Anyone Else Recently Build A Bad@** PC in Reponse to upcoming 1.1?

[T.A.P.O.R.]

6 hours ago, T.A.P.O.R. said:

I tried replying yesterday, but my phone has an old quote stuck in the reply box.

They're prettiness mods. Can be a bit harsh on your machine. Especially Scatterer.

 

Tried scatterer out of curiosity.

Computer didn't melt, however windows 32bit crashed on revert to vab where linux 64bit did not(too many mods i guess).

[Pixel of Life]

Not yet, but I just got a job so I'll probably wait until 1.1 is out and then upgrade my rig a bit.

And by "a bit" I mean I'll probably end up building a completely new one... I need more RAM for KSP, my current CPU and motherboard are 5 years old already (and I broke the locking mechanism on the PCI-E slot so the little screw is the only thing holding the GPU on), PSU's cables are way too short (had to get really creative with them and it looks horrible), and the case is too small. Not sure about the GPU, I kinda want to get a GTX 980/980Ti but I also want to wait for the new 1000 series Nvidias.

At least I can sell some of the old components for a few hundred euros.

[davidy12]

I'm upgrading my primary gaming system to 16gigs. When I get home

Saphire Radeon 6970 2GB
8 Gigs of Ram currently
1TB of HD

AS SOON as it gets back from the shop. (My cousins stepped on one of my ramstick and I have to get two new sticks)

However, at college, my MacBook Pro works Beautifully.

TO ALL KSP NEWBS, with the 64bit hack/64bit support+8gigs of ram and a lot of mods (~190 or more). It works like a dream.  
 

 

[thunder175]

Just ordered a new setup this past week. I'll be decommissioning an AMD 1090T Thuban based system w/ 16GB of RAM on an MSI 890FXA-GD70 mobo in the coming week or two, and upgrading to an i7 5820k, 16GB DDR4, on an MSI X99A MPower mobo along with an M.2 Samsung 950 Pro 256GB SSD. I will be keeping my Crossfire'd 7870's for the time being since those are just fine for KSP usage. A little overkill I realize, but upon looking at old receipts I realized that I ordered the components for my current rig on February 2, 2011. It was time...

 

Hopeful with all the rest of you on here that 1.1 will better utilize the resources committed to it.

[Draconiator]

I still have my Quad-core Athlon 2 X4 3.1GHZ, 4GB RAM and Nvidia Geforce GT610, and it runs KSP really nicely.  Not to mention it takes other games I throw at it really well too.  I may upgrade the video card in this thing again though...

[ToukieToucan]

On February 27, 2016 at 3:01 PM, CaptainKorhonen said:

Not yet, but I just got a job so I'll probably wait until 1.1 is out and then upgrade my rig a bit.

And by "a bit" I mean I'll probably end up building a completely new one... I need more RAM for KSP, my current CPU and motherboard are 5 years old already (and I broke the locking mechanism on the PCI-E slot so the little screw is the only thing holding the GPU on), PSU's cables are way too short (had to get really creative with them and it looks horrible), and the case is too small. Not sure about the GPU, I kinda want to get a GTX 980/980Ti but I also want to wait for the new 1000 series Nvidias.

At least I can sell some of the old components for a few hundred euros.

You can get 8 GB of RAM for just $45 nowadays.

[Draconiator]

On 2/26/2016 at 1:49 AM, OldLost said:

While not specifically for KSP 1.1, I'm building my new PC as we speak.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($249.99 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 54.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($59.99 @ Newegg) 
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($154.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($134.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($159.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($53.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($334.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition ATX Mid Tower Case  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($105.98 @ Newegg) 
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer  ($15.99 @ Newegg) 
Case Fan: Corsair Air Series AF120 Quiet Edition (2-Pack) 39.9 CFM 120mm  Fans  ($25.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1381.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-26 01:46 EST-0500

WARNING: do NOT buy Western Digital hard drives.  I have a 1TB one that konked out on me waaaaay before the hard drives natural lifetime was up, and I had to replace it with a Seagate, which I have had no problems with so far.  It started making a Click of Death, and there it went.  I managed to save some stuff though.

[Hannu2]

My kids need a computer and I think that maybe I give my computer (i7 3770K) to them and buy a new one for myself. But I will wait for Intel's Broadwell E processors and also that I have enough money to buy what I want to (also a 4K display suitable for photo processing). KSP will not certainly need 6 cores but it would be nice for PovRay rendering and my own hobby programming projects.

[oglommi]

On 27.1.2016 at 5:06 AM, scribbleheli said:

I'm Super Stoked about 1.1. So I saved up all my Christmas money, Work Bonus, and even a little Grant funds to build a Skylake PC.

