Graphics card question

[John_M42]

Hello everyone I have a quick question about my graphics card, I was wondering with these specs if I can play this game?  My Graphics card has the following. Total available graphics memory: 3161MB, Shared system memory: 3033MB, Dedicated memory: 128MB.  Any help is grateful.

Thank you

[StahnAileron]

In theory you could with everything turned down for visuals. However, I might be more worried about KSP doing something dumb with the RAM since it's a memory hog like no other. (Nothing I've ran to date can max out RAM usage regularly like KSP can...)

Anyway, KSP is actually kinda light on graphical requirements. All the pretty pictures you see online in-game with fantastic views tend to be with graphical mods installed. If you're running integrated graphics (indicative by the shared RAM specs), I would worry a bit more if the CPU can handle KSP. KSP is pretty CPU-intensive comparatively.

Either way, you may wind up running the game in non-real-time. (Time in-game is slower than reality; i.e. One in-game second will last longer than a real second.)

If you have more specs (brand, model, etc.), we might be able to give you more detailed feedback.

[Starman4308]

Is your toaster and/or microwave from earlier than 2005? These common household appliances may not have enough graphics processing power to fluently run KSP. Fortunately, Squad has announced support for blender-based hardware acceleration on any blender manufactured later than about Q2 2012.

Exaggeration aside, the stock game's graphics are pretty simple, and should run reasonably well on anything even vaguely resembling a modern computer (including El Cheapo laptops). What's usually much more limiting is CPU and/or memory. With a bit more detailed information, I can tell you with much more confidence, but any frame rate drops are probably the fault of A, a weak CPU combined with high part-count vessels, B, you're starting to run out of physical memory and are chugging as you start to move too much to swap, or C, you installed 47 graphics mods with high-resolution textures.

[steve_v]

7 hours ago, John_M42 said:

Dedicated memory: 128MB.

Maybe, but you're sure pushing your luck with that 128MB dedicated VRAM...

System requirements say minimum 512MB, your 'card' sounds like an integrated chip with access to shared system memory, so you might get away with it. System RAM is a whole lot slower than dedicated VRAM though...

Edited May 1, 2017 by steve_v

[LoSBoL]

Must be an Intel HD integrated Graphics card.
It runs on my HD4000 (I7-4600U), but not very smooth. @John_M42 Can you share which CPU you have?  That gives insight in which version Intel HD Graphics you have and gives a better view on the overall performance.

 

[John_M42]

Thank you everyone for your help. Just for more information these are the specs for my computer.  My computer is a HP Pavilion Notebook, Windows 10, Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-502OU CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.19GHz, Installed RAM: 6.00 GB, System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor.  I'm not a computer savvy guy, can someone say yes or no this will or won't work for the game.  Thank you so much.

[LoSBoL]

 

Youre good

Here's what I did, I have an laptop witch an I5-5300U, there are 2 differences compared to your I3-5010U, Mine has a base clock of 2,3 GHz which turbo's to 2,9. The I3-5010U has a clock of 2,1 GHz and no Turbo.So I disabled the Turbo on my CPU to let it run at 2,3 GHz and I disabled my secondary graphics card. Those changes made it run a slightly faster than your I3.

I booted KSP and toned down the graphics details. I took 2 stock vessels, the 89 part Learstar A1 and the 110 part Dynawing, and to my surprise it runs pretty good numbers! FPS at launch is between 25 and 40, And the physics is in the greenish (meaning it can run the physics calculations in real time mostly)

I was sceptic about the CPU speed, It really did surprise me that it didn't choke.

Just don't install graphical mods and keep the part count of youre vessels low, and I think you will enjoy it. (Just make sure your laptop is in performance mode in the battery setting, and you don't have programs running in the background)

 

Happy Launchings!

Edited May 2, 2017 by LoSBoL

[John_M42]

8 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

 

Youre good

Here's what I did, I have an laptop witch an I5-5300U, there are 2 differences compared to your I3-5010U, Mine has a base clock of 2,3 GHz which turbo's to 2,9. The I3-5010U has a clock of 2,1 GHz and no Turbo.So I disabled the Turbo on my CPU to let it run at 2,3 GHz and I disabled my secondary graphics card. Those changes made it run a slightly faster than your I3.

I booted KSP and toned down the graphics details. I took 2 stock vessels, the 89 part Learstar A1 and the 110 part Dynawing, and to my surprise it runs pretty good numbers! FPS at launch is between 25 and 40, And the physics is in the greenish (meaning it can run the physics calculations in real time mostly)

I was sceptic about the CPU speed, It really did surprise me that it didn't choke.

Just don't install graphical mods and keep the part count of youre vessels low, and I think you will enjoy it. (Just make sure your laptop is in performance mode in the battery setting, and you don't have programs running in the background)

 

Happy Launchings!

Thank you so much LoSBoL, I don't understand much of what you said in you post. Like I said I'm not a tech guy (I understand a little) but not as much as what you are talking about.  You sound like you are very smart with computers. I would like to know more about what you are talking about with this statement (see below).

(Just don't install graphical mods and keep the part count of your vessels low, and I think you will enjoy it. (Just make sure your laptop is in performance mode in the battery setting, and you don't have programs running in the background)  I don't know how to put my battery in performance mode?

Thank you again for all of your help.  I downloaded the Demo and built the spaceship and launched the spaceship it gave me and everything seemed to work very well, my computer got warm while I was building my spaceship.  I cant wait to get started helping my Kerbals. 

[LoSBoL]

I've learned a thing or two   And you are more then welcome, I like to help out when I can.

What I meant with graphical mods, is that Squad made the game which can be altered (modified) as you seem fit, so there are tons of modifications that people make that you can make use of. Graphical mods to make the game look better, mods that have new parts, mods that makes the game easier to use, harder to use etc.  Basicly if you think the game could use something extra, somebody probably has made a mod for that already.  I saw this video today, a very different beast than the standard rocketparts, but it still is Kerbal Space Program.

Somewhere in your taskbar is a battery icon, If you click there you'll find something like energysettings, from there you can put it in a different mode, the performance mode will give you the best gaming performance, at the cost of batterytime.
Since the game is pretty demanding, youre laptop will get hot,as you start building bigger vessels, it will get warm in space also, not just in the VAB (building area). That's the just the downfall if you play on a laptop.

[John_M42]

Sorry it took a while to get back with you. Your help is gratefully appreciated I just wish I had more time to figure out computers and how everything works with them. Holy cow that is an amazing video and it looks like this game can really take you places in space I never thought you could.

Ahh, ok I will check that out and make the change.  I never knew that it would do that to your computer, that's crazy that it does that (gets hot). That's just more stuff I would have to learn about computers, lol.  I learned all my computer knowledge back in the late 80's and early 90's so my knowledge only goes about that far.  Thank you again for all of your help it really means a lot that you took the time to help me out.

Is there anyway to make friends in the game?

[maceemiller]

On 2017-5-7 at 4:35 PM, John_M42 said:

Sorry it took a while to get back with you. Your help is gratefully appreciated I just wish I had more time to figure out computers and how everything works with them. Holy cow that is an amazing video and it looks like this game can really take you places in space I never thought you could.

Ahh, ok I will check that out and make the change.  I never knew that it would do that to your computer, that's crazy that it does that (gets hot). That's just more stuff I would have to learn about computers, lol.  I learned all my computer knowledge back in the late 80's and early 90's so my knowledge only goes about that far.  Thank you again for all of your help it really means a lot that you took the time to help me out.

Is there anyway to make friends in the game?

I believe the Dark multi player mod (or another multi player mod, I forget the name) allows you to make friends and play with other people. I'll check.

Try this.....