Upgrading for Odyssey from 2GB GPU to ???

[TSINI]

Hi all, was hoping for some advice from some tech savvy PC people

my current old bertha is

• i5 4460
• GTX 750 Ti
• 16GB RAM

it runs horizons perfectly well. Odyssey runs, kind of, but is a crumpled awful textureless mess.

so what do I need to upgrade?

1. would I get away with simply upgrading to a 4GB graphics card? (probably around £250 to do)
2. or do i need to gut the thing, new Processor (and therefore motherboard to accommodate) along with a 4GB graphics card (maybe achievable around £600)
3. or same as above, gut the thing, new Processor and board and aim for a much higher graphics card? 8GB plus? (potentially costing around £1000-£1500)
4. start again, buy a whole new rig? (possibly around £2000)

any help understanding the dark art of matching processors with motherboards and understanding processor numbering/stats would be much appreciated also.

 

[MickyG1982]

Hi all, was hoping for some advice from some tech savvy PC people

my current old bertha is

• i5 4460
• GTX 750 Ti
• 16GB RAM

it runs horizons perfectly well. Odyssey runs, kind of, but is a crumpled awful textureless mess.

so what do I need to upgrade?

1. would I get away with simply upgrading to a 4GB graphics card? (probably around £250 to do)
2. or do i need to gut the thing, new Processor (and therefore motherboard to accommodate) along with a 4GB graphics card (maybe achievable around £600)
3. or same as above, gut the thing, new Processor and board and aim for a much higher graphics card? 8GB plus? (potentially costing around £1000-£1500)
4. start again, buy a whole new rig? (possibly around £2000)

any help understanding the dark art of matching processors with motherboards and understanding processor numbering/stats would be much appreciated also.

The more graphics memory the better, a decent 4gb card is just about enough to run the game at med/high settings at 30fps(ish), about where my laptop is, or will be once I've mucked about with the settings some more.

 

[Kingston@#]

i would upgrade to a i7. and upgrade to min 1660. or higher depending on budget.

 

[Kingston@#]

if you do go for a cpu.. make sure you buy the same socket. if i remember right i5 is socket 1151. max it can go is i7. double check socket though i may be wrong.

 

[CrowBarHero]

You're on a bit of a sticky wicket here, it's an old platform now, and the fastest/best processor you can shove in there is an i7-4790K - which is also 4core, but runs at 4GHz (boosts to 4.4) this is going to be your bottleneck. Even assuming you can get a RTX 2060 or whatever at the moment, the CPU can only shovel data at it so fast.

Saying that, I'm in a similar boat, I'm running with an i5-4690K (with 8GB Ram) and am also eyeing up a 4790 to get the last gasp out of my motherboard. I did run with a GTX 750ti for a bit but managed to grab a 1650 super when they were available - this allowed me to run Horizons at 4k with graphics setting middle or better and still get playable framerates.

Your memory is good, I think the recommendation is 12Gb - and it could be that having a card that's thin on memory may be offset by having more 'regular' memory to spare.

This site gives a useful measure of the balance between CPU and graphics card:

Bottleneck finder

I'm off to buy more RAM in the meantime, see you on ebay!

 

[Morbad]

so what do I need to upgrade?

1. would I get away with simply upgrading to a 4GB graphics card? (probably around £250 to do)
2. or do i need to gut the thing, new Processor (and therefore motherboard to accommodate) along with a 4GB graphics card (maybe achievable around £600)
3. or same as above, gut the thing, new Processor and board and aim for a much higher graphics card? 8GB plus? (potentially costing around £1000-£1500)
4. start again, buy a whole new rig? (possibly around £2000)

any help understanding the dark art of matching processors with motherboards and understanding processor numbering/stats would be much appreciated also.

While I'm not keen on making recommendations for something that is clearly a work in progress, I'll answer as best I can.

1. No. You want as much GPU as you can reasonably get, and I'd recommend 6GiB as an absolute minimum. 8GiB would be better. However there are quire a few other parameters that are relevant to GPU performance, so don't buy just on VRAM capacity.
2. No, not for Elite: Dangerous. A new processor wouldn't hurt though.
3. This would depend on exactly what components are in your system.
4. Safest route, but probably overkill if your main goal is to play EDO...which is currently broken, but will become completely GPU limited if it's fixed.

My tentative recommendation, after ascertaining that your board and power supply can handle it, would be to get a 4770K or 4790K, a good heatsink for it, and put every remaining cent of your budget toward a GPU.

if i remember right i5 is socket 1151. max it can go is i7. double check socket though i may be wrong.

This is the LGA-1150 platform.

You're on a bit of a sticky wicket here, it's an old platform now, and the fastest/best processor you can shove in there is an i7-4790K - which is also 4core, but runs at 4GHz (boosts to 4.4) this is going to be your bottleneck. Even assuming you can get a RTX 2060 or whatever at the moment, the CPU can only shovel data at it so fast.

