Requirements for Play

[thekruselife]

Hey there,

Just looking for some advice on which computer to get when it comes to playing graphic intense games like Kerbal. I am a Mac use so I'm looking between the iMac 21.5'' base model or the MacBook Pro Retina 13'' base model.

Thanks for your help!

[moogoob]

My 2009-era Macbook pro can run it, so long as I boot into my Windows 7 install. Have to turn off pretty much all the fancy graphics like anti-aliasing, but once I do that it runs fine. Either one of those should do well even with max settings.

EDIT: though you may have to downsample from whatever resolution "retina" means to 1920 x 1080 or somesuch. Or not!

[Robotengineer]

As a former OS X user, I can tell you that you are going to hit the memory limit quite quickly. I switched to Linux Mint about 6 months ago, and haven't played KSP on OS X since, except for developing add-ons. As to which computer, I would recommend the iMac simply for the bigger screen, to be as great as it is, KSP requires a big screen, IMO.

[stibbons]

Consider a CPU upgrade if you can at all afford it - KSP is CPU-intensive and the physics calculations still happen in a single thread.

The stock game seems to run OK on my 2013 Air and 2013 Macbook Pro work machine, but to be honest I haven't really put it through its paces on either, prefer to play it on my desktop.

[Joshwoo70]

Best is to have 5GB of memory for ksp to use and for speed things. Ksp usually takes 2GB or less.

[Guest]

You'll want something with an i5 Minimum and something similar to a 750/750ti for Graphics. That's what i'd say is the Minimum you need to get run the game on full.

[Aerindel]

Runs pretty good on my mid 2012 13" Mac Pro. I imagine anything current that you buy will do better.

[Rune]

The only thing that impacts KSP performance is clock speed on the CPU. KSP is very much NOT a graphics-intensive game. It is, however, a devourer of CPU cycles on account of its detailed physics calculations on dozens if not hundreds of parts every step.

If you want to build true behemoths with thousands of parts, or dock dozens of vehicles to the same station, you should run and grab the i7 with the highest clock speed you can find. Doesn't matter the number of cores or the GPU, the bottleneck will always be that. And RAM is capped on account of it being a 32bit system to 4Gb, so just pick a couple sticks of the smallest size with the fastest clock speed you can afford to slightly increase access time. Solid state SSDs also do wonders for load times, good to have the OS on one of those. The rest is a marriage of budget and parts you should consider yourself.

Rune. Then again, you are a Mac user. You guys are not expected to think about what's under your hood, or what it does.

[Guest]

The only thing that impacts KSP performance is clock speed on the CPU. KSP is very much NOT a graphics-intensive game. It is, however, a devourer of CPU cycles on account of its detailed physics calculations on dozens if not hundreds of parts every step.

If you want to build true behemoths with thousands of parts, or dock dozens of vehicles to the same station, you should run and grab the i7 with the highest clock speed you can find. Doesn't matter the number of cores or the GPU, the bottleneck will always be that. And RAM is capped on account of it being a 32bit system to 4Gb, so just pick a couple sticks of the smallest size with the fastest clock speed you can afford to slightly increase access time. Solid state SSDs also do wonders for load times, good to have the OS on one of those. The rest is a marriage of budget and parts you should consider yourself.

Rune. Then again, you are a Mac user. You guys are not expected to think about what's under your hood, or what it does.

U5 is going to improve the hyperthreading capabilities of the physics engine pretty significantly, don't say to not focus on cores. When building/buying a PC you have to look ahead - a 6/8 core i7 may start to be worth it more for KSP players.

...Completely ignoring cost.

[LostOblivion]

KSP is graphics intensive? The graphics are crap. :-P Still best game I ever played. :-)

[Guest]

KSP is graphics intensive? The graphics are crap. :-P Still best game I ever played. :-)

750ti != GPU intensive. The game isn't, but you still need something decent to run them decently with some AA.

KSP graphics are definitely not crap, I've seen much, much worse.

[SRV Ron]

Being design to be ported to different operating systems KSP is not designed to take advantage of the graphic capability of a gaming computer. Therefore, its limitation is cpu cycles on a single threaded processing. Otherwise, you could be flying and landing on worlds like this.

Edited May 11, 2015 by SRV Ron

[soulsource]

Honestly, I wouldn't look for an Apple PC for playing games. Their specifications make it rather clear that the main priority during development was performance in CPU demanding applications (image and video editing for instance, but also numerics), while gaming performance obviously was much less of a concern. That being said, KSP is one of the few games that can actually benefit from such a design, as it's mainly CPU limited.

So, when the question comes to MacBook vs. iMac, I'd focus on iMac, as from my experience a bigger screen always improves gaming experience. Also, as cool as a thin keyboard might be for portability, for gaming it's (again: in my opinion) preferable to have a decent lift of keys. So, even if you're planning to get a MacBook, consider buying an external screen, keyboard and mouse (and while you're at it, get a gamepad as well, as the new aero model feels much better with analogue sticks).

That being said, the bottleneck for KSP is usually single thread CPU performance. I'm playing on an FX-6350 (3.9 GHz), what can approximately be compared to an i5 or i7 clocked at 2.5 GHz, and I must say that it's barely fast enough. With bigger ships the ingame clock often turns yellow, meaning insufficient CPU power for realtime simulation.

Now, let's have a look at the iMac models.

