Pc spec's and magic?

bladebss · Apr 28, 2016

I have a i7 870 2.93gh (8 cpu's) 16gb ram and a nvidia gtx 460 with 4049 MB memory (I dont know why so much as im shure ots a 1gb card but thats what dxdiag says)

I run this game on 1920x 1080 at 60hz vertical sync on and frame rate limmit at 60hz

Model draw at max every thing on high exept bloom and terrain quality witch are medium amd terrain work at 60% x1.0 supersampling blur is off amd anti-aliasing on FXAA

How?

I read aboit people with way better pcs having all kinds of problems and all I gat is very ocasional slow downs at stations and slight jitter on some planets (I hardly notice)

The rest of the time the game runs like butter on hot crumpets.

I do notice my room gets to tropical temps if I play for a couple of hours and sometimes if I spend a long time on planets I can hear the fan screaming under the desk.

I am thinking of upgrading my GPU to a gtx 970 for VR as I doubt (eaven with my magic harware) that I will run it on a gtx 460. HOWEVER... the min spec for oculus says I need a much better gpu, cpu and basicaly.. a new computer lol

What does every one think?
Is my computer secretly amazing and I just dont realise? Will I be able to wing it with just a new gtx 970 or 980?

I know it's not like im running 4k with x2 supersampling and ultra settings but if the game looks and plays prety much as it does now but on the oculus I will be happy as hell.

I have track ir and active 3d but the 3d hurts my eyes after hours of playing and it interfears with track ir (witch I love!) S its like a poor mans vr lol

777Driver · Apr 28, 2016

The only weak link in your system is the GPU, your processor is only slightly slower than a I5 2600K. Not amazing but more than enough to run smoothly at 1920x1080.

For VR you will be fine with a 970, although I'd say don't go cheap, get the 980TI

bladebss · Apr 28, 2016

I was worried the 980ti might get bottlenecked by the pci express 16x 2.0 I have on my motherbord? So I didnt think it would be worth the extra dosh

777Driver · Apr 28, 2016

bladebss said:
I was worried the 980ti might get bottlenecked by the pci express 16x 2.0 I have on my motherbord? So I didnt think it would be worth the extra dosh

It will be fine.

Brett C · Apr 28, 2016

bladebss said:
I was worried the 980ti might get bottlenecked by the pci express 16x 2.0 I have on my motherbord? So I didnt think it would be worth the extra dosh

I've a GTX980ti from evga (liquid loop), i've no issues with Elite Dangerous on this card. However, my CPU is an i7 3770k - which may play a part in the more fluid gameplay. Not sure how your CPU stacks up against my CPU. The 470 is rather dated at this point, you should consider updating to something in the 900 series.

the100thmonkey · Apr 28, 2016

The PCI-e 2.0 lanes on the CPU controller don't bottleneck modern cards much, if at all. Going forward, you can expect them to start doing so, but at the moment it's not an issue.

Zeeman · Apr 28, 2016

777Driver said:
The only weak link in your system is the GPU, your processor is only slightly slower than a I5 2600K. Not amazing but more than enough to run smoothly at 1920x1080.

For VR you will be fine with a 970, although I'd say don't go cheap, get the 980TI

I'd say that you may as well wait for the 1070/1080 to be released. If nothing else, the 970 will get cheaper (as will a 980TI).

I'm currently building a second ED rig, with current gen mobo and i7, but decided I may as well just sit back and wait for the new gen graphics cards, it seems they will actually be a fair step up this time around...

Z...

bladebss · Apr 28, 2016

Yea I think I will wait for the next gen so the price goes down might give me some more time to save up

I will keep with my magic gtx460 for a bit longer

avow555 · Apr 28, 2016

bladebss said:
Yea I think I will wait for the next gen so the price goes down might give me some more time to save up

I will keep with my magic gtx460 for a bit longer

You got plenty time. Wait for next gen gpu, vr to settle and when atmospheric flight drops that's gonna be the pc killer.

Cmdr Cheese Wedge · Apr 28, 2016

Depends if you own Horizons.
Your CPU will be fine but....
Horizons totally smashed my GTX 660, 20 to 30 fps everywhere looking or driving on a PG planet.
Bit the bullet and purchased a Gigabyte GTX970 G1 Gaming card.
Best investment I've ever made and cheap for the performance gain.
I run at 1080p on my TV so no need to go any higher resolution.
All settings maxed other than Supersampling at 1x, 60 fps everywhere.

Had a GTX 460, two in fact, running SLi, great little card.

