KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[Budgetspaceflight]

3 hours ago, Camacha said:

Where are you located? Maybe someone has some stuff.

Southern Iowa, but this is just me dicking around cheap components are readily available through ebay. I just don't know about comparability between them. Am I just looking for something with a pcie x16 or is there more to it than that? 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Budgetspaceflight

[Camacha]

30 minutes ago, Budgetspaceflight said:

Southern Iowa, but this is just me dicking around cheap components are readily available through ebay. I just don't know about comparability between them. Am I just looking for something with a pcie x16 or is there more to it than that? 

You are basically looking for something that does PCIe and does not have more power sockets than your power supply can provide, or use more power than your power supply can provide. You can even plug video cards with shorter PCIe interfaces into longer slots, since they are electrically compatible, though it is probably easiest to find one with a full size x16 slot. Just make sure you do not get some ancient, power hungry card.

If it is all about economics, make sure your system is not power hungry to a degree that a newer system quickly pays off. Older systems tend to have huge idle power draws and that is where they spend most of their time.

[LoSBoL]

12 hours ago, Camacha said:

You are basically looking for something that does PCIe and does not have more power sockets than your power supply can provide, or use more power than your power supply can provide. You can even plug video cards with shorter PCIe interfaces into longer slots, since they are electrically compatible, though it is probably easiest to find one with a full size x16 slot. Just make sure you do not get some ancient, power hungry card.

If it is all about economics, make sure your system is not power hungry to a degree that a newer system quickly pays off. Older systems tend to have huge idle power draws and that is where they spend most of their time.

 

12 hours ago, Budgetspaceflight said:

Southern Iowa, but this is just me dicking around cheap components are readily available through ebay. I just don't know about comparability between them. Am I just looking for something with a pcie x16 or is there more to it than that? 

 

Hmmm, I don't know, did they have PCIe already back then? Maybe you need a AGP card instead of an PCIe card.

[BlueCanary]

I want to get back into KSP (current PC can't handle it anymore, gave up fighting through the crashes) and I need a laptop for college. Being able to run KSP with a few mods (say, KIS+KAS, mechjeb and BDArmory) is my only requirement beyond basic generic essay writing and whatever, but I don't really want to spend a huuuuge amount of money, say £450 if that's possible. Any suggestions?

[Camacha]

On 01/05/2017 at 9:35 AM, LoSBoL said:

Hmmm, I don't know, did they have PCIe already back then? Maybe you need a AGP card instead of an PCIe card.

The earlier Pentium 4 models had AGP slots, and either terribly slow SDRAM or frighteningly expensive Rambus RAM. The later models had PCIe slots and DDR or even DDR2 ram. This is definitely a later model. I had almost forgotten how much of a mess Intel made with the Pentium 4 endeavour. They got the memory wrong, they got the pipeline wrong, they got transistor leakage wrong and they waved her off by sticking two terrible ideas together.

If I am to trust the wisdom of the web, this model has both a x1 and x16 PCIe slot, as well as two PCI slots. Looking for information, I also found this work of art:

 

 

[steve_v]

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

I also found this work of art:

Wait, it's one of those  I trashed one exactly like that ~3 years ago. Got it from a skip, discovered how slow it was (and that it had only 2 DIMM slots), left it lying around at work for 2 weeks, then put it back where I found it.
I see it has the trademark side-intake duct too... AKA Intels engineering band-aid for the ridiculous heat production of the netburst architecture.

 

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

The earlier Pentium 4 models had AGP slots, and either terribly slow SDRAM or frighteningly expensive Rambus RAM.

Used one (with SDRAM, as I'm not a complete fool) for a while when they were new-ish, it was barely quicker than a late model PIII... at twice the power consumption.

 

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

I had almost forgotten how much of a mess Intel made with the Pentium 4 endeavour

Preshott = Bin. RAMBust = Bin. I am trying to forget these abominations.
 

4 hours ago, Camacha said:

If I am to trust the wisdom of the web, this model has both a x1 and x16 PCIe slot, as well as two PCI slots

I guess it could take a reasonable GPU then, but why bother?

...

Seriously, just get a Core2. Or or a Phenom. Either can be found for less $$ than a good beer.

[thezombiecat]

I am in the early stages of planning my next computer purchase. 

One of my desires is running KSP with reasonable framerates and excessive part counts.

What resources can KSP use to achieve this result?

How much ram can KSP benefit from, does KSP benefit from running from an SSD, what graphics card features does KSP utilize well, how many processor cores can KSP make use of, does OS make much difference to performance. are there anyy other isues i should consider.

