Realistic System Requirements for Starmade?

[RabidBat]

• 
  MINIMUM:
  • OS:Windows XP
    
  • Memory:2 GB RAM
    
  • Graphics:OpenGL 2.1 Capable Graphics Card
    
  • Network:Broadband Internet connection
    
  • Hard Drive:2 GB available space
    
  • Additional Notes:The game is made with speed and scalability in mind, so it runs on older machines. Java is required.

• 
  RECOMMENDED:
  • OS:Windows 7
    
  • Memory:4 GB RAM
    
  • Graphics:Nvidia Geforce, ATI
    
  • Network:Broadband Internet connection
    
  • Hard Drive:2 GB available space
    
  • Additional Notes:Java is required.
    
    Is what is on Steam, a bit vague they are too. No CPU? nVidia you say? So my 2008 128mb Geforce will be okay? :p (no it is not,I've tested on lowest settings and it's a slide show.)
    So thought I'd start a discussion on what people think are realistic systems requirements.
    Maybe post your PC specs and how the game runs for you.
    
    Just curious to see what people get performance wise, even though the minimum says "The game is made with speed and scalability in mind, so it runs on older machines."
    
    I know the game needs optimisation still, being an Alpha and all, but what is an older machine? Pentium 133, Core 2 Duo E4300? Maybe a 486?
    Is a OpenGl 2.1 capable card really enough even on lower settings?
    What memory amount do you think a Video card that is goingto play SM should have?
    
    Just I see people trying to run StarMade on crappy Desktops and notebooks, Intel HD users crashing out when they get within 5km of a Faction Station with a large number of blocks, where as everyone in that faction with half decent gaming PC's do not miss a beat. Talking 9 Players with a bunch of 500m+ ships and a big ass station.
    Honestly no idea how people in this day and age play with 5-15fps in any game.
    
    You then get servers that restrict ship sizes because "Little timmy on his toaster cannot even spawn if a ships over 100m long" While neglecting the other 95% of players with a dedicated GTX 650 or better are fine with 500m+ ships
    
    It's not just starmade we see this in, 2015 AAA titles come out and you get people griping about not being able to play on low on their 2006 laptop that was never designed for gaming. Well gaming past 2006 that is, or complaining their game looks awful because they must reduce graphics to Ultra Low.
    
    So think it is time we get some idea of what people can realisitcly expect they will need hardware wise to play this game.
    
    Here's my Specs.
    CPU: i5 3570k
    Memory: 8GB DDR3
    GPU: 4GB Galax GTX 970
    OS: Windows 10 64bit
    PSU: 750w Thermaltake
    Java: 64bit
    StarMade Memory Settings:
    Maximal: 4096mb
    Initial: 3072mb
    Early: 1024mb
    Resolution: 1600x900 (my monitors native default)
    
    With this I can get StarMade running pretty great with every graphic setting maxed out with my card set to "Let the 3D application decide" under the nVidia control panel.
    Constant 60fps with v-sync on. fps into the hundreds with v-sync off.
    
    About a 6 or so months ago I had a 1gb Galaxy GTX650 GC and a crappy generic 600w PSU, on the same system and setup, and had to have everything graphically in game about half to get what I'd call acceptable gameplay and frame rates.
    Anything under what I was getting with that I would of found unbareable on my eyeballs.
    
    The worst machine I have in the house I got it to run on was an overclocked Core 2 Duo E4300 (default 1.8Ghz, clocked to 3.0Ghz), 4gb of ram and the above mentioned GTX650 with a 500w PSU. Gets 30+fps and is graphically fine to play with 32 bit java and default memory settings.
    I did initially try it with a 128mb Geforce Card but even at the lowest settings in game and in the cards settings it was running at 2fps.
    
    Anything I have seen below a 1GB AMD or nVidia has been awful, no other way to put it. e.g Intel HD graphics, updated drivers or not across a variety of machines and operating systems.
    
    I just think this game honestly needs some better and realistic system requirements out there so those playing it, or thinking of playing it have a better idea of what they will be getting into or need to upgrade when they can.
    I just think the requirements as they are are pretty misleading and of no use for less experienced gamers when deciding whether or not to play or buy StarMade.
    
    So what have you got and how does SM run on it?

 

[MineCatFTW]

CPU: FX-6350
Memory: 8GB DDR3
GPU: 2GB R9 270X
OS: Windows 10 64bit
PSU: 550W Offbrand
Java: 64bit
StarMade Memory Settings:
Maximal: 4096mb
Early: 512mb
Resolution: 1920x1200

Runs with several hundred frames in most situations, 60+ near planets.

 

[therimmer96]

My laptop handles it in a vaguly acceptable way with Intel® Core™ i5 3317U and HD4000 graphics, but that is bare minimum.