If you ARE running Horizons at 60fps with a GTX 460, thank the GPU gods and go buy a lottery ticket.

Rubbernuke · Apr 28, 2016

The 460 is magic. My 1gb card on an old Core 2 Duo runs ED at 30fps on mostly high settings at 2560 x 1080p. Planets are dialled back to Potato but it's amazing what ED can do on my 7 year old CPU and crusty GPU.

I have 2k to slap on a new PC (Zen or Broadwell E plus Pascal or Polaris / Vega) but I am still happy with the performance right now.

MickyG1982 · Apr 28, 2016

If all you want is to run it it 1080p the GTX 960 in either 2Gb or 4Gb guises are perfectly good performers for the price (around £150 new, less off eBay). It should be perfectly capable of 60fps in most situations with that processor on high settings (or ultra with the 4gb model).

robbyp · Apr 28, 2016

On jitter - I tracked it down to running ED on a harddisk in raid config. It was being IO bound. ED loads files continuously, even inside an instance. Once it moved to a SSD it runs like butter.

GTX760 here, I5.

Shintai · Apr 28, 2016

Wait with any purchase for another month or 2. Since new cards are coming.

I am going for a GTX1080 myself ^^

Derath · Apr 28, 2016

460 and 560TI's are probably the best cards nvidia ever made, I bought a pair of 460's to SLI for my current comp before I upgraded and they performed amazingly well for such a reasonable price point!

As many others say here though I'd wait for the next series if your performance is fine as it is, might as well save the mula and get something better overall!

Boomer Kay · Apr 28, 2016

Cmdr Cheese Wedge said:
Depends if you own Horizons.
Your CPU will be fine but....
Horizons totally smashed my GTX 660, 20 to 30 fps everywhere looking or driving on a PG planet.
Bit the bullet and purchased a Gigabyte GTX970 G1 Gaming card.
Best investment I've ever made and cheap for the performance gain.
I run at 1080p on my TV so no need to go any higher resolution.
All settings maxed other than Supersampling at 1x, 60 fps everywhere.

Had a GTX 460, two in fact, running SLi, great little card.

If you ARE running Horizons at 60fps with a GTX 460, thank the GPU gods and go buy a lottery ticket.

If you have an older card, you might want to play around with graphical settings.
ED is not very demanding GPU wise to run smoothly (depending on your resolution - my second rig is well below "minimum requirement" specs and still manages a smooth-ish experience - old AMD x2 4600+ and a GT730) and some of those default "max settings" features are completely unnoticeable in-game (at least on a regular computer monitor at regular sitting distance .. VR and 40"+ screens might look differently), while costing a lot of performance. Free performance gain is the best performance gain.

I'm also using VSync for years now, since in find the drop in framerate from x00 to 40-50 (which is still smooth) more noticeable (looks like stutter/smear), than a constant capped 60 vsynced with the monitor that drops to 40-50 every now and then.

Cmdr Cheese Wedge · Apr 28, 2016

That's true, but I had to tinker quite a bit with the graphics settings on the 660, had to cut everything back to minimum and the difference is very noticeable compared to what I have now, that's also running on old tech, an i7 930 OC 4Ghz plonked into an X58 board.

For me v-sync always and a solid 60 fps at 60hz is the sweet spot for all games.

CMDR Ellegon · Apr 28, 2016

robbyp said:
On jitter - I tracked it down to running ED on a harddisk in raid config. It was being IO bound. ED loads files continuously, even inside an instance. Once it moved to a SSD it runs like butter.

GTX760 here, I5.

The RAID config was probably the culprit here. While I have a SSD in my system, ED runs off a WD Black HDD - no I/O issues whatsoever.

shadragon · Apr 28, 2016

Your GPU, CPU and RAM all communicate through the motherboard. I've seen too many people put all their money into top end gear, then mount them on a bargain basement mobo only to complain about performance.

To paraphrase Aristotle, your PC will perform as well as the sum of its parts.

shadragon · Apr 28, 2016

CMDR Ellegon said:
The RAID config was probably the culprit here. While I have a SSD in my system, ED runs off a WD Black HDD - no I/O issues whatsoever.

If using RAID and are in the need for performance, use a dedicated PCIe RAID controller card with RAID 1. It has the best IO speeds.

If running an SSD, RAID 1 (or an aggressive backup routine) is also recommended. Typically, when a normal spinning platter hard drive goes bad, you have days to weeks to get the data off before it dies. An SSD can go from fully functional to a brick in a millisecond.