Video Card

dancer79 · Jun 18, 2016

I wanted to know am I going to wrong website, for some reason when I contact Frontier they state that even though processor is slightly slower then recommended the game should work well.

My concern is I got new video card and one site that scores 1 to 10 gave my video card a 1.

Was it an error?

I have 2GB Radeon R9 270X Diamond Edition Card.

Any feedback, I would think game should work with no issue with this card.

The Judge1 · Jun 18, 2016

When did you buy that video card?

What was the price of it (if you don't mind me asking)?

Every review of that card is pretty bad. Most say not to buy it because of its lack of any type of real computing power.

The sole reason game makers have a hard time saying what the system specs are for a game is the because of the hardware manufactures.

You would think a card that is brand new would be far superior to older cards but that is just not the case.

My 3 year old GTX 760 is slightly stronger then the 270x. I am upgrading my card on the 29th of this month with AMDs new card the RX 480.

With that said, you should be able to play the game to a point depending on the rest of your hardware. If you were to open a large park it would have framerate issues due to the GPU.

DjSuperPanda · Jun 18, 2016

Your Graphics card can run the game.

i personally say don't worry about ranking websites run your own bench mark tests (http://www.3dmark.com/)
Compared to what the Minimum requirements (http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-270X-vs-Radeon-HD-7850)
your card is just about or slightly better than the minimum requirements.

( I would personally look to updating to AMD or Nvidia as they have a better computing power even the Nvidia (GTX 750TI) has a better time than the Radeon has )

I saw the reviews for that card and some where pretty bad (Amazon, NewEgg,) where the main complaint has been that it wares down pretty bad in performance over time. ( more or less than 6 Months )

Hope that helped.

Happy Building

The Judge1 · Jun 18, 2016

AMD and Radeon are one in the same. (AMD merged with ATI years ago)

I also suggest on any system change to run a benchmark for that process to see the improvements. Also research all computer part purchases.

Like I said above, The hardware manufactures will sell a "new" card that is the same as older cards. In the industry it is called "re-badging" as in they take the same card, tweak the settings (overclock the core a bit) add more memory and a new fancy cooler and call it the next generation card.

Its a shame that they do this to confuse consumers into spending money on a product.

Beans Headio · Jun 18, 2016

I have had the same problem.. my computer was having issues with the game and really had to run it on reduced graphics to get any kinda flow going. but I have just bought a gtx 950 card so that should sort the problem on high demand.

Liamxxs · Jun 18, 2016

I have an R7 260X seems to run fine on my pc.

Beans Headio · Jun 18, 2016

its not just down to the Card right though. there are other elements that would make it run slow like ram and processor

aDOLPHINjoy18 · Jun 18, 2016

Here's the official system requirements: https://www.frontierstore.net/planet-coaster-earlybird.html

I don't think it's a good idea to go out and randomly buy a graphics card especially from a non-manufacturer like ebay etc unless you've done some research to make sure your system is going to be compatible with it.

I invested aka bought, a NZ$2500 custom PC desktop system from a special NZ company who lets you customize your PC and THEY build it for you and run tests and inform you if any changes or additions etc are necessary. It did kind of break my budget but I'm happy with how well it performs. It has the almighty 6th gen Intel Core i7-6700k processor, Sapphire Nitro with back plate AMD RADEDON R9 390 8GB GPU, 16GB HyperX system RAM, a Kingston HyperX SSD with Windows 10 OS and my games on it, Wi-Fi ac, and it can play this game and my games in MAXED OUT settings in 1080p with good smooth frame rate. It can play the sims 4 in ultra everything settings in 1080p 60fps.

The AMD Radeon R9 390 is more better than the GTX 970 according to GPU boss. R9 390 also has a higher bandwidth of 384GB/s, higher bus 512-bit, and 8GB GDDR5. The GTX 970 has 4GB, but only 3.5GB of it is fast memory. The last 0.5GB is slow memory. Some peps may say you don't need 8GB. But 8GB or more helps for 4k. AMD and Sapphire imply the R9 390 is capable of 4k. And AMD recommend at least 16GB memory for 4k, which is what I have. Some peps may say that the R9 390 is not high end. When in fact recent sources and sources on the net, state that it is. It's not the best GPU, but it is more than medium core GPU. I have The Sims 4, cities skylines, planet coaster, and final fantasy XIII on it. I also have an HP 15' ab222tx laptop for everyday needs. I also game primarily on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. But I feel Frontier does a great job with this game I maze well enjoy the full flavour of this game by getting a system which can bring me that. And my system does. My system has overkill hardware XD. Not the best, but it is pretty good. And yes I can't stop bragging about it. I'm proud of my system. And I never use of 7GB of the 16GB of RAM my system has. The R9 R90 can handle all 2015 and 2016 games on maxed out settings in 1080p. I got Xbox 360 late 2010. Final Fantasy XIII was my first game on it and I loved it. So got the PC version off Steam for only NZ$18.99. It has higher resolution I've turned on x16 anti-aliasing and my system plays it comfortably. And since my system has an SSD it takes like 1 second to save and load.

Also the 2GB GPU will be your bottleneck because it only has 2GB graphics. So you may run into bottleneck if you play this game on medium or high settings. Good tools you can get for free on the net is MSI afterburner its free and displays fps and your hardware performance in game. If researching for GPUs and CPUs GPUBoss and CPUboss and notebookcheck I find good. tomshardware.com or something like that and gamingdebate otherwise google are good tools too.

