Upgrading my PC for PA - any comments appreciated!

This is my current desktop, bought in 2010. Basically a radeon HD5870, 4gb ram, i7 930. Mainly it just sits in the background torrenting, but my retina macbook pro isn't cutting the cheese for PA so the desktop might be in for a refresh. I'll probably keep my 1080p monitor for now, but wouldn't mind moving to dual monitor if PA does a lovely job of that

Some options I was thinking of:
a) Just get a new video card, eg a GTX 780. Some forums suggest the i7 930 wouldn't be a bottleneck in this case

b) video card and more memory

c) Get one of the new i7-4770k cpu's with a new mobo, ram and GTX 780. This was my initial thought, but considering how many years have passed they aren't mind blowingly faster than the old 930 by the look of it.

Any thoughts would be great! I don't mind spending some cash, but only if it'll be a big change in perf (I realise the current lag is optimisation related in large part but might as well be prepared and enjoy a few more fps's during alpha/beta)


SKU QTY Description Unit Price Item Price
42060302 1 PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 Video Card, 1024MB 256-bit GDDR5 RAM, 875MHz GPU Clock, PCIe 2.1, Dual-link DVI-I, HDMI, HDCP, DisplayPort, CrossFire Ready (AX5870 1GBD5-PPDHG) $499.40 $499.40

37140575 1 Mach Xtreme 4GB (2x 2GB) Dual Channel Armor X Series Memory - PC3 17600 (2200MHz) DDR3 - CL 7-10-10-28 2N - XMP Support (MXD3AX22004GK) $224.50 $224.50

28023263 1 Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, LGA1366, Triple DDR3-2200, Intel X58+ICH10R, 6.4GT/s QPI, 10x SATA (2x 6Gb/s), 2x eSATA, 1x IDE, 1x FDD, CrossFireX, SLI, 4x PCIe x16 (x16+x16+x8+x8), 2x PCIe x1, 1x PCI, 12x USB (2x USB3), 3x FireWire, Gigabit LAN, 8ch ALC889, ATX $299.00 $299.00

18020364 1 Scythe Orochi CPU Cooler for Intel 478/775, AMD 754,939,AM2 (SCORC-1000) $78.70 $78.70

16010872 1 Antec Nine Hundred Two Gaming Case, 9x Configurable Drive Bays, 1x Top 200mm TriCool Fan, 1x Rear 120mm TriCool Fan, 2x Front TriCool Fans, 7 Expansion Slots, 2x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA, 1x Audio-in, 1x Audio-out, ATX, No PSU Included $157.72 $157.72

34040573 1 XFX 850W Black Edition Modular Power Supply, ATX & ESP, 135mm Fan, Main Power ATX 20+4-pin, ATX 12V 4+4-pin, EPS12V 8-pin, PCI-E 6+2-pin, SATA 15-pin, Peripheral 4-pin, FDD 4-pin (P1-850B-CAG9) $209.00 $209.00

19010198 1 Intel Core i7 930, 2.80GHz, Quad Core, Socket LGA1366, 130W TDP, 4.8GT/s QPI, 4x256KB L2 Cache, 8MB L3 Cache, Boxed, Bloomfield (BX80601930) $369.00 $369.00

actually, my home build has similar stats. Right now it can play PA alpha passably even at endgame. You can upgrade if you want, but I'm not seeing any real problems with you playing even the alpha. And the alpha is laggy as hell, unoptimized to the extreme, etc. etc.

So basically I would say your PC is fine to play PA at the moment, even in buggy, laggy alpha. Final release it's definitely ready.

edit: on second thought, reminding myself that PA is a game with tens of thousands of units streaming across planets at once, you might want to go for that upgrade if you can afford it. Although you'll probably be fine.

Thanks. Yesterday was a bit of a turtlefest with another guy and we ended up with 1500+ units each. Foolish the playstyle may be, I was getting about one frame per 3-5 seconds near the end! Slideshow city. I probably should look into whether its cpu bound or GPU but I'm figuring the latter may be more likely.

Don't bother upgrading, 3-5 FPS is really good for endgame. Everyone is getting absolutely terrible framerates endgame, and I believe it is both GPU and CPU bound.

It'll only get better with time, upgrading won't be worth the money. Unless you can afford a Titan and a pair top-of-the-line i7s, there's no point.

