Truly recommended PC specs for playing Starmade for real

[jorgekorke]

So, as some of you may know, I've been away from Starmade recently, frustrated with the fact that I'm not able to play it and command my faction into wars on EE for real, since I cannot play with those titans that have more then 2 mil mass - they cause FPS drops that makes the game unplayable and would render a defeat without even giving me the chance to fight back for sure. Other faction mates are facing this same problem as well.

Currently, this is my PC :

AMD Phenom II X6 1080T 3,2 Ghz
GTX 550 Ti
8 GB RAM

I'd like to know a spec for building up a new PC that is not too much expensive, in order to play Starmade for real. Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

Your ram seems to be fine, but what speed is it running at (in mhz)? Is it DDR3 or older DDR2 ram?
The GPU definitely needs an upgrade, the old 500 series can't really run SM too well. I'd recommend a GTX 750 Ti as I've had a good experience with that card myself, or, if you can stretch to it, a GTX 760 or 960 (almost the same performance and price, but the 960 is more power efficient) Or, if you want an AMD card, the Radeon R9 270X or R9 280 could be better alternatives.
The processor should be fine, but to be safe I'd upgrade to one of AMD's FX-6300 Six-cores. Throw in a new board with the AM3+ socket in and you're all set. For a cheap board I'd recommend the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P as it has everything needed to get excellent performance out of the cpu.

This is what I'd recommend to anyone wanting to play SM at high res with excellent graphics quality, and fairly budget-friendly.

I personally have no issues with my pc except when around planets or having ultra shadows, and my pc spec is this:

• AMD FX-4130 Quad-core 3,9ghz
• Radeon 6970 2gb
• 8gb DDr3 ram 1333mhz
• Gigabyte 78lmt-usb3 motherboard (a cheap one xD)

I got most of my stuff second hand however so it was fairly cheap.

Hope this helps you!

 

[fire219]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your system, except the GPU is a bit old (and was low end at the time). Jamster already suggested a few good choices.

 

[Crusade]

Try turning OFF Occlusion culling. With large entities (planets, large ships) turning it off results in a rather big speedup.

Looking at a full loaded r600 planet, i get:

12-15 fps with Occlusion Culling ON
80+ FPS with it OFF
(GTX 970, 4gb vram, 8gb ram [6gb to SM], [email protected] ghz)

Good luck!

 

[jorgekorke]

Your ram seems to be fine, but what speed is it running at (in mhz)? Is it DDR3 or older DDR2 ram?

DDR3 , it's in fact, two memory memories of 4GB each. Both at 1333 MHz.
However, they are from different brands - one being Kingston, and the other being MarkVision (if i'm not mistaken). Not sure if this might cause some trouble (because of that difference), so I give SM 4GB.
[DOUBLEPOST=1424696960,1424696791][/DOUBLEPOST]And thanks for the tip, Crusade, I'll see if this option is on and turn it off if it is when I arrive home.

 

[MineCatFTW]

The GTX 750 is a great card. I have one in my desktop, and it can easily run everything up to Star Citizen with playable frames.

 

[Panpiper]

My biggest handicap with my system is that I am running a 32 bit OS (Windows Vista). A 32 bit OS will only allow 1024 meg (1 gig) to be allocated to memory for this game, and that is 'not' enough for large ship encounters.

 

[Megacrafter127]

As most have already more or less stated, I think the GPU is the bottleneck here.
The CPU is actually better than mine, and so far I have no noticable problems with titans(unless they ram planets)
And Crusade turning occlusion culling ON improves performance near large entities for me, so…everyone should try what fits them in the case of that setting.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

DDR3 , it's in fact, two memory memories of 4GB each. Both at 1333 MHz.
However, they are from different brands - one being Kingston, and the other being MarkVision (if i'm not mistaken).

That shouldn't give you too much grief really, so don't bother changing them unless you really can afford it. The performance difference is negligible.

The GTX 750 is a great card

Agreed, the 750 and 750 Ti are absolutely brilliant for their price and power; My 750 Ti only cost me £95 over here in the UK for mine (brand new) and it was probably the best gpu bargain I've ever had. Runs SM, max but without shadows, solid 60fps (not including being near planets xD)

As most have already more or less stated, I think the GPU is the bottleneck here.

A GTX 750 or above (R7 260 or above for the AMD camp) is perfectly sufficient to play at max settings but without shadows. If you want shadows too then invest in a GTX 760 or R9 280 (still quite cheap cards) but the 750 or R7 260 should get you through large ship encounters and dogfights easily.

A 32 bit OS will only allow 1024 meg (1 gig) to be allocated to memory for this game, and that is 'not' enough for large ship encounters.

Absolutely correct, make sure your OS is a 64 bit version if you really want to engage in battles.

 

[Lidren]

2 million mass? Try a different server, that's just pushing the limits unnecessarily.

 

[aceface]

2 million mass is too overkill. i don't blame your system, that's 20,000,000 small cubes! i have the AMD R9 280x and I can barely load anything above 5000 000 blocks, and the R9 280x is just a bit under the GTX 770
[DOUBLEPOST=1424720989,1424720910][/DOUBLEPOST]

4gb vram

 

[Crusade]

Oddly enough, it does have 4GB, it just registers and uses 3.5gb until the last 500mb is needed. For whatever reason.

 

[jorgekorke]

2 million mass is too overkill. i don't blame your system, that's 20,000,000 small cubes! i have the AMD R9 280x and I can barely load anything above 5000 000 blocks, and the R9 280x is just a bit under the GTX 770

Well, all big dogs on the game possess those, and I've heard some ex-CoK got things even bigger then that. Looks like gigantism still lives on the game. Well, if I have any hope to fight the big ones, at least I must render their ships, huh .... hehehe

2 million mass? Try a different server, that's just pushing the limits unnecessarily.

