KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Deddly]

Possibly, but don't let the clock speed fool you. See if you can find some reliable benchmarks, for example Passmark here. Look for what it says about single-thread performance and compare different CPUs side by side.

Also, do let us know what you find :).

Hmmm, according to Passmark, the i3 7350K that you mention is right at the top of the list, even higher than the i7 7700K.

Of course, benchmarks don't tell the whole story, either, but it's a good indication!

[Gerry]

Yes and it can be overclocked what may increase the single thread performance around 10%. The question is wether this 2c/4t CPU is future oriented if someday KSP will benefit more frome more threads, gaming engines like Unity development goes to more cores?

[ottothesilent]

So from what I hear, Unity itself constrains the way multithreading works in KSP. So, basically, you want higher clock speed over more cores, because as it is, KSP can use only a single core per craft. Graphics input is minimal compared to the CPU requirement, so the card you have selected should be fine. So, the i3 should be pretty darn good as a KSP machine.

[Gerry]

Ok that sounds good. The i3-7350k, chipset Z270 ASRock mainboard and a appropriate fan cost around 350€ in my country, so it´s slightly over my bugdet, but if its worth it than i forget the additional 50€

[StrandedonEarth]

48 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Edit: actually, I'm surprised that your current machine gets such poor performance because that sounds worse than my old dual core laptop... It might be throttling performance because of the heat. Have you tried opening it up and cleaning all the vents and fans from dust?

This. When the KSP framerate on my i7-3630qm laptop gets choppy, shutting down, blowing out my vents, and starting back up does wonders. Bear in mind that (in previous versions at least, not sure about 1.2.2) after changing scenes and/or reverting a lot, KSP can slow down and get choppy or stutter. Simply restarting KSP helps sometimes.

[stibbons]

There's a fair bit of discussion in the KSP Computer Building thread that you might find useful.

 

[Zeiss Ikon]

This came up when I asked about performance on my desktop machine in the support section -- one CPU suggestion I received over there was for a Pentium G4560.  It fits the same LGA 1151 as the Core family, has two cores and four threads, and can be had in clock speeds that make it highly competitive in the Core i3 range -- and it's under US$70.  It's also a bit future-resistant, in that you can upgrade in future just by dropping in a new CPU chip in the existing motherboard.

[DrLicor]

Well, since KSP mostly uses CPU and RAM to store your mods for a while. I would recommend not to spare on your CPU. 
Also keep in mind when you are looking at benchmarks for the CPU, which benchmark it is. It really makes a difference between a gaming benchmark and a visual program benchmark like for like editing etc. 
For instance, and I'm not totally sure about this, but the a intel 6600 is better than a 7400 for the last benchmark. And even there, the new AMD Rysen will beat both of them for the same price. 
But when it comes to gaming, the 7400 will beat them both with no mercy. 
 

[Gerry]

14 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

This. When the KSP framerate on my i7-3630qm laptop gets choppy, shutting down, blowing out my vents, and starting back up does wonders. Bear in mind that (in previous versions at least, not sure about 1.2.2) after changing scenes and/or reverting a lot, KSP can slow down and get choppy or stutter. Simply restarting KSP helps sometimes.

That sounds like a good idea to restart KSP if its runs chobby, in the older days the game was crashing very often so the restart was inevitably but now the newer versions runs stable so i can play it continuous for hours and dont think about restarting it

 

11 minutes ago, stibbons said:

There's a fair bit of discussion in the KSP Computer Building thread that you might find useful.

 

Thank you, this is what i have searched in vain!

 

6 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

This came up when I asked about performance on my desktop machine in the support section -- one CPU suggestion I received over there was for a Pentium G4560.  It fits the same LGA 1151 as the Core family, has two cores and four threads, and can be had in clock speeds that make it highly competitive in the Core i3 range -- and it's under US$70.  It's also a bit future-resistant, in that you can upgrade in future just by dropping in a new CPU chip in the existing motherboard.

 

Yes this sounds reasonable, i read this tip in many purches advises in a german computer forum. The G4560 has a superb price-performace ratio and it wont hurt to replace this cheap CPU in the future. But, the G4560 has 2004 quite good single thread performace at passmark benchmark, the US$170 i3-7350k leads the chart with 2625. I wonder how noticeable this effects KSP performce hmmm.

[c4ooo]

Anyone have KSP benchmarks for Ryzen yet?

[Zeiss Ikon]

1 minute ago, Gerry said:

 But, the G4560 has 2004 quite good single thread performace at passmark benchmark, the US$170 i3-7350k leads the chart with 2625. I wonder how noticeable this effects KSP performce hmmm.

My personal rule in 30 years of building and upgrading my own PC hardware has been to buy all the performance I can afford -- because it'll be on the verge of hopeless obsolescence by the time I can afford to replace it.

