GPU or CPU

[flamango247]

Well, I think you can already tell what I'm going to ask but to get better FPS on KSP, Do I get a faster GPU or a faster CPU?

Thaaaanks

[Alshain]

Well, I think you can already tell what I'm going to ask but to get better FPS on KSP, Do I get a faster GPU or a faster CPU?

Thaaaanks

Depends on what you have already. In most cases it will be CPU, but if your running a Geforce 8, well...

[Bilfr3d]

In most cases, its both. For example, if you have a really great GPU but a horrible CPU (i.e. a Pentium ), you'll need to get a CPU upgrade for more FPS. If you have a killer CPU (Socket 2011 Inte i7 for example) but a bad GPU (integrated iGPU for example) then you are definitely going to need to get a better GPU for more frames. Usually you want both the CPU and GPU to be balanced in terms of power. For example, having a GeForce GTX760 and an Intel i5 core is a fairly balanced kit.

[flamango247]

As of right now I'm just using the first laptop I got with the current specs:2.26 Ghz i3, Nvidia 310m w/ Cuda, 4gm of ram. It's 4 years old but I take good care of it, only takes about a minute and a half to start up.

And this is what I plan on getting sometime if I ever need to: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-14-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-gray/5829015.p?id=1219163974349&skuId=5829015&st=categoryid$abcat0502000&cp=1&lp=4

[NoMrBond]

If graphics is limiting you (i.e. bad FPS with even small ships), GPU

If physics is limiting you (i.e. bad FPS with large ships), CPU

What you're looking at there (Lenovo U430) has integrated graphics, which probably won't be great for KSP.

[Edit] Something like this X550LNV-NB51 is the same price but has a discrete GT840M instead of HD440 IGU, and has the same CPU but better screen size/res. It isn't a touchscreen though (if that's a dealbreaker)

Edited August 22, 2014 by NoMrBond

[Skipants]

I played KSP using Intel HD Graphics 4400 on a i5-4670. I had to lower the resolution to get decent frame rates (720p @ about 30FPS) but that went down easily with higher part counts. I also played on my laptop with similar settings on a i5, slightly better than the one that Lenovo has, and it throttled quite a bit (slowed it's self down to not overheat). My temps were always 95-98C while playing...not good. you would probably experiance the same thing with that lenovo.

I would say your KSP experience will not improve by $700 over your old laptop, not even close. If you are getting the laptop for other reasons then more power to you but, I would not recommend getting it hoping for a better KSP experience.

I would recommend building your own desktop or if you think that would be to hard you could buy a desktop for a similar price and get much more performance.

I'm currently running a i5-4670 and a GTX 750ti and can max out KSP with no problems.

[_Aramchek_]

What gpu do you currently have?, what cpu?

[sedativechunk]

Well OP I'm not sure what to tell you. I don't know about everyone else here, but I have VERY high end gaming computer. I'm too tired to post all the specs now but it has an overclocked 5Ghz processor on a water loop with an overclocked MSI HD 7950 graphics card. Everything is extremely fine tuned and I've even broke a few overclocking records with this rig without blowing up my system or using liquid N. I can play literally every game on maximum settings including Crysis 3, Battlefield 4, and many others in 1080p glory.

The one game I have the MOST problems with believe it or not, is KSP! KSP, it's not the most optimized PC game in the world. It gets lag issues, especially with huge ships/space stations. The more mods, the more issues KSP has despite being so mod-friendly. Around my space station, my FPS dips to 15-25 FPS. It sucks. The whole point I am trying to make is, you can have the biggest, baddest computer out there, but KSP won't run any better. It's just not optimized that well for high performance rigs, there are limits on RAM, and the game doesn't really load/render everything in the best way to perform well.

Believe it or not, more so than CPU/GPU, I recommend you get a solid state drive solely for KSP. With a lot of mods, this game can take several minutes to load.

[_Aramchek_]

Speak for yourself, it runs pretty well on my 4.7ghz 3570k. And an SSD makes almost zero difference in the game unless you have an older, slower mechanical hd.