Core I7 6700k@ 4.8Ghz 

Asus Range 8

64GB SDD just for KSP, 500gb SSD as primary boot, 1Tb HDD storage.

16Gb DDR4 @2400Mhz (another 16 is in the Que if KSP can make use of it)

Liquid cooled goodness Cosair H100i

GTX 760OC windforce (Hopefully tax refund gets a 980 ti)

 

Anyone else build I high end PC just because they were excited about 1.1?

Na, I have a [email protected] Ghz 2xGeforce 680 SLI. When I get the upgrade itch it quickly dissipates when I start calculating how much it would cost to get a computer that is significantly stronger than the one I have today.

[Pecan]

Every day gets better and better.

New computer should be here in a matter of hours (i7, 16G RAM, GTX 970, etc.) and now 1.1 experimentals is announced.  Just in time then; if only I didn't have to go to work.

[NecroBones]

On 3/1/2016 at 2:57 PM, Draconiator said:

WARNING: do NOT buy Western Digital hard drives.  I have a 1TB one that konked out on me waaaaay before the hard drives natural lifetime was up, and I had to replace it with a Seagate, which I have had no problems with so far.  It started making a Click of Death, and there it went.  I managed to save some stuff though.

 

Heh, my experience has often been the other way around. I've had a couple WD disks go bad over the years, but most have run fine. The thing is, all physical hard drives (from any manufacturer) have failure rates that climb rapidly after the first 3 to 5 years, and they also can have a high chance of failure when they're new, in the first week or two. They can still die somewhere in between, if you're unlucky.

 

I've had mostly WD disks for the last 15-20 years. They die at the expected rate, IMHO.

 

[Tig]

On 3/1/2016 at 2:57 PM, Draconiator said:

WARNING: do NOT buy Western Digital hard drives.  I have a 1TB one that konked out on me waaaaay before the hard drives natural lifetime was up, and I had to replace it with a Seagate, which I have had no problems with so far.  It started making a Click of Death, and there it went.  I managed to save some stuff though.

Yeah, I agree with Necro, its tough to make generalizations about brands, especially with a sample set of one. Not exactly what we statistic geeks would call an acceptable sample set size. Also, even within a manufacturer it can vary a lot between different drives.

If people are really interested, they should check out Backblaze.com 's blog.  They're a storage company that uses consumer drives; they put out a great blog updating every quarter on what drives they have and their failure rates over time.  Now, they have like 50,000+ drives... so that becomes a bit more relevant statistically.

From their website, interesting note regarding Seagate...

Drive:	Failure Rate:
1.5GB 7200 RPM Drive	24%
1.5GB 5900 RPM Drive	10%
3GB 7200 RPM Drive	28%
4GB 5900 RPM Drive	3%
6GB 7200 RPM Drive	1.9%

That 3GB 7200 rpm one with the terrible 28% failure rate... I have the 5900 rpm version, tougher to get a good precise number on it, but it looks like it has a failure rate of only about 3%.  Although its meaningless, if interested, the one in my possession has zero SMART errors.

So, is Seagate good or bad? 

[Vermil]

On 3/1/2016 at 8:39 PM, thunder175 said:

Just ordered a new setup this past week. I'll be decommissioning an AMD 1090T Thuban based system w/ 16GB of RAM on an MSI 890FXA-GD70 mobo in the coming week or two, and upgrading to an i7 5820k, 16GB DDR4, on an MSI X99A MPower mobo along with an M.2 Samsung 950 Pro 256GB SSD. I will be keeping my Crossfire'd 7870's for the time being since those are just fine for KSP usage. A little overkill I realize, but upon looking at old receipts I realized that I ordered the components for my current rig on February 2, 2011. It was time...

 

Hopeful with all the rest of you on here that 1.1 will better utilize the resources committed to it.

 

I also have a 1090 Thuban. ..And dam if I don't have the same motherboard too? I think so but I don't remember exactly. I think it's on its fifth year? Dunno... It's got a Radeon 6970 and a 30" 2560X1600 calibrated monitor.

Anyway, it's just fine. Still works splendidly. I'm actually not playing KSP much on it. I mostly use my also old laptop for that. Also works fine.

I mostly use my desktop for photography work, and I've looked at the specific application benchmarks and I actually don't have terribly much to gain to build new. For it to feel worthwhile, I'm forced up to 6-core, triple channels Corei7, and that will be dam expensive. What I could use is 32 GB ram.

I also play big RPGs and some FPS on the desktop. But it has no problem with those either, just a bit of tweak to graphics settings sometimes. I've never had a computer this long. Normally I build a new one at least every third year.

