Another hardware question...

[Pierre45]

Hi there

Since my Acer M3800 computer crashed last summer, I haven't been able to play KSP a lot...

Now I'd like to buy another desktop which would allow me to play KSP well.

I'm looking for a great computer but not a battle machine, I don't need the highest settings on KSP, but I'd love to have a good quality - like, medium or high settings. I'm also a big player of FSX (but again, not at full res with tons of add ons) if that helps to define the kind of power I need. I'm of course looking for a durable computer that won't crash and burn in a year or two. It will be my day to day computer, allowing me to switch between Internet browsing, movie watching, FSX and KSP. Essentially, what I did with my Acer!

The Dell Inspiron 3847 looks good to me: 4th gen i5 4440, 3.1 Ghz ; 8Go Rams ; Nvidia GeForce GT 625 with 1Go and a 1To HDD. What do you think?

Thanks!

Pierre

[Kialar]

Sounds sufficient to me.

I am running KSP on an i7 2600 / 16 GB RAM with a GTX 590 with 3 GB video RAM and never had any performance problems.

As the game highly depends on performance of a single core, an i5 4440 should be quite OK (compared to a 2600 this CPU is only 5% lower in single thread performance) and the GT 625 should perform for your needs.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/421/Intel_Core_i5_i5-4440_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-2600.html

[Tank Buddy]

Sure, I was willing to spend money on my computer because I wanted excellent performance. And that's what I got. I also built my computer, which takes time, effort, and money. But it was a good learning experience. KSP is a CPU intensive game, so your i5 4440 is the most important piece of hardware.

According to http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/431/Intel_Core_i5_i5-4440_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-4770.html, your i5 doesn't preform as well, but close to my i7, which is much more expensive. I'm relatively new to computers, but I can say you probably will be fine if you aren't looking for mind blowing performance, you should be fine.

Also, you can look at this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/42877-CPU-Performance-Database

[shand]

I'm looking to "upgrade" my PC - its in quotation marks because really its replacing failing components rather than improving the performance much (going up around 30% across the board still thghoU)

this is the build im looking at doing: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Sh4nd/saved/32k2

AMD FX-6350; Radeon HD 5770 1GB; 8gig RAM

I say this mainly because: intel is the go to answer for high performance - while an AMD is a LOAD more bang per buck. My current intel chip (Q5550 i think) is sufficient for 500 part ships, and thats less powerful than the chipset im looking at.

[Pierre45]

Well, my Acer had a dual core Pentium (ouch) and ran KSP well at medium graphics so I guess with a Haswell i5 it should be ok

[_Aramchek_]

I say this mainly because: intel is the go to answer for high performance - while an AMD is a LOAD more bang per buck. My current intel chip (Q5550 i think) is sufficient for 500 part ships, and thats less powerful than the chipset im looking at.

In KSP a Q5500 is probably at least as powerful as that AMD chip, intel has been beating AMD pretty badly on ipc and fpu power for quite some time.

[DMagic]

If you're going to be replacing the motherboard I would go with an Intel i3. Either something like the i3 4130 or an i3 3240, whichever one you can get cheaper or maybe in some kind of combo deal with a motherboard. That i5 4440 should be fine for KSP, although the CPU itself is probably quite a bit more expensive than the i3s.

For KSP those would perform much better than just about any AMD CPU (and use a whole lot less power). If you have some other needs, especially for highly threaded work loads then maybe the AMD would be a better option, but for KSP AMD CPUs just don't perform well.

[shand]

I'll try not to have the same discussion on two threads

As i said: not so much an upgrade but a sidestep - need to replace broken components (MOBO for one thing) and theres no point getting a new MOBO just for that chipset, theres absolutely no upgradabilty in that socket, AMD is more bang per buck, so they look like a good option for me, also i dont just use my machine for KSP - i often have all 4 cores above 50% utilisation.

My point at the OP was, there are alternatives - i believe the AMD processors are in line with the chip he listed for similar price, although, you might not get all that performance if mutlicore doesn't appear. That said OP doesnt seem to be a builder, so perhaps this was all a bit pointless

What i WOULD say directly on topic and relivant is: my dell xps has lasted me 6 years with only minor upgrades and runs KSP absolutely fine,

[_Aramchek_]

AMD is more bang per buck, so they look like a good option for me,

No, AMD is just cheaper, at the moment, as DMagic said, even a dual core i3 is faster in more situations than not.

I really wish AMD WAS still competitive with Intel, but eh sad fact is even intel has better "bang for the buck" these days.

also i dont just use my machine for KSP - i often have all 4 cores above 50% utilisation.

The situations where my overclocked 8 core AMD chip was faster than my stock speed i5 are fairly limited, and mostly are situations I don't see most people actually getting themselves in to.

You can't really go by the cpu utilization graph anyway, if you could then apparently ksp maxed out all 8 cores on my BD..which obviously..can't be true.

[quote name=shand;938175My point at the OP was' date=' there are alternatives - i believe the AMD processors are in line with the chip he listed for similar price, although, you might not get all that performance if mutlicore doesn't appear. That said OP doesnt seem to be a builder, so perhaps this was all a bit pointless

But the objective facts are that the cpu you suggested is terribly far behind the cpu the op was talking about.