_Tilly-Tony_ · Jun 18, 2016

This game is very CPU dependant at the moment and no matter what GPU you have, you will see frames dropping at around 3000+ guests.
I have an Intel I7 4770K OC'ed@4.5, 2 x GTX970's (Game only uses one) and 16Gb ram.
Im at around 4500 guest now and see my CPU sitting at around 80% and my GPU at about 30-40% with fps of around the mid 20's

The Judge1 · Jun 19, 2016

_Tilly-Tony_ said:
This game is very CPU dependant at the moment and no matter what GPU you have, you will see frames dropping at around 3000+ guests.
I have an Intel I7 4770K OC'ed@4.5, 2 x GTX970's (Game only uses one) and 16Gb ram.
Im at around 4500 guest now and see my CPU sitting at around 80% and my GPU at about 30-40% with fps of around the mid 20's

I agree 100% with this statement.. the AI is CPU hungry and the more peeps the more lag you will have. I have been experimenting and when I had PC on an i3 (dual core + hyper threading) at about 2500 guests it was almost unplayable while both paused or un-paused.

Dropped in an i7 it improved a ton, on pause. My video card is a bit old (GTX 760) so when you hit play.. it drops to very low FPS (5-8). With the game paused I can hit upwards of 20fps. Same amount of peeps (2600) in the park the i7 preforms so much better.

The more threads/cores you have the better off the game will be! That's why I am eyeing a 8core Xeon build for my Planet coaster PC.. Perhaps 2 Xeons lol, can anyone say 32 threads! Dx12 is just around the corner too and it allows multi thread use. Food for thought!

That reminds me, does anyone know if PC supports Dx12?

But back on subject. Your card should be able to run PC somewhat. While you wont run a massive park filled with 10000 guests, it should run well enough to enjoy until an upgrade can be made!

Replica · Jun 19, 2016

By the sound of peoples experiences on these forums, it'd seem like the game is pretty poorly optimized at the moment, and that even good rigs with specs up above the recommended specs seem to struggle with medium sized+ parks of 2-3k+ guests and sprawling scenery/rides.

It's probably a better idea to maybe, like, wait before investing into a new expensive card & CPU.

aDOLPHINjoy18 · Jun 19, 2016

Everyone knows that the game isn't optimized yet. It's in Alpha stage and surprisingly, the game is still heaps of fun. Why WAIT when you can enjoy it now? And Frontier provides many Updates and regular too, for the Alpha. Past 2 weeks ago there was like 3 updates.

I'm happy in investing money in a custom desktop PC. It has the almighty i7-6700k processor and Sapphire Nitro AMD Radeon R9 390 with back plate GPU which is considered a high end GPU. It even gets a better rating on GPUBoss than the GTX 970. Sure it will break you budget, but you end up getting to enjoy more high quality content than playing on a system which is weaker. Even my desktop system gets some lag sometimes. But it's not because the hardware is not up to the job. According to EA on the Sims 4 GPU requirements site it lists my GPU as 'overpowered'.

If you want to play this game on High Settings 1920x1080 with 4,000+ peps and a big more detailed park with like 6 coasters and lots of rides with smooth frame rate (not guaranteed 100% of the time cause the game is only in Alpha), I would recommend at least 16GB system RAM, a GTX 970 or AMR R9 390, or better, and a QUAD CORE i5/i7 or AMD FX 8350 with over 3.4Ghz clock speed. But normally better and expensive hardware will do a better job at rendering games rather than cheap/affordable hardware.

dancer79 · Jun 19, 2016

I purchased it this week.

The card went for $285.00 I paid $150.00 for it.

I spoke to rep at frontier and they told me Card would be fine and should work with no issue. My processor is slower than reccomended 2.8 as I have 2.67 but that's not huge difference and I have 12GB or RAM so game should play. I saw screen shot of low resolution vs High and really didn't see a difference.

So well see will be buying game this week.

The Judge1 · Jun 19, 2016

This may sound crazy, but return the card and get a full refund.
In 10 days (the 29th of June) you will be able to buy an AMD RX 470 for the same price you paid for the 270x but get twice the compute power. And yes, the 270 will run PC, probably pretty good, but the RX 470 would run it without any issues at all.

The shops are discounting those cards and people are selling them for cheap because once the new cards launch, no one is going to buy the older cards.

rcthardcore1 · Jun 22, 2016

I have an EVGA Geforce GTX 980 TI and it really does well. 6 GB GDDR5. Intel Core I7 3770K. OC to 4.2 GHZ on watercooling. System does really well. No slowdowns yet. Knock on wood.

dancer79 · Jun 25, 2016

UPDATE

Ok I did some shopping and for one came was not spending more than 200 and I just wanted 7 or better out of 10 to play gave.

Not buying system for one game when I don't play PC that often as I have an xbox.

So I still have the 2.67 I7 processor which should be fine as was told processor is not the best but still faster than a lot and its not main item to make a game work, I updated my system ram from 12 to 24, but system says 16 usable will fix that.

I went from ATI R9 270X to NVidia GTX 960 4GB card and ranked at an 8 out of 10, I know ATI 380 X would have game me 9 but 8 to 9 not impressive and ATI from what store clerk told me uses more power and that NVidia cards were way better at gaming vs ATI and that ATI made more for things like graphic cards.

So my system I think is now ready.