[Renegrade]

On 2016-03-01 at 6:48 PM, oglommi said:

Na, I have a [email protected] Ghz 2xGeforce 680 SLI. When I get the upgrade itch it quickly dissipates when I start calculating how much it would cost to get a computer that is significantly stronger than the one I have today.

We should make an overclocked i7-3820 club or something heh. 

[oglommi]

35 minutes ago, Renegrade said:

We should make an overclocked i7-3820 club or something heh. 

Yeah, I can get mine over 5GHz, but when I use BCLK/Strap 125 my motherboard and G.skill Ram starts to dislike each other intensly.

[tetryds]

Just bought the i7 4790k, will arrive soon, gunna be gud.
No, a 6700k was really not worth it on my case, I would be stuck without the ability to overclock it, be forced to use DDR3 on it and underuse my WC and PSU, at a 30% higher cost.
This baby is what is going to run the next BAD-T battles, so expect 30+fps on 2x2 battles.
I am expecting the 1.1 update to allow up to 4x4 battles, maybe 8x8 (4 vessels per core) if the performance is THAT much better, but that would be a bit too much even if it becomes possible, would rather increase the part count 

What I really expect is to be able to set up battlefields and strike missions on 1.1 without lagging at all.

[DowsingSpoon]

I see a lot of people with cool rigs, and some comments that they're overbuilt for KSP. So, I'm wondering what the minimum specs are in order to achieve good frame rates in Kerbal Space Program. What setup do you need to get a steady 60 FPS in Stock KSP at the highest quality settings at 1080p? 1440p? 2160p?

For a specific example of why this question matters, let's say I wanted to upgrade my rig to run Kerbal Space Program at 4K. Should I get a GTX 970 or a GTX 980Ti? Perhaps 2160p60 requires a crazy SLI setup? Or maybe I'm overestimating the task and a GTX 960 is sufficient for the job?

[Renegrade]

23 minutes ago, DowsingSpoon said:

For a specific example of why this question matters, let's say I wanted to upgrade my rig to run Kerbal Space Program at 4K. Should I get a GTX 970 or a GTX 980Ti? Perhaps 2160p60 requires a crazy SLI setup? Or maybe I'm overestimating the task and a GTX 960 is sufficient for the job?

KSP is largely CPU bound, so high end cards aren't really needed.  I have a rather dated GTX 670 card, and it runs KSP fine.  Just don't have a card from the budget/value end of the spectrum (a GTX 470 will absolutely tear a GT 710 apart).

SLI (scalable link interface) is usually a waste of money - it can actually result in lower framerate in some games/applications.  You're better off spending the money on other components, or using it to shorten an upgrade cycle (well, assuming hardware is actually even improving at all lately*), or buy reliability-related products (HDDs for backups, nice big cozy UPSes, etc).

* - there's a lot of signs of slowing in the CPU industry in terms of real performance.  As I mentioned earlier in this thread, current-gen CPUs are no match for my dated, four or five year old i7-3820, which basically represents Moore's Law catching on fire, falling over, and sinking into the swamp.  Outside of memory performance, anyhow.  Either that, or Intel is sinking into the bog of the Pentium 4 again.

[eddiew]

On 01/03/2016 at 7:57 PM, Draconiator said:

WARNING: do NOT buy Western Digital hard drives.  I have a 1TB one that konked out on me waaaaay before the hard drives natural lifetime was up, and I had to replace it with a Seagate, which I have had no problems with so far.  It started making a Click of Death, and there it went.  I managed to save some stuff though.

Seagate usually fares worst on reliability studies. Bad luck on your one bad WD, but please don't recommend people to buy Seagate based on it ^^

12 hours ago, DowsingSpoon said:

I see a lot of people with cool rigs, and some comments that they're overbuilt for KSP. So, I'm wondering what the minimum specs are in order to achieve good frame rates in Kerbal Space Program. What setup do you need to get a steady 60 FPS in Stock KSP at the highest quality settings at 1080p? 1440p? 2160p?

For a specific example of why this question matters, let's say I wanted to upgrade my rig to run Kerbal Space Program at 4K. Should I get a GTX 970 or a GTX 980Ti? Perhaps 2160p60 requires a crazy SLI setup? Or maybe I'm overestimating the task and a GTX 960 is sufficient for the job?

Impossible to answer. FPS is determined by vessel complexity and situation. Nobody gets 60 fps with a 500 part ship. Most don't get it with 100 parts.

