The 'help me choose hardware to run PA' megathread

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This is propably related/best fit.
Somebody on teh steam forum claimed very loudly the game with not support 4k/Ultra HD resolutions in full screen.
So this is twofold question:
Does the game support it?
And what is the maximum fullscreen resolution?

Game runs at whatever resolution your desktop is set to. 4k is possible. There is a bit of a problem though (based on comments on here from someone running 4k) and that is there isn't an option to scale the ui, so on very high resolution the ui is very small...

For those who want new hardware for PA, I recommend buying nvidia gfx cards. There is this annoying lighting bug on amd cards for many months now. I don't know if it's related specifically to my r9 290 and other and cards but I have 10 fps at the start of the game on maxed graphics.

I regret buying the r9 290

Well what settings do you need to adjust to avoid this problem? For example is it related to HDR or Super-sampling?

Yeah, the super bright sunlight is very annoying and has been there with my former 5850 and now 290 too. I somehow got used to it. I don't think I would have considered buying nvidia just for this game though (perf/price ratio wise)

Something is wrong with your set-up. I have R9 280 3GB and have 60 fps are constantly, even with PiP on 1680 x 1050 and a massive systems on Uber settings.

I occasionally have great fps but it's after i do some random changes in the settings.

The lighting or the fps rate issue?

What I'm saying is there is *obviously* something not quite correct with your set up. It could be an incompatibility with AMD drivers and a particular graphics feature (in which case changing settings 1 at a time will help identify it), it could be an issue with an external setting in the catalyst software (e.g. forcing AA outside the game?), it could be an issue with your drivers. I've run PA on an AMD Fire Pro (workstation card) as a test and it ran flawlessly so I know AMD hardware isn't fundamentally broken.

As a start, would you mind posting a dxdiag (assuming Windows?) just to rule out anything obvious (I'm sure you'll be fine just thought it's worth a look). Then maybe it's worth doing some testing with a set map and an AI with 0 eco to rule out a problem relating to biomes.

It's also worth adding in the '--nomods' switch into the launcher options as it could be remnants of an old mod causing a problem (this solved a similar performance crash for another guy on here recently). I know Nvidia cards are preferred but the difference is more like "normally a 290 would match a gtx 780, it's only matching a gtx 770" kinda difference (i.e. a few fps) rather than total stall like your describing.

I understand my issue now. When i launch through the official launcher without mods, i have between 10 and 20 fps no matter what the gfx options are (low -> uber).
When i launch through PAMM without mods (and with mods too), everything is fine, 50+fps with uber gfx + 175% supersample.

Please don't ask me why.

Case closed.

That's bizzare?! Still at least you've found the fix Now I'm jealous... must... resist... buying.... graphics card....

What happens when you just start the binary directly? On Windows one lives in a x64 folder in the PA game folder or something? I don't know where it is, but I imagine it's called PA.exe or something like that. It's basically what PAMM does. If that works, then you can just make a shortcut to that executable and you don't even need to have PAMM running.

As a big pa fan that has been unable to play for quite sometime due to cpu breaking, I have a question. Will pa see continuing optimization enough so that it will be able to be played on a alienware m17x r1 with dual 280m sli gpu and 8gigs ram ; or should I throw in towel quit checking and realize I won't be able to play till I'm done with grad school and can afford another cpu?

If you go to grad school, you'll never be able to afford another CPU.

PA currently doesn't support SLI configurations, so the extra grunt that usually gives you is forfeited at the moment.

Any plan on sli support in near future?

As long as that's dual-core (or better) it should run, especially if it's Windows 7, though disabling SLI may result in better performance, since the game isn't true fullscreen. As for support in the new future, I'd go with no. It's possible, especially if Nvidia keeps making their SLI drivers more capable, but it's unlikely that Uber will work on it since it only applies to a minority (should I really generalize that far? ) and they have bigger fish to fry.

Also, you'll likely find that having 8GB of RAM is more important than an awesome CPU, though your settings will need to be lowered if you only have a mobile dual-core or low-end quad (I'm talking mobile bottom of the barrel i5/C2Q) here).

(Also, though not related to PA, don't get a hyper threaded CPU unless you're using applications that benefit from it, HT will actually slow down [some] games.)

Ok I've looked up your machine... It's a core 2 quad. Also a 280m should be ample as well as the 8gb ram. That should play the game well (possibly on low graphics settings). For comparison, I run pa on my first gen i5 laptop (2.4 Ghs dual core +ht, your cpu is probably faster overall thanks to being full quad), 8gb ram and an nvidia gt 420m gpu.

If your having issues, it's possibly a config problem. Post a Dxdiag and we can help

SLi actually is in game at the moment. From this thread https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pax-dev-slides.63521/#post-989984

Cheers,

-Todd

Fixed, lol. It was my drivers. By some miracle I found laptopvideo2go or something and paid thirty bucks for a driver update program and read walls of txt cuz I guess nvidia quit supporting sli laptop configs so these guys found work arounds, anyway long story short,I'm back in and you guys have done fantastic work with the game since the Alpha and early beta days,wow, you've truly made a fantastic game!