 

thankyou for anny advice

 

the zombie kat

[Randox]

On 2017-4-30 at 8:27 AM, severedsolo said:

Yeah I set that option in the BIOS. I assume it worked, as when the PC booted my main monitor came on, but the VGA one didn't while Windows installed the drivers for the Intel Graphics, and my BIOS shows on the DVI monitor.

How is this working out? A lot of hardware configurations can't handle this; installing a dedicated graphics chip will forcefully disable the integrated graphics.

Windows 10 also has it's own issues, if you use that. Windows 7 and prior played nicely with multiple graphics chips at the same time, but Windows 8 and 10 have problems. I'm unsure if they can't run multiple graphics drivers at the same time at all, or only if the drivers include files with the same name (I run 2 independent GPU's currently, but I had to select a pair that use the same drivers). Not many people have independent multi GPU setups, so finding good info on it has been fun.

[severedsolo]

1 hour ago, Randox said:

How is this working out? A lot of hardware configurations can't handle this; installing a dedicated graphics chip will forcefully disable the integrated graphics.

My new card has just turned up today, so bear in mind this information is based on about 2 hours worth of info.

Windows 10 64-bit (Insider Build 16184) - with the DVI monitor on the 1050Ti and the VGA on the integrated chip (Sandy Bridge, Intel HD Graphics 3000 according to Windows).

They work together fine. It took Windows a few minutes to figure everything out (drivers etc), but once it did no issues at all. There is obviously a performance penalty when running on the Integrated Graphics monitor, (in KSP this is about 10FPS - with SVE installed), but otherwise you would not be able to tell that it's not the same GPU (as it was before with my GTX 460).

I believe (but wouldn't be able to conclusively prove) that the 1050Ti is helping the Intel graphics out. I find it difficult to believe that my Intel Graphics chip can handle SVE when my 460 struggled at times. When running KSP on the secondary monitor, GPU-Z shows that the 1050Ti is still working (more so than when KSP is not running).

Edit: After checking the output_log and GPU-Z I believe that KSP is processing graphics on the 1050Ti anyway. The intel is obviously just outputting it (this ties up with the usage levels I am seeing in GPU-Z, and would account for the slight frame-rate drop) - further testing needed to see if this is a Unity quirk, or whether it's because the 1050Ti is set to Primary graphics chip.

Edited May 3, 2017 by severedsolo

[Leafbaron]

I am definitely not the most qualified to answer this but I do know that KSP does very minimal if any multi-threading and is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, so I would make sure that each individual core on your next processor is beefy. For KSP it is better to have 2 large cores than 7 little ones as an example, I don't know the exact technical jargon. 

as far as RAM goes if you are using 64x bit KSP then i believe 8Gb's of ram is sufficient but RAM is cheap so might as well get 16 or 32  

Edited May 3, 2017 by Leafbaron

[Camacha]

10 hours ago, steve_v said:

Used one (with SDRAM, as I'm not a complete fool) for a while when they were new-ish, it was barely quicker than a late model PIII... at twice the power consumption.

The problem the Pentium 4 had was that it really needed that fast RAM, but that SDRAM was not at all capable of supplying all that data to the CPU in time. In reverse, the Pentium 3 actually was a nice chip that did a lot of things right. The result was what you mention: hot, slow systems, barely or no improvement over their predecessors. I had one of those early Pentium 4 models and even edited videos on it, but it really was an experience to quickly forget. I also owned a later model Pentium 4 and actually got that to purr quite nicely, all relatively speaking of course. I had some proper fun with that one.

[Starman4308]

8-16 GB of RAM (mostly for mods), and either an overclocked Core i5 or Ryzen CPU. Graphics are minimal, it's mostly a single threaded CPU thing... and due to the nature of rigid body physics, there will be no panacea for slow framerates with many parts on your vessel.

SSD might help loading up the game, particularly if you run many mods, but should have little impact on gameplay.

In short: CPU single thread performance is key to KSP framerates with large vessels.

[Mastikator]

Launch it into space. The cosmic rays will add to the computing power.

[Vanamonde]

@thezombiecat, your question has been merged into the master thread for this kind of thing. 

[Randox]

11 hours ago, severedsolo said:

My new card has just turned up today, so bear in mind this information is based on about 2 hours worth of info.

Windows 10 64-bit (Insider Build 16184) - with the DVI monitor on the 1050Ti and the VGA on the integrated chip (Sandy Bridge, Intel HD Graphics 3000 according to Windows).

...

