Building The Perfect Simulator

[Eean Holt]

Here is a rig I am going to build for an extreme RSSRO historical playthrough

Processor: Intel I9 4.5 Ghz

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 1080 16 Gb DDR5

RAM: 32 Gb DDR4 

High PC specs do matter if you want to run over 100 mods on KSP so you can have over 60 FPS and less game crashes. The type of playthrough I'm doing is The Wright Brothers to the present day. #Bob Fitch Project Alexandria "Continued". I'm also going to make a YouTube Channel out of this. Right now I have limited money and am trying to get a job. I will also do a weekly update.

Mod List is coming soon.

Thanks for reading.

Edited May 2, 2018 by Eean Holt
Help Needed

[Snark]

Moving this to Mission Reports, since it sounds as though your main plan for this thread is to provide updates on a KSP play-through, which is what that subforum is for.

(Science & Spaceflight is for discussing real-life stuff, not KSP.)

[wumpus]

I'm curious if you will have any significant load on the rest of your processors.  I'd expect that the RAM matters (especially once you start overdoing the mods) and the GPU matters (if the mods hit it hard enough), but getting KSP and/or the mods to use the rest of the threads will be impressive (unless you are planning something like fleets flying in formation).

For a long time it was pretty clear that a high power Pentium could likely match even the most expensive CPUs (unless the L3 cache became critical), multithreading changed that, but I didn't think it changed it by all that much.

[Cunjo Carl]

I'm a stock KSP guy, but most slow downs I've run into acted like cache / memory latency slowdowns, where your primary and secondary CPU caches get clogged and it's meandering out and dragging back a whole block from main memory for some random bit every command while your processor just hangs out and idles. I'm basing this on the classic slowdown you get where doubling your parts makes it go 6 times slower! If you're aiming for ships with lots of parts (many hundred), my thought would be that nice memory latency would be good and big CPU caches would be better. Just a thought, but there's my 2 cents!

I think most folks are running KSP on hardware much less impressive than what you've mentioned. Many problems with lag can be ironed out in post if you have the patience. I'll admit though, I never quite got it to look quite as nice . As I understand it, there's mods that will gate KSP to run at specifically say 1/2 or 1/32 speed to make it easy to speed back up in post if you need to do a thing that's particularly laggy.

Have fun with the playthrough, it sounds neat, and best of luck on the job market!

[Eean Holt]

use ubio welding to merge multiple parts into one part

[Cunjo Carl]

Thanks! I happen to be a stock guy though, I'd rather play with rockets than mods on the balance. They do have a ton of cool abilities though. I'm not sure if part welding would help with the 'cache thrashing' I described or not, I guess it would depend on how it's all programmed. It'd be an interesting experiment though!

[Eean Holt]

On 05/03/2018 at 9:18 AM, wumpus said:

I'm curious if you will have any significant load on the rest of your processors.  I'd expect that the RAM matters (especially once you start overdoing the mods) and the GPU matters (if the mods hit it hard enough), but getting KSP and/or the mods to use the rest of the threads will be impressive (unless you are planning something like fleets flying in formation).

For a long time it was pretty clear that a high power Pentium could likely match even the most expensive CPUs (unless the L3 cache became critical), multithreading changed that, but I didn't think it changed it by all that much.

the intel i9 is one of the powerful processors i've come across, which i am planning on getting, it has around 4.5 Ghz of processing power.

[Heirloom]

5 hours ago, Eean Holt said:

the intel i9 is one of the powerful processors i've come across, which i am planning on getting, it has around 4.5 Ghz of processing power.

i9 is absolute overkill. I can run 100+ mods with an i7-6700 3.4GHz. Your whole setup is overkill to be honest. Save yourself some money and don't buy all these parts. 32GB of RAM is okay, but a GTX 1080 16GB? KSP barely touches your CPU and a 1080 is overkill for most games anyways. Also, are you getting a spinning disc or a SSD? Ssd's help a lot if your running 100+ mods.

[Eean Holt]

Thanks, I'll try downgrading a bit.

[wumpus]

6 hours ago, Messier said:

i9 is absolute overkill. I can run 100+ mods with an i7-6700 3.4GHz. Your whole setup is overkill to be honest. Save yourself some money and don't buy all these parts. 32GB of RAM is okay, but a GTX 1080 16GB? KSP barely touches your CPU and a 1080 is overkill for most games anyways. Also, are you getting a spinning disc or a SSD? Ssd's help a lot if your running 100+ mods.

KSP will certainly hit one core hard, especially if you have a lot of parts flying around.  Anything past that is pretty questionable (this means an equally clocked i3 and i9 do equally well at KSP, but you might want a bit beyond an i3 while streaming).  I'd suggest an i5 8600K (and then cranked to ~5GHz) for hitting the asymptote of performance (this processor is unlikely to be limited by anything else for quite some time).  You might want an i7 (or Ryzen) on the odd chance that KSP and streaming might compete for cores, but I suspect that a 6 core i5 will get both jobs done.