[Gerry]

8 minutes ago, DrLicor said:

Well, since KSP mostly uses CPU and RAM to store your mods for a while. I would recommend not to spare on your CPU. 
Also keep in mind when you are looking at benchmarks for the CPU, which benchmark it is. It really makes a difference between a gaming benchmark and a visual program benchmark like for like editing etc. 
For instance, and I'm not totally sure about this, but the a intel 6600 is better than a 7400 for the last benchmark. And even there, the new AMD Rysen will beat both of them for the same price. 
But when it comes to gaming, the 7400 will beat them both with no mercy. 
 

Yes, currently the new Ryzen shows not to compare performace in appliaction benchmarks with gaming performce.

btw, how much RAM to you recommend with a heavily modded KSP running, 16 GB should be enough?

Edited March 6, 2017 by Gerry

[DrLicor]

@Gerry, I use 8gbs now, but I'm going to upgrade it to 16gb. 
8gb is enough to run ksp, as long a you have enough room left to run it. From what I understand and heard here is that KSP moves the data to your RAM, so when you use a extremely heavily modded ksp that uses 20gb of space on your hard drive, (not really possible), you need that in RAM too.
Also, what does matter is what RAM you have, DDR3 is what I recommend, but if you have some money spare, I recommend DDR4, it moves and processes everything smarter and quicker. Ram is quite cheap, so you can also start with 8gb and later upgrade it to 16 or 32.  

[Gerry]

The new mainboards for the Intel Kaby Lake CPU generation supports afaik only DDR4 RAM. How much effect have dual channel RAM? Because, if 8 GB is enough for the beginning, i would buy only one 8 GB bar and update later with a second bar, but havent dual channel at the start.

[legoclone09]

4 hours ago, c4ooo said:

Anyone have KSP benchmarks for Ryzen yet?

Don't think so. I can ask on r/amd's Discord server, though.

[Deddly]

4 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

My personal rule in 30 years of building and upgrading my own PC hardware has been to buy all the performance I can afford -- because it'll be on the verge of hopeless obsolescence by the time I can afford to replace it.

It's a pretty good rule of thumb, but interestingly, not as much as it used to be. Single-core performance is very important for quite a number of things apart from KSP, and on that measure, hardware has been becoming obsolete much slower since multicore became the standard.

[Zeiss Ikon]

4 hours ago, Deddly said:

It's a pretty good rule of thumb, but interestingly, not as much as it used to be. Single-core performance is very important for quite a number of things apart from KSP, and on that measure, hardware has been becoming obsolete much slower since multicore became the standard.

I won't argue, but my budget hasn't improved, no matter how many pay raises I get (they barely keep up with inflation).  My current (Core2Quad) CPU was bought used, on eBay, 4-5 years ago, and I've been on multi-core architecture for roundly ten years, with a jump from dual to quad (which also brought a 50% clock increase) with the current CPU.  My dual-core laptop is ten years old, as well -- seems to handle my low demands pretty well, most days (though it's time to shop for another replacement battery).

[Magzimum]

Could it be that Windows is doing all kinds of stuff in the background, thereby affecting your KSP performance? Although I am a nitwit when it comes to computers, I see many people that treat Windows computers as if they are vegetables: After some time it goes past the expiration date, and needs to be replaced. The hardware obviously shouldn't be affected, but the Windows software often is. Before spending the cash, you can install Linux Mint on the laptop that will be replaced anyway. You can then download a Linux version of the game and see if that is any change. You may not win anything by doing this, but it's also free of costs.

I have a 4-core Intel i5-4570 CPU with 8 GB of RAM, and a GeForce GT 640, running Linux Mint 17.1. The whole desktop cost me around 550 € if I remember correctly - it's a few years old by now. I built it myself, so I obviously did not spend cash on buying Windows. The game runs quite smoothly, unless my ship has over 800 parts and is experiencing serious atmospheric drag... then the framerate drops. The largest ship I launched was around 1200 parts. By then the frame rate slowed to a poor 1 fps... but I am not sure whether that had anything to do with an issue regarding large fairings.

 

[Streetwind]

The thing I treat as a vegetable and replace it every now and then is my browser session. Like, I have a reasonably recent Intel desktop quadcore clocked at 4x4.2 Ghz, and 16 GB RAM. And when my browser has been open for a week or two without a complete quit, it can get to the point where single clicks in the OS start taking longer than a second to react.

I witnessed the days were Netscape Navigator was king, and browsers were basically glorified text display mechanisms. They were among the least performance intensive programs you had. But this kind of thinking is long outdated, and if you thought that today's browsers are still little helper apps, I've got a bridge to sell you Truth is, a modern browser nowadays is one of the most performance hungry things you're running on your computer, even if you have only a single site open. Starting a browser is only a few nitpicky details removed from starting a virtual OS. You can install software into them, they can run websites can as active programs (the KSP forum is an active program, in case you haven't noticed), they manage user profiles, sync with cloud storage, talk incessantly on dozens of outside connections and even perform typical OS-level tasks like sandboxing and managing their own process threads. Doesn't matter which vendor you're trusting. They all work like that. It's practically a requirement to stay competitive.

If you wonder if a background process is interfering with KSP (or any other game for that matter), the first step should always be to close your browser!