Edit: After checking the output_log and GPU-Z I believe that KSP is processing graphics on the 1050Ti anyway. The intel is obviously just outputting it (this ties up with the usage levels I am seeing in GPU-Z, and would account for the slight frame-rate drop) - further testing needed to see if this is a Unity quirk, or whether it's because the 1050Ti is set to Primary graphics chip.

Cool. I never even thought to check to see if I can run off my integrated graphics with a GPU installed (my previous computer could not, so perhaps I just assumed my new one also lacked the ability). One GPU rendering to the other's output was one of the first things I noticed. It makes sense knowing it now, but I had assumed that if you put a window across two screens run by different GPU's that each would have to render their own portion. There is however, as you noticed, a serious performance penalty for this.

 

In case you were still wondering, for standard programs like a web browser the rendering will be done by whichever screen the window is on (or mostly on. I'm not sure what the exact criteria is for when one GPU hands off the rendering to the other). For 3D applications however, the application can specify which GPU to use indecently of the screen it is running on, and most programs will use the primary graphics adapter by default. Some games however do give the option to specify either which screen or GPU they should use (in the case of the former, I think they'll also choose the GPU that screen is connected to). Others do allow you to choose, but bury the option in a configuration file.

Oh, and if you go into device manager, you can probably disable your onboard graphics when you don't need the second screen if you ever feel the need. Mine is a full card, and even though it doesn't use much juice at idle, I do turn mine off sometimes.

Edited May 4, 2017 by Randox

[severedsolo]

5 hours ago, Randox said:

Cool. I never even thought to check to see if I can run off my integrated graphics with a GPU installed (my previous computer could not, so perhaps I just assumed my new one also lacked the ability).

Assuming you are on an Intel chip, I believe this was introduced with sandy bridge, before this the mobo would force the on board graphics to disable themselves.

Overall I'm very happy with the new card, according to gigabyte it can boost itself to about 1440mhz, but in real life application I'm seeing clock speeds of 1730 ish, assuming that the card is not trying to draw too much power.) with furmark its holding at about 1300 due to high power draw, but in actual gaming I'm seeing the higher clock speeds.

[LoSBoL]

On ‎3‎-‎5‎-‎2017 at 11:26 AM, thezombiecat said:

anyy other isues i should consider.

 

thankyou for anny advice

 

the zombie kat

Yes, one isue to consider (as the thread performance has been answered), a 29" 2560x1080 or an 34" 3440x1440 Ultra wide monitor. You will absolutely love it

18 hours ago, Leafbaron said:

I am definitely not the most qualified to answer this but I do know that KSP does very minimal if any multi-threading and is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, so I would make sure that each individual core on your next processor is beefy. For KSP it is better to have 2 large cores than 7 little ones as an example, I don't know the exact technical jargon. 

as far as RAM goes if you are using 64x bit KSP then i believe 8Gb's of ram is sufficient but RAM is cheap so might as well get 16 or 32  

I wouldn't say multithreading is minimal nowadays, offcourse the main thread will be its bottleneck, but I put it to the test a few weeks ago because I wanted to find the maximum performance...

I7 with 4 cores + hyperthreading

I7 with 4 cores, hyperthreading disabled

I 7 with 2 cores disabled and hyperthreading enabled

 

 

There was no noticeable performance difference between the I7 running with or without hyperthreading, there was most definately a performance hit when just running 2 cores (and hyperthreading enabled)

I would not advice going for an high IPC i3, an quad core i5 with an high IPC is the way to go

Edited May 4, 2017 by LoSBoL

[Elthy]

Since KSP doesnt seem to be the only game you want to play i would choose a Ryzen 5 1600(X). Way more futureproof...

[Budgetspaceflight]

On 5/3/2017 at 1:03 AM, steve_v said:

Wait, it's one of those  I trashed one exactly like that ~3 years ago. Got it from a skip, discovered how slow it was (and that it had only 2 DIMM slots), left it lying around at work for 2 weeks, then put it back where I found it.
I see it has the trademark side-intake duct too... AKA Intels engineering band-aid for the ridiculous heat production of the netburst architecture.

 

Used one (with SDRAM, as I'm not a complete fool) for a while when they were new-ish, it was barely quicker than a late model PIII... at twice the power consumption.

 

Preshott = Bin. RAMBust = Bin. I am trying to forget these abominations.
 

I guess it could take a reasonable GPU then, but why bother?

...

Seriously, just get a Core2. Or or a Phenom. Either can be found for less $$ than a good beer.

Like I said its just me dicking around. Settled on an entry level card. (Nvidia 610 gt 2gb) it's only a 30w card but it is quite a leap from were we started. 