Both the 1080GTX and 32G are extra expensive thanks to shortages.  The 1080 is dropping fast, both thanks to mining no longer being profitable and expectations of a next generation this summer.  32G seems extremely extravagant for KSP, considering that all mods needed to fit in 2G up until 1.1 (so most mods had to be designed with sane memory use in mind).  The graphics card is up to you, but KSP is typically only limited by how much CPU power you can get out of a single core/thread (i.e. an i9 isn't any more powerful at KSP than a similarly clocked i3), I'm not sure how many mods it takes to change this.

Certainly such a beast needs an SSD, but it also needs a spinning drive if you want to save your streams.  You want to keep windows, KSP, your streaming software, and anything else you use a lot on the SSD and keep your streams and anything else that is huge (and/or accessed slowly in sequence, like video) on the spinning drive.

[Eean Holt]

8 hours ago, wumpus said:

KSP will certainly hit one core hard, especially if you have a lot of parts flying around.  Anything past that is pretty questionable (this means an equally clocked i3 and i9 do equally well at KSP, but you might want a bit beyond an i3 while streaming).  I'd suggest an i5 8600K (and then cranked to ~5GHz) for hitting the asymptote of performance (this processor is unlikely to be limited by anything else for quite some time).  You might want an i7 (or Ryzen) on the odd chance that KSP and streaming might compete for cores, but I suspect that a 6 core i5 will get both jobs done.

Both the 1080GTX and 32G are extra expensive thanks to shortages.  The 1080 is dropping fast, both thanks to mining no longer being profitable and expectations of a next generation this summer.  32G seems extremely extravagant for KSP, considering that all mods needed to fit in 2G up until 1.1 (so most mods had to be designed with sane memory use in mind).  The graphics card is up to you, but KSP is typically only limited by how much CPU power you can get out of a single core/thread (i.e. an i9 isn't any more powerful at KSP than a similarly clocked i3), I'm not sure how many mods it takes to change this.

Certainly such a beast needs an SSD, but it also needs a spinning drive if you want to save your streams.  You want to keep windows, KSP, your streaming software, and anything else you use a lot on the SSD and keep your streams and anything else that is huge (and/or accessed slowly in sequence, like video) on the spinning drive.

Thanks, I'll try downgrading a bit.

But the most significant visual mod I am going to use is extreme texture overhaul to make KSP RSS look realistic as possible. It needs at least 12Gb of RAM and a powerful graphics card to work. other visual mods include planetshine, distant object enhancement, RSSVE, EVE, scatterer, texture replacer, and a real skybox. All of those visual mods combined needs a powerful graphics card above gtx1000.

I'm going to use KSP 1.2.2

[DeltaDizzy]

28 minutes ago, Eean Holt said:

I'm going to use KSP 1.2.2

RSS and RO are both updated to 1.3.1, so why use 1.2.2?

Heres the new RO thread if you didnt know.

 

Edited May 7, 2018 by DeltaDizzy

[Eean Holt]

because other mods in my modlist are not yet updated to 1.3.1

Edited May 7, 2018 by Eean Holt

[Eean Holt]

pc spec update

i7 8700k

gtx1070

32gb ddr4

1tb hdd

500gb ssd

current windows os

dual monitor display 165 hz, one for non-UI full screen visuals, cinematics, the other for UI flight information, controls, pc health monitoring, and browsing.

Edited May 7, 2018 by Eean Holt

[Heirloom]

5 hours ago, Eean Holt said:

Thanks, I'll try downgrading a bit.

But the most significant visual mod I am going to use is extreme texture overhaul to make KSP RSS look realistic as possible. It needs at least 12Gb of RAM and a powerful graphics card to work. other visual mods include planetshine, distant object enhancement, RSSVE, EVE, scatterer, texture replacer, and a real skybox. All of those visual mods combined needs a powerful graphics card above gtx1000.

I'm going to use KSP 1.2.2

KSP doesn’t touch your GPU. Anyways, I have all those mods in one of my RSS games and i can run it smoothly with just a GTX 950, i7-6700 and 32gb ddr4

[RocketMan-Explorer]

8 hours ago, Eean Holt said:

pc spec update

i7 8700k

gtx1070

32gb ddr4

1tb hdd

500gb ssd

current windows os

 

(impressed whistle)

Not a bad spec. I have a Ryzen 3 1300X, 8GB of DDR4, and a RX 550 (yes, I'm a bit of a cheapskate ). I still get 60+ fps on KSP and between 70 and 80 on other games But it's your decision, not mine. You do you. And by current Win OS I assume you mean Windows 10? The i7 is REALLY good for KSP (and most games in general). Although I do have to admit that 32GB is just a tiny bit of overkill considering the current RAM prices, and the 1070 is a little bit OP for... basically anything, really.

Again, it's not my choice, do whatever you want.  

(If you have time, could you make a PCPartPicker list?)

[Eean Holt]

Remember the quote from Armageddon: "At NASA we don't take chances, we double up on everything".

[RocketMan-Explorer]

So something like this?

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/spacepotato101/saved/ry2hqs

[Eean Holt]

yep, but triple monitor display: center for visuals, left for orbit map, right for data and other things. 

[RocketMan-Explorer]

Improved list (is this better)?

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/spacepotato101/saved/ry2hqs