That's out of question, since it seems most of the community gives more vision to EE. Seeking to have a big name on an lesser server would be no use at all.

 

[Viridis00]

So, as some of you may know, I've been away from Starmade recently, frustrated with the fact that I'm not able to play it and command my faction into wars on EE for real, since I cannot play with those titans that have more then 2 mil mass - they cause FPS drops that makes the game unplayable and would render a defeat without even giving me the chance to fight back for sure. Other faction mates are facing this same problem as well.

Currently, this is my PC...

I actually have a very similar processor to yours (Phenom II X6 1100T) and it's still kicking pretty well from what I can tell. I'm waiting next year to upgrade to AMD's Zen chips if they turn out to be as good as they are hoped to be. If you want to upgrade now and want to stick with AMD, the 8350 or 8370 might be up your alley. The 9590 and 9370 are too power hungry, run too hot, and only certain boards support them despite being more powerful.

For the graphics card, avoid the GTX 970 at all costs. Right now you can get a Radeon 290X for cheaper. There's more modern benchmarks out there showing that it's actually beating out the 970 now since past driver updates. Sometime in Q2, the 300 series is coming out from AMD. I'd say wait a little bit and see if they turn out to be any good.

Oddly enough, it does have 4GB, it just registers and uses 3.5gb until the last 500mb is needed. For whatever reason.

Thing about that though, the last 500MB is like 1/7th or 1/8th (forgot the exact fraction) the bandwidth of the other 3.5GB, so it causes immense performance drop if you need that last bit. I actually am unfortunate enough to own a 970 (G1 Gigabyte is sexy at least) and when my card needs goes past the 3.5GB I go from 160 FPS in space with a couple of ships to 30 FPS or slightly under when around stations and massive ships. GTX 970 is a terrible choice for Starmade especially if you want to max everything. I've never had buyers remorse worse than with this card.

I'm going to try turning off occlusion culling like you mentioned above.

 

[Crusade]

I've never seen my card drop below 60 fps thanks to a single ship, looking at Kepticks 'Charon' maxed out, 4x aa, no texture compression, 256 texture resolution, shadows off, max segments at 20k, 4096 res procedural bgs, I still get over 60 fps.

Performance will only be affected when stuff is loaded from that extra 0.5gb, not when that 0.5gb is active.

 

[ReaperEOD]

My faction had started on EE for a couple hours but then a person was allegedly mining and causing unplayable server lag. I'm over on a server now where the max block limit is 500,000 for ships which I find to be reasonable. Oh, and my Poseidon is pretty much complete. You should add me and check it out. =)

Anyways good luck over there, tried our best to make it work but being on a server where having thousands of ping for everyone because of a single person just isn't ideal for the livelihood of gameplay. Hope to see you around.

 

[Viridis00]

I've never seen my card drop below 60 fps thanks to a single ship, looking at Kepticks 'Charon' maxed out, 4x aa, no texture compression, 256 texture resolution, shadows off, max segments at 20k, 4096 res procedural bgs, I still get over 60 fps.

Performance will only be affected when stuff is loaded from that extra 0.5gb, not when that 0.5gb is active.

I use those settings, too. Except 8x AA and Ultra shadows. I specifically get as low as I stated before around a 700m diameter 800m high station with a 344m ship parked close by (not docked).

I just tried turning off occlusion culling and I notice that I get 45 in some areas, but still as low as 30 in other parts with everything fully loaded up. Going down to 4x AA like your settings though, I get 40 at worst, 60 at best. You can absolutely play this game at good FPS most of the time with good FPS and fairly high settings, but for a card like this I don't know if I should expect better optimization in SM, better card performance, or both. Normally I'd just write off massive ships since naturally they're FPS killers, but since OP's gripe is specifically with Titans hampering gameplay, I can't recommend this card for SM. (or for anything modern, hue hue 3.5GB)

Take a look in a program like MSI Afterburner under the right conditions, and you will see this game will peak at the 3.5GB (which means it is accessing that last 500MB) under the right circumstances. I expect a card like this to play a game like SM maxed out always, not shit the bed the way it does when it gets to the massive structures. I'm only coping because in regular space I see acceptable FPS.

 

[Jake_Lancia]

the last 500MB is like 1/7th or 1/8th (forgot the exact fraction) the bandwidth of the other 3.5GB, so it causes immense performance drop if you need that last bit. I actually am unfortunate enough to own a 970 (G1 Gigabyte is sexy at least) and when my card needs goes past the 3.5GB I go from 160 FPS in space with a couple of ships to 30 FPS or slightly under when around stations and massive ships. GTX 970 is a terrible choice for Starmade especially if you want to max everything. I've never had buyers remorse worse than with this card.

Have you heard about the GTX 960 controversy too? Nvidia crippled it with a 128bit memory bus so its performance is almost the same as the GTX 760, the card it should have replaced. Mind you its quite a bit more power efficient than the 760...

...Anyways I should stop derailing this thread xD

 

[MacThule]

So, as some of you may know, I've been away from Starmade recently, frustrated with the fact that I'm not able to play it and command my faction into wars on EE for real, since I cannot play with those titans that have more then 2 mil mass - they cause FPS drops that makes the game unplayable and would render a defeat without even giving me the chance to fight back for sure. Other faction mates are facing this same problem as well.
.

Try using frigates, destroyers and cruisers that don't lag out the whole server when 3 of them get together. "For real" fleets don't consist of a gang of super-titans.

Fighter/corvette matches are super smooth if you want to have some serious faction PvP action.

 

[Comr4de]

This should about do it