[Camacha]

11 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

I would not advice going for an high IPC i3, an quad core i5 with an high IPC is the way to go

Or Ryzen. Even though SMT will not help KSP a lot, in other games and applications it will. IPC is roughly equal, but Ryzen provides more for the same, or the same for less.

[cantab]

You've pretty much traded in your snail for a turtle there. From experience the GT 610 will play KSP on low settings, but turning them may cause extra lag. I hope you got the 610 for very little money.

[Budgetspaceflight]

8 minutes ago, cantab said:

You've pretty much traded in your snail for a turtle there. From experience the GT 610 will play KSP on low settings, but turning them may cause extra lag. I hope you got the 610 for very little money.

Yeah I got it for next to nothing, it doesn't do bad though, but like you said I'd been racing snails. It has let me confirm though it actually wasn't the Pentium 4 holding it back and it shows some promise either way. I'm back in the game

[LoSBoL]

13 hours ago, Camacha said:

Or Ryzen. Even though SMT will not help KSP a lot, in other games and applications it will. IPC is roughly equal, but Ryzen provides more for the same, or the same for less.

I have to refrase that sentence a bit, It was not a Ryzen discussion, I made the post because there is a lot of discussion if KSP benefits from more cores. what I really ment to say was:

Don't get an 2 core chip because it will hurt performance, but you don't need an I7 either, because I see no gain in performance having hyperthreading on top of 4 cores.

 

As for Ryzen, I have had my fair share of AMD's in the past and wouldn't hesitate to buy one in the future. The Ryzen blows away equaly priced Intels when multithreaded applications are in play, you want to do content creation, heavy multitasking or things like rendering. For games however we have to face the facts, games are rarely CPU limited but are mostly GPU limited. So it doesn't really matter much which one you will buy. There are however always going to be certain games that due to their specific nature will be singlethread limited (like KSP), and the current Ryzen lineup is behind Intel on this one (although not much), and that won't get better with this generation Zen.

If we're talking about futureproof for games, you really can't say if more cores and threads are going to be usefull, it's pretty hard to split gameworkloads, even for 4c/8t's, and it's going to be even harder when talking 6c/12t's or 8c/16t's. You won't see any advantages for games of the past, they are not going to be optimized, and the question remains if in the foreseeable future games will be optimized for specific CPU's.

I found this to be a very good read on the subject: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/intel-still-beats-ryzen-at-games-but-how-much-does-it-matter/

A big heads up for AMD, we've got competion again, and we'll all benefit from that.  As for now, I'm pretty good where I am now, but if I had needed a new platform (for gaming) I would definately consider an AMD, but there are some bumps that would hold me back to:

The AMD Ryzen platform is brand new, it has it's quircks at the moment, bios updates, memory compatability issues and such. It will get better for sure, but it's tinckering for now and I don't think we will see miracles in (game) performance gains.
A bit of the 'more for less' is being somewhat comprimised right now (again, for gaming), mainboard's are cheap for AMD, but the Ryzens seem to benefit most from the fastest and most expensive memory one can buy, it's not only the CPU which you have to fork out for.
And the above mentioned considering spreaded workloads and singlethread limited games. (and for KSP in particular, Ryzen seems to be at the same performance point as Intels Haswell's at the same clockspeed)
 

It's just one benchmark though, I'm eager to find out what the future holds, in any way, it looks brighter than it has in the last 4 years, we really did need competition.

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by LoSBoL
typos

[Camacha]

4 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

There are however always going to be certain games that due to their specific nature will be singlethread limited (like KSP), and the current Ryzen lineup is behind Intel on this one (although not much)

Even though Intel scores slightly better when it comes to IPC, AMD seems to have much more interesting offers when price is also included. The long story short seems to be that for a given amount of money, AMD by far provides the best single threaded speed. The 7700K is the notable exception, just because AMD cannot match those clock speeds.

Edited May 5, 2017 by Camacha

[LoSBoL]

On ‎5‎-‎5‎-‎2017 at 5:34 PM, Camacha said:

Even though Intel scores slightly better when it comes to IPC, AMD seems to have much more interesting offers when price is also included. The long story short seems to be that for a given amount of money, AMD by far provides the best single threaded speed. The 7700K is the notable exception, just because AMD cannot match those clock speeds.

Now that surprises me, for multithreaded performance that was certainly the case, if you say 'by far' I would have certainly noticed. Then again, I haven't been doing the math, so you could be right. Maybe I've looked to much to overclocked speeds, because every 'K' spec I5 runs easily at 4,6 GHz and the I7's at 4,8 GHz. I wished those Ryzens could match those speeds...