I would say my old desktop would be roughly the minimum recommended for a client on a server with an old intel core 2 quad and a GTX550ti with 4gb ram

 

[shadowulf]

I run the game on both my laptops- an unmodified 2009 Macbook Pro 15" (I can't remember specs right now-at work) and it can run 30+ fps everywhere but near large amounts of animated blocks.
32-bit version

My other laptop is a 2014 HP Inspron 17" touchscreen. It can max out graphics at 60-75 fps and 120+ with shadows. 64-bit version

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Running an AMD FX 8150 (previously an AMD FX-4130) with a Radeon HD 6970 2gb and 8gb 1866mhz DDR3 Ram and 120gb SSD on a 1080p HD screen is pretty nice xD
Singleplayer is buttery smooth with absolutely no lag between actions (mainly due to superspeed of the SSD :D) and MP is good aside from planets (tbh everyone has problems with planets xD) Average FPS on this system is around 260 fps (I tend to restrict to 60fps most times though)

Meanwhile my APU-powered laptop with a AMD A10-5745m, Radeon R9 M260 2gb and 16gb 1600mhz DDR3 Ram and 1tb HDD still gets over 40fps during multiplayer and is pretty stable in singleplayer too. Average fps there is around 80.

 

[kupu]

32-bit version

What java version are you using?

 

[shadowulf]

Any particular reason you're not running 64 bit on OSX?

I'm running Lion on it, and the 64-bit only improved specs by ~5 fps.

Its not the games fault, its the stupid graphics card. The CPU has never even hit 50% load while running Starmade, even during lagstorms.

On a different note, however, my previous OSX 15" 2012 Macbook Pro with quadcore i7 and whatever integrated graphics card they used that year ran 70+ fps on 64-bit with 3 gigs allocated to memory. Sadly, though, its battery melted because of a short-circuit in the fans.

I run 64-bit java with my HP, and developers 32-bit on my Mac.

 

[Megacrafter127]

My specs:

• CPU: AMD A8-3850 APU (4 cores @ 2.9GHz)
  
• RAM: 8Gb
• GPU: NVidia GTX 760 @ 135 MHz ( 2Gb VRAM)
• Storage: [only listing relevant info]
  
  • 1Tb HDD
    • 427Gb ext4 partition [install is here]
  • 500Gb HDD (698Gb accessible)
    
    • 16Gb SWAP [only relevant in case RAM overflows]
• PSU: 750W (unknown brand) [actually draws about 120W in the current setup while maxing out CPU and GPU]
  {IMO the PSU doesn't matter, as long as it can provide enough power}
• OS: 64bit ubuntu linux 12.04
  
• JVM: 64bit OpenJDK
• Mem-settings:
  • max: 4Gb(4096Mb)
  • init: 1Gb(1024Mb)
  • early-gen: 0.5Gb(512Mb) [0.25Gb(256Mb) for server]

Performance:
Never measured due to lack of need to measure. [anything 25+f/s is acceptable for me].

 

[Ithirahad]

You do not need an i5 or 8gb of RAM to play this game. I have 2gb assigned out of 6, so 4gb RAM should work fine... And I have an i3-3220 for a CPU. It's not very good, but under normal circumstances it works fine. Hell, my Geforce GT 640 (1GB VRAM) ripoff of a graphics card (Got it for nearly $100 at Best Buy... derp!) runs the game alright as long as texture compression is on and I'm not dealing with titans. The one thing is that I would not advise anyone to play SM on a 32bit OS or using 32bit Java for any reason. Out of Memory errors everywhere. But technically, even then it's still playable when not dealing with gigantic objects. (Planets are the main concern performance-wise, in almost all cases)

 

[Keptick]

OS: Windows 7
CPU: i7-5820k (hex core OC'd at 4.0Ghz)
RAM: 16gb 2133hz DDR4
GPU: Nvdia GTX 980ti
STORAGE: 250gb M.2x4 SSD (~1gb/s read/write speeds), it's my boot drive
MONITOR: 1440p @144hz

In short, I can do practically anything. I only dip below 144fps (capped by G-sync) around very large structure and planets, or colisions. Uncapped fps is close to or over 1,000 in most situations. I've done stupid things like parking my 1.3km long ship next to a 1000r radius planet and still had 20+ fps. Also note that I'm running the game with max settings (no shadows) in 1440p.

The only time I crashed the game due to too much stress was after spawning four of my titans beside each other (I did get some screenies first tho :P). However, my GPU and CPU didn't reach 100% usage, so I guess the game engine just couldn't take it.

Spoiler: for science

 

[linwe talion]

OS: Windows 7
CPU: i7-5820k (hex core OC'd at 4.0Ghz)
RAM: 16gb 2133hz DDR4
GPU: Nvdia GTX 980ti
STORAGE: 250gb M.2x4 SSD (~1gb/s read/write speeds), it's my boot drive
MONITOR: 1440p @144hz
[/spoiler]

I hate you, man :D

 

[GRHayes]

OS: windows 7 64 bit
CPU: A8-3850 2.9Ghz
video: AMD 260x
memory: 8Gb
JAVA 64 bit

After setting sectors to 3K I average 70Fps and hit 120 very often
memory settings low to high 1024 2048 4096

 

[jorgekorke]

Recommended Specs for Starmade

 

[Minsc]

24-inch Mid 2007 iMac
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo
6 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB
OS X Mavericks

While I'd never take this rig online it gets the job done to allow me to play single player. It's sub 1fps town when spawning in on a planet. Patience is required. I run between 15-30 fps with just me around (1280x720 windowed). What annoys me more than FPS is textures not displaying properly at a distance.

