Hardware & Technical What feature list is most important for Cobra engine performance?

[Gran Solo]

I'm looking at getting a new PC and my budget isn't big enough to simply buy top of the line and not worry about anything.

I'm a bit irritated that there is apparently no hardware testing site around - reputable or not - that benchmarks with Elite: Dangerous or Horizons.

Given that this is pretty much the only game I play that has high hardware requirements (that bunch of turn-based 4x titles play fine and I don't actually care about FPS in Master of Orion), I would be really interested in seeing some specific Elite Dangerous Horizons benchmarks. Do you guys know if there are any, or what other game comes reasonably close (tricky because of the proprietary Cobra engine...)

I would love some hints of what to look out for when buying a new system. For example, let's say EH makes full use of some architecture only found in Skylake chipsets, so I would look at a massive performance boost per buck if I invested in Skylake, and so on. I don't need a list of hardware components, I want to understand what I'm buying and why. Maybe I want to understand the Cobra engine and the way they use it to model planets more than I want to know what to put into my next PC build ASAP.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Hooplah]

I might try for benchmarks with X-Plane 10 by Laminar Research. It has graphic options which with add-ons even the latest greatest computers cannot keep up with at the maximum settings. In ED approaching a planet with detail can add processing. Approaching a planetary base adds even more detail and processing requirements. But that base is limited to a specific narrow "circle" and FDs Cobra Engine is designed to work with it to lower the processing needs.

Add in Drzewiecki designed airports for the New York City area with five airports in X-Plane and lots of building graphics, airport details down to zooming into the runway lights and add-ons with multiple air/ground traffic then ED doesn't even come close to what X-Plane requires. Just Google "X-Plane 10 Benchmarks" providing lots of info for several years then see what hardware combinations work best. One doesn't need the latest greatest to play ED. While I run two Nvidia GTX680s for Adobe audio/HD video in the professional world, I only need one of them to play ED.

 

[Porina]

I haven't benched it recently, and it was a while ago since I tried so my memory might be a bit off. Even on planet surfaces I never saw ED use that much CPU, rarely if ever exceeding 2 cores worth on an i7-6700k, and those occasions weren't for general movement but in more limited scenarios like using the map. So for a pure ED box, I've generally worked on the assumption you want to bias your spending on the desired level of GPU performance you think you need, with the rest on what you think is a comfortable level of CPU power. That depends a bit on what resolution you target. In my case, I'm GPU limited on planets since I can't maintain my target 60fps with a 980Ti at 3440x1440 Ultra settings. It depends on how tight the budget is, but personally I think a Skylake i3 (2 core 4 thread, from 3.7 GHz) would unlikely be a limiting factor relative to the GPU.

I'll have to have another play with monitoring resource usage next time I'm on a planet surface but I'm unlikely to do so before the weekend.

 

[Gran Solo]

I think I'd like to run 3840x1080, two monitors.

Interesting that you recommend a 2 core 4 thread Skylake i3 - technically that doesn't meet Frontier's minimum requirements, does it?
I don't doubt you, I just wonder what's behind the recommendation of a "Quad Core CPU (4 x 2Ghz)" as a minimum requirement. I long suspected that the number of physical cores is not really the reason for asking for a quadcore, since the game can clearly be run on a dualcore. Does Horizons require 4 threads - Would it benefit from hyperthreading? Or is the requirement of a quadcore because of general performance?

 

[Porina]

It would be fair to doubt me, at least question what I say. I'm basing this off previous testing from memory, which isn't the most reliable, as well as extrapolating other observations. Now, it isn't this simple, but say you have 4x 2 GHz cores. Assuming the software can split the load equally, you can say that is like a single 8 GHz core. The i3-6100 is 2x 3.7 GHz before considering HT, or 7.4 GHz. Not that far off the same. Also, consider the 2 GHz cores are likely to be older ones, with slower ram. So the performance of those two cores are likely more efficient than mere GHz count. HT is another unknown, which I haven't tested in ED. Given CPU needs are so minor, it didn't seem worth the effort. It may elevate the effective power of the i3 above what the physical cores can deliver in themselves. End of the day, this is a lot of speculation, but I would still say this would be my route if you gave me very tight budget and told me to build a gaming system. I'l put as much as I can towards the GPU which I know is limiting, rather than the CPU which is much less so.

I actually went through a proposed budget system build in another thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=233506&p=3608108&viewfull=1#post3608108. In there, I went with an older Haswell system to push the price down even further, but beyond this point it was getting very challenging. I believe the described i3/960 box would be decent enough for 1080p gaming.

There is also the argument, what is good enough for now, might not be good enough for tomorrow. Certainly what I thought was ok before Horizons was blown away when that arrived. Maybe when we get Earth-like landings the bar will be raised up another step. But how far forward can you look by buying more now vs. a future upgrade? Hard to say.

3840x1080 is an interesting choice. In total pixels it is still less than my single 3440x1440 monitor, but I'd estimate a 980Ti still wouldn't get 60fps minimum in all situations. Also with 2 monitors, the join will be right in the middle of your field of view. Not sure that's going to be fun.

 

[Gran Solo]

I had the idea to use the headtracker so that I can "look away" from that center bar.
That reminds me, Frontier, how about a setting to move off-center your position within the display's field of view?
If the whole dual monitor thing doesn't turn out to be fun, I'll probably stick to using just a single monitor. I probably can't afford the hardware to make a three monitor cockpit work.

Edit: I've been looking at the Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition, because it's very competitively priced and overclockable. However, it's lack of features like hyperthreading and its lower cache are a bit scary to me. Who knows what makes the COBRA engine hum, and I don't want to cripple my performance out of the box.