do with itself .

Oh, and what if Elite uses your smart phone to access the local space station's prices so that you can sell your goods on the way in, book repairs and buy upgrades on your smart phone as you fly in...

Or your tablet (iPad?) to view the rear screen...

will we need to save for one of those too?

 

[P4UL]

I build PC's and while i don't know what the final specs of Elite : Dangerous will be, and it is far too early to speculate, I am quite sure that you will NOT need to spend £1500 to play this game at a decent 60fps

If you are worried you should wait until as late as possible and buy a new system next year (2014) and by then, what is expensive now will be cheaper anyway.

My PC is already 2 years old and i'm quite confident that if anything, only a new GPU will be required.

I'm just going to guess that a minimum of say 4gb ram will be required, and probably you wil want a quad core CPU, and a decent GPU. It should cost well under 1k i'm sure.

Of course we will just have to wait and see really!

 

[Dusty]

While I don't think we're looking at Crysis 3 spec with ED I'm think it more along the lines of far cry 3 ofc I could be wrong I just hope we an idea around spring 2013 so it give the folks plenty off time to upgrade or buy a decent rig :smilie:

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

PC Spec for ED ?

Who knows ... save a little each month and wait until 2014 .. worry about it then.

 

[Mr Sophistication]

My pc is exactly two years old now and is farily robust for even the newest games: i5 2500k @ 4.4ghz, ATI 6970 (well, actually a 6950 with the shader cores unlocked, but it's the same thing), 120GB SSD. This didn't cost £1500, even two years ago.

I can maybe see myself getting a new graphics card before ED ships (probably for Rome II Total War's release), but the rest will probably stay the same. Things aren't really changing at the pace they once were.

The big battles might put some pressure on your hardware but outer space is by definition quite empty, so it's not as resource hungry as running through a Jungle in Crysis. Eventually you will be able to go down onto planets in ED, but not when the game ships. This will possibly require a bit more ooomph, but it might not be in the game for another year for all we know, as it will be a major addition.

 

[Sav112]

Having used the Same PC since Nov 2004 I think I’m due a new rig! Conisdering the Hardware now seems way ahead of the game – No pun intended My next high end rig should last me years playing games.

Really the longer I wait the better but I’m thinking next May or maybe going into next Winter as thats when you spend most time on games.

For now my end of 2004 PC keeps on going for browsing, Shopping, FB. BF2 PR MOD started killing my 6800GT Card to blue screen so just stopped playing games! think that was back in 2007 or 2008.


I actually think Broadband speed will be more important to get right when this comes out but everyone is on 10-100mbs i remember 56K and even before Prestel!!!!!!

 

[Dusty]

My pc is exactly two years old now and is farily robust for even the newest games: i5 2500k @ 4.4ghz, ATI 6970 (well, actually a 6950 with the shader cores unlocked, but it's the same thing), 120GB SSD. This didn't cost £1500, even two years ago.

I can maybe see myself getting a new graphics card before ED ships (probably for Rome II Total War's release), but the rest will probably stay the same. Things aren't really changing at the pace they once were.

The big battles might put some pressure on your hardware but outer space is by definition quite empty, so it's not as resource hungry as running through a Jungle in Crysis. Eventually you will be able to go down onto planets in ED, but not when the game ships. This will possibly require a bit more ooomph, but it might not be in the game for another year for all we know, as it will be a major addition.

The 6950 is quite a powerful card you should be able to run Rome 2 on that very well you and you should be able to run ED on you rig quite well unless its Crysis 3 speced

 

[Mr Sophistication]

I know, but unfortunately I'm the sort of freak who feels compelled to run 8xAA and then install some mod that increases max unit sizes. Shogun II runs well for me with everything on, but the Total War games have a history of making me get my credit card out so I am preparing myself!

 

[neltek]

How does the following from Dino PC sound?

Storm Claw R9 280



£579.00 inc. VAT
£599.00 inc. VAT "The Stormclaw R9 280 has great gaming performance"

	AMD FX 6300 (6x 3.5Ghz)​
	Windows 8.1 (64-bit)​
	Gigabyte 970A-DS3P Mainboard​
	8GB DDR3 1333Mhz​
	120GB SSD​
	1TB HDD​
	AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB​
	Corsair Carbide Spec-01 Case​
	Corsair VS 550W PSU​