We can only say that the more you spend, the better the experience, and that CPU is more important than GPU. Personally I would look to an i5 6600K and overclock it, since KSP does not thread very well. Dual GPU is probably pointless, but I don't know that for sure.

Edited March 10, 2016 by eddiew
typo'd cpu number

[eddiew]

-

Edited March 10, 2016 by eddiew

[DowsingSpoon]

KSP is largely CPU bound, so high end cards aren't really needed.

High-end cards definitely are not needed to play the game. Hell, I sometimes play on a MacBook Pro with an Intel GPU and it does just fine with high quality settings at the "low" resolution of 720p. Now, if I try to use that machine to drive a high resolution display, well, it's not going to do so well at any part count.

My takeaway from Renegrade's and eddiew's comments are that the limiting factor in KSP is often the CPU, and a better CPU (in terms of raw single-threaded performance) is essential to getting decent performance with high part count vehicles.

But that's not particularly useful. Let me explain why. Here's what I'm imagining:

If you take some variable like Part Count which impacts the game's "CPU boundedness" and some other variable like Resolution which impacts the game's "GPU boundedness," put them on two different sides of a plot then you can draw something like a performance gradient. Imagine it's measured in FPS or something, the specifics don't matter right now. On this gradient, you can trace the curve where FPS=60. This describes the capabilities of a particular piece of hardware running Kerbal Space Program.

Because this curve looks different for different pieces of hardware, you can extend the gradient into additional dimensions describing that hardware. If it were possible to boil all hardware configurations down to a single value like "Dollars" then you could imagine it in three dimensions. Or, you could do something similar by limiting yourself to varying only the CPU, or varying only the GPU, and so on. Doing so, FPS=60 becomes a surface describing what hardware to buy to achieve a particular performance target. And I'm wondering what that surface looks like.

Looking at it from a different angle, you could say to yourself that any number of parts greater than X is unreasonable and beyond that all bets are off. Take the slice where Part Count=X and look at the FPS=60 curve for Dollars and Resolution. Pick a resolution you think is good enough and find where the FPS=60 curve crosses that line. This is how much money you need to spend to hit that target.

[Renegrade]

15 minutes ago, DowsingSpoon said:

Looking at it from a different angle, you could say to yourself that any number of parts greater than X is unreasonable and beyond that all bets are off. Take the slice where Part Count=X and look at the FPS=60 curve for Dollars and Resolution. Pick a resolution you think is good enough and find where the FPS=60 curve crosses that line. This is how much money you need to spend to hit that target.

Indeed!  But let me point out one tiny detail: the thing you want to shoot for is avoiding the yellow/red numbers in the clock in the upper left.  KSP's simulation/physics rate is decoupled from the rendering rate, so FPS isn't the best indicator of performance.  Claw (the moderator, not the krakenbait dock-anywhere docking port) made an excellent post about it recently:

Claw's explanation

 

[T.A.P.O.R.]

All in the yellow, all the time.

1 part or a hundred. Makes no difference.

[eddiew]

7 hours ago, DowsingSpoon said:

Looking at it from a different angle, you could say to yourself that any number of parts greater than X is unreasonable and beyond that all bets are off. Take the slice where Part Count=X and look at the FPS=60 curve for Dollars and Resolution. Pick a resolution you think is good enough and find where the FPS=60 curve crosses that line. This is how much money you need to spend to hit that target.

I think I understand what you want to know - I don't think anyone has the numbers available. The problem with sandbox games is that they're such variable beasts. It would need a standard KSP performance test, probably a scripted launch and FPS tracking to orbit, and then you'd have to persuade people to run it en-masse and upload the results ^^;

While you are right that eventually the game will become GPU bottlenecked, my personal hunch is that it would be hard to do without falling right back to the onboard graphics. What you can of course do is build a new rig using your old graphics card, and see whether it maxes out. Something like MSI Afterburner will tell you the GPU usage, and my aging nVidia 760 rarely breaks 35% at 1900x1200. By 4k it is just possible that it would be the bottleneck, but it wouldn't be at WQHD.

On the other hand, I think it is still useful to know that performance scales with single thread CPU performance and not much with GPU, because it means that you should try to buy the newest i5 K and a motherboard that will let you overclock it. That is the minimum you need to spend for the best performance, regardless of your resolution 

[Temeter]

Not necessary. I've got a nice I5 4k, everything above that rises astronomically in price while giving very little performance gains. Tbh, even that I5 is kinda OP for almost every game. Graphics card is somewhat outdated and needs to be replaced, but an GTX660 still manages most modern games in 60fps and should be just fine for KSP. CPU is most important for a game like KSP anyway, and I'm quite well off in that regard.