• The cheapest one, for USD 1099, has an i5 clocked at 1.4 GHz (dual core, but that's nearly irrelevant for KSP). If it reliably would clock at its highest turbo boost frequency (2.7 GHz), it'd in principle be fast enough, but afair the turbo boost clock rate depends not only on CPU load, but also on temperature, and it's very hard to predict that beforehand. The integrated GPU should in principle be enough to run KSP at low graphics settings, but I'm not sure if it can deliver the game without stuttering in the screen's native resolution of 1080p. I personally wouldn't consider this model for playing KSP.
  
• The second cheapest model, USD 1299, has an i5 quad core clocked at 2.7 GHz, with turbo boost at 3.2 GHz. This CPU is definitely fast enough for KSP. The only thing I'm sceptical about is the lack of a dedicated GPU. I'm rather confident that this integrated GPU can display KSP at the screen's native resolution, but again I wouldn't bet on it being able to render high terrain details, or to allow using visual enhancement mods without occasional stuttering.
  
• Now the last of the 21.5 inch models (USD 1499) of course has a fast enough CPU (i5 quad core, 2.9 Ghz with 3.6 GHz turbo). I wouldn't bother about the possible i7 upgrade, as the main difference between i5 and i7 is in multithread performance. This is the first (and only) 21.5 inch model with dedicated graphics card. The nVidia GTX 750M is actually on the border between entry-level and middle class graphics cards, but as KSP is not very GPU demanding, it probably will allow running the game at highest settings (except maybe for anti aliasing), and will very likely have enough reserves left for using graphics enhancing mods. It's definitely the most gaming friendly iMac of that size.
  

Regarding the 13 inch MacBook Pro: They all have a fast enough CPU, but all use the integrated Intel graphics processor, so what I've been writing about the USD 1299 iMac applies here as well.

Now, the question which one to buy is also a question of finances. If you have enough money and are really determined to buy Apple, I'd recommend you to get the USD 1499 iMac, with the USD 1299 iMac as second best option.

I personally would still build my own gaming PC from selected components. It's cheaper, and assembling a computer is fun. Also, as the 64bit version of KSP is (currently) only available for Linux, you might end up installing Linux on the Mac anyhow, and then there's the question, if the higher price really pays off, as the only thing that makes an Apple PC different from any other x86 based PC is the operating system. I don't know about the legal situation, but there's of course also the option of building a Hackintosh.

Edited May 11, 2015 by soulsource

[SRV Ron]

Want a real experience? Plug the computer into a huge flat screen TV or projector via the RGB or HDMI connector.

[Tiberion]

and something similar to a 750/750ti for Graphics.

Good lord, man. No way. I ran at full settings when the game came out on my laptop, which has a GTX 525 Mobile GPU in it, with an i3. KSP has certainly gotten more CPU intensive since then, but not really any more graphically. Even now I only run a i5 2500K (not overclocked) and a GTX 575, and I play 1920x1080 with it all turned up, and I've used graphics mods like EVE as well. There are plenty of games this system can't run on high anymore, but KSP isn't one of them

[eddiew]

The only thing that impacts KSP performance is clock speed on the CPU. KSP is very much NOT a graphics-intensive game. It is, however, a devourer of CPU cycles on account of its detailed physics calculations on dozens if not hundreds of parts every step.

Interesting you say this... because I agree, and yet I don't. For the most part, yes, CPU is dominant; however it's also very single threaded and doesn't care if you have an i3, i5, or i7... and while it only uses ~30% of my GPU to play, it uses 100% when I alt-tab out - unless I'm in the tracking centre, when it drops to 1%

The last point is probably an error, but it's still annoying!

SSDs are great though; my modded game is starting in 30 seconds since 1.0

- - - Updated - - -

Good lord, man. No way. I ran at full settings when the game came out on my laptop, which has a GTX 525 Mobile GPU in it, with an i3. KSP has certainly gotten more CPU intensive since then, but not really any more graphically. Even now I only run a i5 2500K (not overclocked) and a GTX 575, and I play 1920x1080 with it all turned up, and I've used graphics mods like EVE as well. There are plenty of games this system can't run on high anymore, but KSP isn't one of them

You'll run out of RAM before I run out of graphical performance

That said, a 100+ part spaceplane under nuFAR... that can chug! But the stock aero is much more lenient with its performance hit.

[stibbons]

Being design to be ported to different operating systems KSP is not designed to take advantage of the graphic capability of a gaming computer.

This is pretty poorly informed. And using Space Engine screenshots to try to demonstrate it isn't the best idea, seeing as cross platform support is on their roadmap.

Therefore, its limitation is cpu cycles on a single threaded processing.

Those are artifacts of the way the current engine processes physics calculations. Again, using Space Engine as a comparison is a terrible idea, seeing as it's purely a space simulator, without any of the complex small-scale interactions of KSP.

[hellion13]

Want a real experience? Plug the computer into a huge flat screen TV or projector via the RGB or HDMI connector.

I do this. On an i5 Alienware Alpha. 55in HD tv plus 5.1 surround. Its awesome.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

If you want to build true behemoths with thousands of parts, or dock dozens of vehicles to the same station, you should run and grab the i7 with the highest clock speed you can find.

But I'm poor... and my government's currently inflating our economy to the point of stupidity...

I'm basically screwed.