Edited March 6, 2017 by Streetwind

[Deddly]

I never noticed that problem when it comes to KSP, @Streetwind, because KSP is mostly on one core, leaving any other core free to be used for other things.

[eddiew]

Despite what people say about KSP being single core, I regularly have it use 80% of all 4 of mine... I would not want to drop to a dual core! Might relate to all the visual mods I have, but I can't see a reason why this would change how the game engine allocates CPU time. Worth checking how your install is behaving on your current hardware.

If you want a budget system, I would take aim at the upcoming AMD Ryzens with 4 or 6 cores. They won't be as strong per-thread as an Intel i7, but they look like they'll be pretty decent, as long as they come out with decent stock clock speeds or good overclocking headroom.

[wumpus]

13 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

This came up when I asked about performance on my desktop machine in the support section -- one CPU suggestion I received over there was for a Pentium G4560.  It fits the same LGA 1151 as the Core family, has two cores and four threads, and can be had in clock speeds that make it highly competitive in the Core i3 range -- and it's under US$70.  It's also a bit future-resistant, in that you can upgrade in future just by dropping in a new CPU chip in the existing motherboard.

Don't underestimate this chip.  It is pretty much everything you need for KSP and then some.  About the only thing passmark can find to give a higher score to the i3 are AVX instructions: those are pretty rare (they are also what lets a 4-core i7 keep up with the new AMDs in some highly threaded code benchmarks, so they are used somewhere).

13 hours ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

My personal rule in 30 years of building and upgrading my own PC hardware has been to buy all the performance I can afford -- because it'll be on the verge of hopeless obsolescence by the time I can afford to replace it.

Note that in the last 6 years Intel has managed to increase performance by at most 25%.  I'd expect some significant changes soon enough, but only because AMD is suddenly competitive again.  Moore's law is effectively dead for CPUs (there isn't much point adding transistors, they make the cores "too big" and the delay lengths slow things down.  So the only advantage smaller transistors give is to spam more cores on the chip (which doesn't help KSP so much).  GPUs are still improving (more in design than by raw transistor tech), and SSDs are still happily obeying Moore's law and prices are cratering.

[Of course if Zeiss Ikon is still hanging on to a core2quad, that was perfect timing on what looks like an amazingly modern chip for its time].

The market for 'gaming' CPUs looks kind of funny right now:

Pentium G4560: Ideal for KSP.  Might slow down a bit after 2 threads and definitely after 4.  Note that it can likely be replaced by whatever Intel throws out to compete with AMD.

Intel i5, i7: The i5 is pretty much like the Pentium, but for 3 times the price it keeps going between 2 and 4 threads.  The i7 is simply the best you can buy for today, but tomorrow is uncertain.

AMD: roughly as expensive as the i7, it should be able to throw everything you can at it.  It also handles big, embarrassingly parallel jobs [read rendering and video editing] with the ease of $1000 Intel chips.  Expect it to handle jobs with more than 4 threads far better than the i7 (which may or may not be most future CPU-hungry code).

Personally, I'd go with the Pentium.  It should do everything you need now, and I'd expect any 6-8 core i7 that Intel releases (at nearly AMD prices) to also fit in the 1151 socket.

[Alex38]

19 hours ago, Camacha said:

I am not sure about the exact model, because that greatly depends on local pricing, but going for a non-overclocking model makes sense if budget is somewhat tight. You do not have all the extra costly requirements for the PSU, cooling and motherboard, which should save you some cash.

If you want to play BF1, you could find out how well it plays on an RX470. If that performance level is acceptable, that might be a sensible choice.
 

Yes. It is almost certain that you will get a better price performance than with Intel, without the terrible single threaded speed AMD used to have. With a tight budget, waiting could very well pay.

 

We do not know for sure, but it should be somewhere in Q2.

thank you i appreciate your patience  that's cool ! 

i'm going to see if i buy an i5 + RX470 right now or if i wait until ryzen release (april-may) 

if you know a good i5 to play ksp, i'm open to suggestions  thanks again for those infos 

[Elthy]

An i5 7500 would be a good choice, but im quite sure the Ryzen Hexacores will be faster for the same price. Those i5 have a way lower clockspeed than the i7 7700k that won against the Ryzen octacores in gaming. Its up to you how long you want to wait...

[Zeiss Ikon]

Yep, my timing was apparently pretty good on getting my used Core2Quad 2.7 GHz when I did.  It's served me very well, and it was a socket drop-in replacement for the Core2Duo 1.8 GHz it replaced -- which was all the CPU I could afford when I had a motherboard failure about 9 years ago (I replaced that motherboard a few months ago, with a used unit from eBay, but the only real upgrade was support for 8 GB DDR3 RAM instead of the 4 GB that was max for my old motherboard).

Next year's tax refund will probably have to go toward a new LGA1151 motherboard, with 16 GB of DDR4 and a faster-clock, reasonably current CPU (not sure if I'll be able to afford a quad core, but I do other things that make a quad preferred over dual if the money will stretch) -- unless I see enough good things about Ryzen between now and then to jump back to AMD (I ran AMD for years before my Core2Duo).