[flamango247]

Alright, I think I just need in general a better pc all around. I still want a laptop, I love the portability and I don't need a custom gaming rig. I'm thinking maybe 6-8 gigs of ram, a i5 that's all around faster than the current i3 I have now and maybe an Nvidia500 series or something around that power. I don't have a bunch of money to blow so I'd like it to be cost effective. You guys let me know if you think this is good enough to run KSP with a few mods, build maybe ~100 part ships and get a decent framerate.

Again, specs are i3 @ 2.26, nvidia310m, 4gb of ram and a pretty slow hd. (around the 5200 rpm area something like that) and it's 4 years old but well taken care of to the point where it starts up just as fast as it used to when I first got it.

[Alshain]

Speak for yourself, it runs pretty well on my 4.7ghz 3570k. And an SSD makes almost zero difference in the game unless you have an older, slower mechanical hd.

It does make the game load the assets faster when started, but it doesn't do anything in game. I'm running less than you are and it runs just fine.

Alright, I think I just need in general a better pc all around. I still want a laptop, I love the portability and I don't need a custom gaming rig. I'm thinking maybe 6-8 gigs of ram, a i5 that's all around faster than the current i3 I have now and maybe an Nvidia500 series or something around that power. I don't have a bunch of money to blow so I'd like it to be cost effective. You guys let me know if you think this is good enough to run KSP with a few mods, build maybe ~100 part ships and get a decent framerate.

Again, specs are i3 @ 2.26, nvidia310m, 4gb of ram and a pretty slow hd. (around the 5200 rpm area something like that) and it's 4 years old but well taken care of to the point where it starts up just as fast as it used to when I first got it.

I understand the portability, but there is gaming machines and there is laptops. Laptops are always going to perform like a mid to low powered desktop. i3 tells us very little, the last 4 generations of CPU's have used the name i3, i5, and i7. We need to know the model, i.e. mine is a 2500K which makes it 4th gen (Sandy Bridge). The above mentioned 3750 is 5th gen (Ivy Bridge).

Edited August 22, 2014 by Alshain

[_Aramchek_]

It does make the game load the assets faster when started,

If you already have a fast mechanical hard drive, it really makes almost zero difference actually.

I went from a wd black 1tb to a vector 150 and noticed maybe a couple seconds difference. Overall this is not worth the price paid for an ssd to have maybe a 5 second difference.

[Linear]

If you already have a fast mechanical hard drive, it really makes almost zero difference actually.

I went from a wd black 1tb to a vector 150 and noticed maybe a couple seconds difference. Overall this is not worth the price paid for an ssd to have maybe a 5 second difference.

Yeah the SSD doesn't really help even with loading times - amazing for most other things you do on a PC though.

@OP, it's an i3 laptop - they're built for basic stuff like web browsing and word processing. A laptop (unless it has a decent dedi GPU and a higher-clocked i5) is always going to under perform.

[Red Iron Crown]

CPU, CPU, CPU. You can turn down the graphics settings and reduce resolution to compensate for a poor GPU, but there's almost nothing to be done to reduce the physics calculation load on the CPU. An added plus is that KSP's long load times are CPU-constrained, so a faster CPU improves loading times, too.

Buy the fastest single-thread performance CPU you can afford (which means Intel at just about every price point).

[Marclev]

Several others have noted this, but I'd hate the OP to waste money so will contribute as well ...

An SSD makes a negligible difference with KSP at best. I moved the game off my "big mechanical HD" onto my SSD boot drive to try and improve loading times and I can't honestly say I notice a difference, which is certainly disappointing.

SSDs are great, but unfortunately not for KSP.

[TheKutKu]

Well, my computer has a Celeron B830 (dual core) 1.8GHZ , 4gb ram and a chipset (Intel HD 3000), and i can easily run ksp, but i have to lower the graphics setting, i can fly ships with 400+ parts and with mods at 25 fps. I can also run games like skyrim warthunder or guild wars 2. Low-end laptops run a surprising amount of games. Your computer will run ksp smoothly.

[NecroBones]

As others having already pointed out, KSP is mostly CPU-bound.

As a point of reference, I saw very little difference in framerate when I temporarily had to switch back to my GeForce GTX 460, while my GTX 760 was being swapped out under warranty. The framerate drops were in the 10-15% range at most, when the framerates normally were in the 20s or 30s. For the really low-rate moments (less than 20 FPS), and high-rate moments (40+ FPS), the difference was probably less than 10%, if it was even noticeable at all. (I keep FRAPS running all the time with KSP). This is of course estimates based on what I expected the performance to be with various spacecraft after using the GTX 760 for most of my time with KSP.

