The 'help me choose hardware to run PA' megathread

Well a lot of the trouble is, some of us have year old low end computers, so we have a 1g 1 year old gpu (9500gt), a 2.8ghz 1 year old dual core (athlon 3 I believe...), and 8g ram at something like 160.

We can run the game okay, like fully, but probably won't on grand scale. Thing is, we aren't saving money by buying these, we just happen to already have these. We are saving money by "knowing it can run it so we don't need to spend money on a new machine all over again.

So in context of this thread:
if you already own a 2.8ghz dual core 6g ram 1g gpu type machine, you can run this. If so, you save money not buying another one until you can spend decent money and get a decent machine (upgrade when you really do need it). If not, buying one THIS weak won't save you money, so might as well go higher (unless you see an Emachine 1331 for $100 somewhere and you can reset it to factory).

Disclaimer: Even THEN, I advise against buying an Emachine, they truely do suck and is a big ripoff, but I was desperate lol...

I've got AMD FX-8120 8 Core Black Edition and AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series videoadapter.
The game runs perfectly on this hardware but the problem is the game overheats the processor so it reaches 90C and turns the whole computer off despite the expensive zalman's coolation pack.

I suppose the game does not take a full advantage of a videoadapter and lays the whole burden to processor.
I hope devs will take it into account and make videoadapter do the work.

WoW for example on ultra graphics heats my processor up to 45C and this is in 40vs40 battleground.

If your hardware overheat it's mean there is something wrong with hardware or OC settings. What you need to do:

• Make sure thermal paste isn't too old .
  It's good idea to replace it at least once a year.
• Check case fan out isn't blocked.
• Add more fans to case so there is more air flow.

If you can't manage to decrease heat just downclock it.

Hi there,

I still own a HD5850, it does the job, but I wanted to upgrade to a new GPU. I wanted to get the same price range of around $200-300, so I thought about a R9 280, R9 270X, GTX760 or GTX770 (still a little bit expensive though).

How does PA profit from VRAM, would be a 3GB card much better or even a 4GB one? Or is it overkill for 1920x1080? Ive read a lot you only would need 2GB if you want to play 1920.

What about AMD vs Nvidia for PA, does it run better on one side?

Will PA use things like AMD Mantle, have extra advanges of Nvidias core architectur, or will use DX12 later?

Should I better wait for next months, like R9 285 coming out, and GTX870. Or even 2015, when 20nm GPUs coming out (maybe)?

Thanks a lot

The more powerful the better, otherwise you'll just need to replace it sooner.

AMD tends to have issues with games in general, I'd go Nvidia. But I'm no hardware buff.

I doubt it. My HD5850 is over 4 years old and still does the job. Now it's time to upgrade though, where I think upgrading todays PCs should be around every 4-6 years. The jumps between technologies havent been that big in the past 10 years. It was way extreme in the beginner years around 1996-2004, where you had like 4-8x more speed every year. If you buy a GPU today, I would say it will still be good in 8 years, and CPU, even longer, like 10 years. GPU like I think upgrading makes sense if you get at least 100-150% more FPS for the same price like you paied for the older card, and thats the case today, if I switch from my HD5850 to a R9 270x for example. I have a 3770k, and the newest Intel only is around 6-10% faster on single core at same MHZ.

I think 3GB is going to be an overkill, I remember I saw the performance information before (ctrl + p) indicating that PA only used less than 1GB vram. On a not so large earth planet(1200 radius). I have a 7970 on my PC. It allows my PC to run the game pretty smooth at the early stage of the game.

I can say for sure that PA does take advantage of 2GB RAM so 3GB would be helpful for sure.

It's hard to say if 3GB vs 4GB worth it. In theory PA engine can effectively use mostly any amount of VRAM because it's use virtual textures, but nobody did any testing on 4GB+ GPUs yet.

It's depend on money you want to spend. Nvidia GPUs are move expensive so you pay more for same performance. Nvidia OpenGL drivers are better so they're better for PA, but most of games using D3D GPU manufacturer doesn't make sense.

In same time I can't say that Nvidia GPUs had less bugs or problems.

It's not likely and dev answer about that is here:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/amd-mantle-api-in-pa.51882/#post-794986

Though Khronos recently announced next generation of OpenGL and who knows, might be PA will use it one day.

When we talk about hardware it's always good idea to wait if you can, but there will be something else announced you'll be wait for.

PA does use 1.5GB ov VRAM even on my integrated graphics so it's hard to say how did you manage to only see 1GB used. Though Ctrl+P panel isn't always show correct video memory usage so better use some GPU manufacturer tool.

In general VRAM only makes a difference for high resolutions like 4k. My 2GB card does fine and if you're playing at 1080p there is really no need to get 3 or 4GB of VRAM.

Although if you plan on upgrading your monitor to 4k, you should go with 4GB, since SLI VRAM does not scale. 4K would be hard to run with a single $300-$400 card, not just in terms of power but also textures.

Hi mkdr,

Just wait for newer Hardware to come out, also by having your basic GPU, you are more likely to notice and appreciate the huge improvements that the DEVs making on the performance side on the engine.