Saying that, I'm in a similar boat, I'm running with an i5-4690K (with 8GB Ram) and am also eyeing up a 4790 to get the last gasp out of my motherboard. I did run with a GTX 750ti for a bit but managed to grab a 1650 super when they were available - this allowed me to run Horizons at 4k with graphics setting middle or better and still get playable framerates.

Your memory is good, I think the recommendation is 12Gb - and it could be that having a card that's thin on memory may be offset by having more 'regular' memory to spare.

This site gives a useful measure of the balance between CPU and graphics card:

Bottleneck finder

I'm off to buy more RAM in the meantime, see you on ebay!

Elite: Dangerous, even Odyssey, is not especially CPU limited. A half-way decent hyperthreaded quad-core is not a major bottleneck for it. A 4770K or 4790K will still run the game very well, even when paired with quite a high-end GPU.

I can drop my RTX 3080 or RX 6800XT into a Haswell era 4c/8t system and still have the GPU be the bottleneck in Horizons at least at higher resolutions and details (1440p ultra and up). The same is likely true of Odyssey...it's just got even bigger problems at the moment.

 

[TSINI]

Ok some good info here. Budget is a big issue. Buying a house basically means I don’t have spare money for a few months.

I think I’ll have to look at an 8GB graphics card in reality. And then upgrade the rest as required to suit the gpu. I don’t think the 4GB will get me the easy results as intended and would potentially be a waste of money.

I’ve sort of managed to get the game to run at medium specs, between 60fps in space and 15 on the ground haha. It might keep me occupied in the meantime.

thanks for all the advice and I’ll refer back to this thread when the time comes to start buying parts.

 

[MickyG1982]

While I'm not keen on making recommendations for something that is clearly a work in progress, I'll answer as best I can.

1. No. You want as much GPU as you can reasonably get, and I'd recommend 6GiB as an absolute minimum. 8GiB would be better. However there are quire a few other parameters that are relevant to GPU performance, so don't buy just on VRAM capacity.
2. No, not for Elite: Dangerous. A new processor wouldn't hurt though.
3. This would depend on exactly what components are in your system.
4. Safest route, but probably overkill if your main goal is to play EDO...which is currently broken, but will become completely GPU limited if it's fixed.

My tentative recommendation, after ascertaining that your board and power supply can handle it, would be to get a 4770K or 4790K, a good heatsink for it, and put every remaining cent of your budget toward a GPU.



This is the LGA-1150 platform.



Elite: Dangerous, even Odyssey, is not especially CPU limited. A half-way decent hyperthreaded quad-core is not a major bottleneck for it. A 4770K or 4790K will still run the game very well, even when paired with quite a high-end GPU.

I can drop my RTX 3080 or RX 6800XT into a Haswell era 4c/8t system and still have the GPU be the bottleneck in Horizons at least at higher resolutions and details (1440p ultra and up). The same is likely true of Odyssey...it's just got even bigger problems at the moment.

Dunno about it not being CPU limited...

Seems to manage to be both CPU and GPU limited on my Asus FX505DT....

 

[GroG79]

Dunno about it not being CPU limited...

Seems to manage to be both CPU and GPU limited on my Asus FX505DT....

Morbad is wrong here.You will be CPU bottlnecked in EDO

I am on this hardware with a good GPU. No problem getting 60 FPS while my CPU is working 70-80%. However with on foot combat my CPU goes to 100% and my FPS drops to below 20.

 

[Morbad]

Dunno about it not being CPU limited...

Seems to manage to be both CPU and GPU limited on my Asus FX505DT....

What sort of clock speeds is the CPU reaching during play?

Zen+ isn't far off Haswell in IPC and a 4770K or 4790K will typically reach much higher clock speeds than a Ryzen 5 3550H.

The i5 probably would be CPU limited in Odyssey it it's current state, with a major GPU upgrade over that 750 Ti.

 

[MickyG1982]

Morbad is wrong here.You will be CPU bottlnecked in EDO

I am on this hardware with a good GPU. No problem getting 60 FPS while my CPU is working 70-80%. However with on foot combat my CPU goes to 100% and my FPS drops to below 20.

Dropping shadows to low does have a decent effect to "on foot" frame rates, along with SS on .85 and dropping any AA usually keeps me at 30-40fps.

 

[GroG79]

Yes.. I am sure gaming on 800x600 will also help

 

[Razzerman]

Buying a house basically means I don’t have spare money for a few months.

That works to your advantage - wait a few months before gpu prices come down and supply gets better. Maybe a Christmas treat?

 

[TSINI]

Yes I think that’s the plan haha. I wasn’t sure if the situation was going to get worse or better but it sounds like there’s a smidge of hope in the future of GPUs.