This is with graphics settings set to maximum detail, and at 1920x1440 in a window.

I saw a much bigger jump in performance when I upgraded from a Core i7 950 to a Core i7-4770k (4GHz overclock).

Edited August 22, 2014 by NecroBones

[mythic_fci]

Depends. I've got an Early 2013 MBP, which has a 2.8Ghz i7 and a GT650, and it runs KSP fairly we'll. What you want is a balanced rig, with a fairly good CPU and a nice GPU to complement it. I recommend (for an average user) a CPU with 2.5-3Ghz and a GT750 (the new upgraded version of the 650).

[boxman]

@sedativechunk

Then try clocking it back to stock and then load up that space station again.. I promise you that there will be a noticeable difference.

You will of course always get low framerates once you reach the limit of what your rig can handle, but that does not mean it does not run signifinactly better with a high end cpu.

[boxman]

Well, I think you can already tell what I'm going to ask but to get better FPS on KSP, Do I get a faster GPU or a faster CPU?

Thaaaanks

Like others have said already.. CPU is what is most important but if you have a low end gpu/integrated one then upgrading the GPU will give you a significant performance boost. If you on the other hand have a mid range GPU then currently there will be no noticeable improvement even at high graphics setting unless you upgrade your cpu.

If you want to see if your gpu is limiting you then you can try to lower the graphics settings and resolution to see if that improves framerates. If it runs faster with lower settings then a better gpu would definitely help you out with lower part count ships.

[flamango247]

Here's my CPU name: "Intel® Core i3 CPU M 350

GPU: Graphics clock: 625 MHz, Processor clock: 1530 MHz, Memory data rate: 1580 MHz.

I get decent frames while playing KSP except when in the atmosphere or with a ship with a 100+ part count but what I have a problem with is that when I open KSP I'm using near my max ammount of RAM (around 3.5gb of 4) I have blue screened and had the game crash several times and I'm guessing it's because of overstressing the computer so would adding more RAM fix the crashing/blue screening at least? I'm fine not building 100+ part ships just whenever I play KSP, CPU stress is always on my mind.

[FirstSecondThird]

Well, I have a new dynabook Tecra M10 with a Nvidia Quadro 150M and Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme with vPro technology, and it runs ksp fine with the max FPS set to 60 FPS.

(I called Toshiba dynabook because in my country, that is what Toshiba markets their laptops under)

[FirstSecondThird]

Here's my CPU name: "Intel® Core i3 CPU M 350

GPU: Graphics clock: 625 MHz, Processor clock: 1530 MHz, Memory data rate: 1580 MHz.

I get decent frames while playing KSP except when in the atmosphere or with a ship with a 100+ part count but what I have a problem with is that when I open KSP I'm using near my max ammount of RAM (around 3.5gb of 4) I have blue screened and had the game crash several times and I'm guessing it's because of overstressing the computer so would adding more RAM fix the crashing/blue screening at least? I'm fine not building 100+ part ships just whenever I play KSP, CPU stress is always on my mind.

Do you have KSP 64 bits, because if you do, likely the 64 bits version is WAY too unstable to play with >4 GB of RAM.

This is why 32 bits has been in use for programs since 1985. Because the virtual memory feature of Wintel PCs is not enough to stop crashes, if not, make more crashes.

[Linear]

Do you have KSP 64 bits, because if you do, likely the 64 bits version is WAY too unstable to play with >4 GB of RAM.

This is why 32 bits has been in use for programs since 1985. Because the virtual memory feature of Wintel PCs is not enough to stop crashes, if not, make more crashes.

You make 0 sense. How on Kerbin does virtual memory come into the 64x KSP crashing?

64x is incredibly stable on Windows - has been for many years now.

[*Aqua*]

You make 0 sense. How on Kerbin does virtual memory come into the 64x KSP crashing?

I want to know that, too. Virtual memory is the basic of the basics of every OS memory management.

64x is incredibly stable on Windows - has been for many years now.

You misunderstood him. He meant KSP x64 which is unstable.