 

[RabidBat]

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far.

I actually saw it running okay with everything at starmades defaults on a 4gb HP pavillion laptop with Intel HD and 32bit Java and Win 10 64bit, mind you it was a fresh install, single player and a fresh spawn. When I see it online and with some ships and players etc, I'll take note of the exact specs and report back on them and performance the guy who owns it gets.

 

[Mork2]

If you can if you have the available memory to make sure you use Java 64bit. I've had a 440k mass titan with over 70 power cores to lag things up use up to 2.5GB of memory in single player. I think I hit 3GB a couple times while combat testing against a downloaded 5million block titan. So while you do need a bit memory 4GB assigned to starmade should be more than you will need under most circumstances. Massive amounts of memory is only really needed for multiplayer servers.

What generally slows PCs down with starmade is usually your CPU. Most earlier games just required great graphics card and didn't require a lot of background calculations so as long as you had a great video card your okay, at least with older games which didn't have a lot of background processing.

Some games like X-Rebirth or the entire X-Series ran a simplified universe which was always running in the background. Everything single ship and station was running around doing there own thing. So having a good CPU helped it number crunch all the extra stuff you couldn't see. What eventually killed most of my old X games was having a couple hundred stations in a single system and being in the same system the computer would try to calculate collisions and path finding for every ship and station in system... Another example is the turns on bigger turn based strategy games like a massive civilisation game where you have to wait a minute or two while the computer calculates all the computers players moves. A faster CPU helps there.

There is a massive amount of raw calculations that has to be done in this game it can scale up rather rapidly.

A tip if you have a second or old computer with similar decent CPU and memory but no graphics card worth a damn you can use that to run a server on a lan that only you can join. So its effectively single player. I actually had a file server with the same CPU and memory as my main computer and using that as a server allowed me to continue constructing a ship overloading single player on my main PC.

i7-5820K. 3.3GHz Hex Core
64GB DDR4
win 7 64bit and java 64bit
Nvidia GT730
1TB SSD

I will buy a better graphics card when this one finally runs into problems.
64GB of memory was massive overkill even with steam and all the other crap I have open but not using in the background never hit 15GB used yet.
450k mass titan with I think its 96 power cores now runs at under 45% usage roughly at the moment. I know I have start having problems when I hitting around 60%...

I notice that starmade typically has a file for every entity in its server database. Does that mean if I have a ship with a hundred docked entities it has to manipulate 100 files for just my ship? And if that is the case then shouldn't an SSD drive make a bit of a difference?

 

[therimmer96]

I got curious and so I connected to the NFD server under a new account on my surface none-pro 3 and was really pleasently suprised

Looking at this, the spawn station, I got 15-20 FPS... on a surface... fucking GG schema...

 

[Mirage]

Seems like i have bellow average frame rate for my specs:

CPU: FX-8320 at 3.5Ghz 1.225V(-75mV default)
Mainboard: GA-990XA-UD3
Memory: 8GB 1.6Ghz DDR3
GPU: Gigabyte R9 270 at 975Mhz CPU+1.4Ghz memory clocks
OS: Windows 10 64bit
PSU: (does not seem relevant) CM GX450W
Java: 64bit
StarMade Memory Settings:
Maximal: 2Gb
Initial: 1Gb
Early: 256mb
Resolution: 1920x1080

110-130FPS in empty sectors(travelling) on a small-ish ship(7-30k blocks)
60-80FPS on my SEPICtech factory, than contains around 100-150k blocks on SB+20k+- for external 3 gate 160x120m warp gate, around 2M blocks from ships
10-40FPS when on the same sector as a damm evil planet

When i had a phenom 965(at 3.4Ghz -75mV) and a gigabyte 8400GS at the maximum settings i would get around 15-40FPS in empty sectors, and with around 500k blocks near me i would get 6-15FPS. The FX-8320 is not a notice-able improvement to the phenom 965(probably 3-5FPS in SEPICtech factory)

 

[rocketman221]

It does run fine on older machines, if they were decent when you got them at least. My desktop has an i7-960 and a GTX 560ti, which came out about 5 years ago. It still gets 50-90 fps around planets and large stations. That's on 1920x1080, 10,000 segments and no shadows, AA, or bloom. Using a huge salvager on a planet still turns it into a slideshow though.

 

[Anonchief]

CPU: 17-4790k Devils Canyon
Memory: 32GB DDR3 1600
GPU: EVGA 980ti
OS: Windows 10 64bit
PSU: 850w Corsair
Java: 64bit

StarMade Memory Settings:
Maximal: 8192mb
Initial: 4096mb
Early: 2048mb
Resolution: 1920x1080 (my monitors native default)

I normally use vsync, but i get a few hundred in open space, and with r500 planets (after they have loaded) i have a minimum of 100 fps.