 

[Morbad]

I just put Odyssey back on my Haswell-E setup. I'll play with disabling cores/thread and reducing CPU clock to see where CPU limitations show up in a more repeatable combat scenario.

Dropping shadows to low does have a decent effect to "on foot" frame rates, along with SS on .85 and dropping any AA usually keeps me at 30-40fps.

Reducing render resolution (which includes lowering SS) generally won't increase CPU limited frame rates. Shadow quality might, to a degree, but should remove GPU work faster than CPU.

Yes.. I am sure gaming on 800x600 will also help

One of the best ways to tell if there is a CPU limitation is if changing resolution doesn't appreciably alter frame rate.

 

[MrVaad]

I use :

• supersampling to 0.75 with 1440p resolution (this is equivalent to 1080p resolution).
• the best mix of low and high settings i can use (after a lot of testing) .

CPU Ryzen 2600 (6 Cores, 12 logical cores) :
I see a peak usage around 40%. Elite balance its usage very well across all cores.

GPU Nvidia GTX 1080 overclocked to 2Ghz and 8GB vram.
The game still goes to 100% easily in some concourse/settlement and drops to 40fps in some situations.
Even on medium texture, elite can use 7GB vram but i assume it's for caching.

My humble advice:
You have a 4cores/4logical cores CPU.
I would say upgrading your cpu is a safe buy. A 6cores/12logical cores CPU plus motherboard, under 200£ from intel or AMD, as you wish.
But you will also need to buy 16Gb DDR4

The graphic card is a trickier choice as we don't know what FDEV will do. And currently, all GPUs are overpriced.

Upgrading your cpu alone won't give you much improvement, as you will be very limited by your GPU.
If you have to choose, the GPU is probably the better upgrade. But you will be limited by your cpu

 

[Morbad]

5820K (Haswell-E) @ 4.2GHz, all 6c/12t enabled, plus GTX 1080 Ti at 2050MHz/~12Gbps memory. Odyssey running at 1680*1050 (only display I have handy), high preset (targeting 60 fps minimum here). 60-90 fps in combat during the suit tutorial. All logical CPUs loaded, 60% peak core load during combat. Completely GPU limited.

Will knock off two cores and run the tutorial again.

Edit: Firmware on this system doesn't let me actually disable cores, so I forced affinity instead, should be a suitable approximation. At 4.2GHz again, 4c/8t, performance was more or less identical to 6c/12t, though all assigned logical CPUs saw significant increases in utilization, with the two highest loaded cores reaching just over 80%. Still GPU limited. At these settings performance should be very comparable to an i7-4790K (cache/memory subsystem is faster on this LGA-2011v3 part, but there is even less of an indicator of that being a limiting factor than CPU core clock and count), which is the fastest part the OP is likely to be able to use without a complete platform upgrade. That part should be sufficient for at least 60fps, GPU permitting, in at least light to moderate combat. CZs might dip below that.

4c/4t, other settings the same, is almost fully loading all four cores, but was barely any slower, and remained smooth. Still primarily GPU limited.

Will try 3c/3t at 4.2GHz and then 4c/8t at 3.2GHz.

 

[MrVaad]

Currently, I think Elite has a few effects that can't be disabled and kill the GPU :

• some specific smokes
• some glass walls in concourse's shops, impact is bigger when you go near them
• When inside a building without windows (seems to confirm the lack of occlusion culling):
  • if i look toward the other buildings, GPU goes to 100%.
  • If i look to the outside of the settlement, GPU goes to 40%

 

[Vanred777]

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 @ 3.6 Ghtz
8GB GTX 1650 Super OC
G-skill 16GB DDR4

WMR - Lenovo Explorer
.
Full-screen NO HMD 60-200 Fps
HMD - 44-90 FPS

Anything in HMD 50+ is playable

(Turn WMR to 60htz)

But ever since before Horizons,
Turn OFF ANY ANTI-VIRUS ONLY When
Playing Elite (The real-time scanning slashes GPU performance)

Ever since the windows 10 BSOD update KB5000802
I have had to ditch Windows Defender and use Malware-bytes.

 

[MickyG1982]

I just put Odyssey back on my Haswell-E setup. I'll play with disabling cores/thread and reducing CPU clock to see where CPU limitations show up in a more repeatable combat scenario.



Reducing render resolution (which includes lowering SS) generally won't increase CPU limited frame rates. Shadow quality might, to a degree, but should remove GPU work faster than CPU.



One of the best ways to tell if there is a CPU limitation is if changing resolution doesn't appreciably alter frame rate.

Weirdly, neither CPU cores, nor GPU were being used to the full during the playthrough I just completed on my system, still struggled to break 30-40 fps on the ground, despite this GPU was at 80% CPU was 60-70% (this might be a laptop quirk). That said, absolutely no disconnects & the textures worked properly even after using the system map.