As the proud owner of a GTX770 i can say that this can play PA very smooth up to 8 players on 8 planets (yes i tested it )

My card has it's own 2GB GDDR5 VRAM and an overclocked 1.2 GHz core. It runs with an Intel Quad-Core i7 3.2 and 8GB of RAM. Never had a problem with playing PA except for the occasional bug, but that has nothing to do with my system

Sorry, but that information is outdated. It worked like that with older graphic engines, but not with PA.

PA uses clip mapping with procedurally generated textures, whereby the raw full resolution textures can be several gigabytes in size. Minimum amount of memory for artifact-free texturing is about 1,5G (with 1G you will notice low res textures when swapping planets quickly, it can take up to a second until textures have been swapped out), and more memory can possibly also be put to good use.

AFAIK there is currently a 2GB limitation in place, so the current version of PA won't use more than 2GB VRAM, however that limitation is arbitrary and very likely to be lifted.

4K isn't that difficult either btw.: More stress from the fragment shader, but cost for the vertex shaders remains constant. Should work just fine with any recent $200 GPU
Right now, the engine doesn't even deal respect to the screen resolution, texture detail grade is only based on zoom level for now. And it even if it did, running a higher resolution would only cause the GPU to swap textures faster, it's not before 8k or so that 2GB VRAM would become insufficient to store the textures for a single scene.

PS: From my personal experience, PA runs fine with both AMD and Nvidia cards. Sure, the devs primarily use Nvidia cards, so they are going to fix most bugs for Nvidia cards in house, while some bugs on AMD cards might slip through due to insufficient testing (and are then only fixed in the next release), but in general both vendors don't take or give much.

PA is made with OpenGL, so no need for any direct X or mantle stuff.
The devs have stated that nvidia simply has better OpenGL drivers and that PA usually runs more fluid on Nvidia. Also Nvidia has better driver support.

The "problem" with Nvidia however is that there aren't many 3 or 4gb gpu's. I cited problem because I never had any problems with my 2gb GTX 770. PA runs at 140 to 70 frames (depending on the zoom) at the start and with a lot of units this might drop to 50 fps.

You could wait for the new Nvidia GPU's but then their price will be a lot higher than their current counterparts. So my 770 was 270 euros, but the 870 might cost 350 euros when it releases.

I'm very happy with my 770, it runs all games with a good fps. I also have a 144hz monitor so with older games where the card can go above 60fps everything is even more fluid

For your priceclass I'd say a 770 is the best choice for PA. But if you want an AMD card I cannot say which one is the best because I don't know much of AMD.

There is a gtx 770 4gb is there not?

Yep have one, and the 4gigs make a lot of difference with very very big systems. However, 2gigs of memory seems pretty reasonable. And i have another rig with a 560gtx 1gig, the game is running quite well also.
In order to enjoy the game as much as possible would vote i favor of :
core i5 (i have i7 with hyperthreading)
8gigs of ram (i have 32gigs)
gtx660 / 2gigs (i have gtx 770 with 4gigs).
The good thing with PA, the thing i really like among all others, is its ability to scale up. I've never seen a game scaling up that much. The more power you provide the larger system you can play with.

did the merger show this thread on General since one of the threads was on general or did you get moved?

Anyways I approve of this list if only that the ATI mark should be higher since running PA on ATI has such bad results and maybe putting the ram down as "8-16GB" instead of simply "8GB". but heck, who knows, perhaps further optimisation will ease things up on RAM usage further.

There was a thread in General with "what's the best graphics card for PA in this price range" - as promised in the OP I merged it into this thread with no mercy. Left a pointer up in General for 12 hours.

And actually the list of recommendations in the OP wasn't made by me some other bugger with a green or red name popped it in there, and I've not enough expertise on the matter to change it!

I'm on a fairly limited budget for upgrades as I'm moving house soon. Also because of this I need to future-proof my system as best as I can as I'm going to be fairly skint for a few years!

Current setup:
CPU - i7 930 @ 4ghz
GPU - Gainward GS 2GB 460 GTX
MB - Gigabyte - X58
RAM- 6 x 1gb Triple channel DDR3 1600Mhz
HD - 500GB SSD

The 2 things I've looked at upgrading are below, I'm trying to figure which I'll get the most benefit out of as unfortunately I can't afford to get both of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/190384-24gb-ddr3-1600mhz-hyperx-genesis-xmp-memory-khx1600c9d3k6-24gx

http://www.ebuyer.com/546764-gigaby...hdmi-displayport-pci-e-graphics-gv-n760oc-4gd

I think that for PA the best option would be RAM but I'm not sure this is the best option with other games coming out in the future. Is my GPU close enough to the latest offerings that it wouldn't make a great deal of difference?

Not easy to answer, but basically, having lots of memory should not really help if at the same time you do not upgrade your graphic card, simply because using more memory (to play larger planetary systems) will also require additional GFX card power. On the contrary, even if 8gigs of RAM would be better than 6gigs, (but here you're planning for 24gigs), the benefit you will get from a GTX760 to display all these polys will probably dramatically increase your game experience, even with 6gigs of memory.