Lol not 3-5 fps, *one* frame per 3-5s!!! But I agree, I'll hold off for now. Looks like no new graphics cards coming out before the end of the year though, so whatever is out now will be the same as when it gets released I think.

i'd say wait till beta before you plan a new computer, it's still yet to be optimised, your current pc may be perfectly adequate

Two GTX 760s in SLi outperform not only the 780 but also the Titan for quite a bit less cash (the 760s are $250 each/$500 together).

https://www.facebook.com/evangelho/post ... 8334583464

Thanks - that's a good idea (and I appreciate the wise counsel to wait it out, also ). They are $329 each in Oz, but everything is a ripoff here. I notice it says on the product page it requires 500W. My power supply is 850W though, not sure if it'll run two of these puppies.

Also, is buying two going to be of much benefit or would a single one be more realistic given my older CPU might be a limiting factor?

I'd personally recommend you to avoid SLI/CrossFire if you mostly want to play PA and not some AAA titles with 4X multi sampling. There is few reasons why:

• SLI is really low-priority task for Uber, because it's client-only stuff which not affect gameplay and only used by very few users. link
• You need proper motherboard to get SLI working correctly. Most of motherboards with multiple PCI-e x16 can't work correctly with SLI, e.g: first card will work as x16, but other one may work as x2, it's make SLI/CF really slow. So you need to check that your motherboard support x8:x8 or x16:x16 modes.
• If you got both PCI-e near or you got small case you can get overheating.
• SLI/CF support for OpenGL isn't perfect. You can check how it works for your setup with Unigine Benchmarks (Heaven and Valley).
• Even many AAA games doesn't use SLI at all. Check different hardware reviews.

For long time I got 2-4 videocards in my PC, but I use it for OpenCL/CUDA and other non-gaming activity. I have 1200W power supply and I tested Nvidia SLI and CrossFireX, so I need to say that 99.99% of gamers doesn't need dual card setup. It's can only required if you want to play on 2660x1600 monitor or setup of three 1080p monitors/TVs, but it's definitely not cost-effective solution. Even if pay 1500$ for 2-4 GPU in SLI it's won't make you alpha experience much better, you only get 8-9fps instead of 3fps. But I think it just won't work at all, so you will get same 3fps even with four cards in your setup.

Don't buy two GPUs on start, you can always buy second card later if you need it and it's will be cheaper then. At least wait before any other person with dual GPU make proper testing of PA performance and check if there real advantages with SLI/CF.

All problems (exclude motherboard and overheating) is also same for dual-core video cards like GTX690 / HD6990 / HD7990 / etc. Popular (non dual-core video cards) hardware is always got less tech problems and much better drivers. So dual core card it's always even more risk than SLI/CF.

PS: Yeah my English is bad and I have no time to fix that wall of text, but I have more than 5 years experience with more than one GPU and I don't want people to buy overpriced hardware they don't really need.

I'd like to know what specs will be minimum required in late beta/release (Since I'm not in alpha anyway). My PC is ancient compared to those mentioned here:

Intel core 2 Duo E6850 2x3.00 GHz
Gigabyte Series Ati Radeon HD4670 (this version has 1 GDDR3 instead of 512 MB)
4 Gigs of DDR 2 RAM.

My pc is also from the core 2 line up it's still pretty good.

Q9450 @ 2.66 GHZ
DDR2 Ram 4 gb running at 800 mhz
Evga 570, 1.2 gb video ram (this was slightly before 2 gb models became popular)


Yeah. for any kind of upgrades i would wait into beta or at least into hardware goes on sale. ^^ you can also look into overclocking as a alternate for a boost (if you have the cooling for it)

Early game even on a pc as Ancient as mine it's fairly playable early game, there are some stutters with moving the camera but they will likely be fixed in a few weeks / early beta.

Ok, for others benefit I thought I'd update this. Taking the advice to avoid SLI, I got a GTX 780 superclocked (EVGA) but left everything else the same. (I also found I had 6 gigs of ram, not 4).

The improvement is immense. Not 'smooth' with heaps of units, but what was a 'one frame per 3 seconds' affair is more like 3-5 frames *per second* which sure makes all the difference. And the CPU seems to be under no strain throughout.

So if you have a similar config I can recommend that move; I'm sure even a lesser card would have done a lot, but if somethings worth wasting money on, surely it's worth wasting a lot! </bulletproof logic>

Cheers

well you're set.

the graphic card you had wasn't even an issue but thats basically a beast PC you have nnow and quite ready to run PA.