Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: CT27 on June 28, 2017, 08:01:17 pm
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I may be getting a new computer in the next few months or so but I want to make sure I'll be able to do Freespace stuff on it.
The computer I'm looking at online says it's graphics are "NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 2GB DDR3 dedicated graphics memory".
Is that good enough?
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So I've got an R7 265, when testing out in Freespace (Blue Planet, Delenda Est, basically everything maxed out) I've still got a sub-30 FPS result (closer to 20, rather not bottlenecked by the CPU). And if you google "R7 265 vs GT 730" you'll receive results of my Radeon outperforming that 730 anywhere from 3 to 7 times. Or more.
Tl;dr: It's completely terrible for gaming, just a replacement for Intel integrated graphics, but with some more VRAM.
My suggestion would be to ask HLP which parts to buy in a certain budget, as pretty often prebuilt computers are definitely overpriced and you need to upgrade their graphic cards anyway.
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Are you getting a laptop or something? A GT 730 really isn't very powerful, but it might be able to scrape by at 30 fps on a low resolution. It's more of a browsing and office GPU than a gaming one and it's 3 years old too.
If you're getting a desktop stay away from prebuilts, they're overpriced garbage. When you can find a few hours you can just build one yourself.
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I'll be getting a desktop.
My current graphics card that I'm using is an AMD Radeon HD 6770.
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So why would you want a GT 730 then? It's a much slower card than the 6770 you've got now.
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I was needing a new computer (my W7 machine is getting slower) and I saw a good computer online and saw it came with a graphics card and was wondering if that was better than the one I'm using now.
So I take it I could take the graphics card I'm using now out of my W7 machine I'm using now and put it in the new W10 computer when I get it?
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Not necessarily. If the PC was built with a 730 in mind it might have a really weak PSU with no 6pin PCIE power cables. The GT 730 is a very low power card powered directly from the motherboard so it doesn't need a PCIE power cable. While you could get a Molex to PCIE adapter I wouldn't recommend it as I doubt that PSU has enough power for a real graphics card. I could tell you if I knew the exact specs but I'd guess that PC won't support a HD 6770(AMD recommends at least a 450W PSU with at least 1 6-pin PCIE power cable).
You're better off just building a computer from scratch. If you're aiming at the performance level of a GT 730 prebuilt the parts should be pretty cheap.
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I had an HD5770 (it's actually the same as 6770) for some time, and I still have it now. It really wasn't a bad card, but as for modern gaming... Yeah, it's lagging behind. As for Freespace, I remember that it was doing fairly well, but shadows on a larger amount of objects (like asteroid fields, but bigger battles too) were out of the question.
That card has a max power draw of 108W, so it would only be a problem with a really cheap chinese PSU. And well, in my regions you can find used ones for an equivalent of 25 USD.
Perhaps the best way to get a better PC is to actually upgrade the one you've already got? I'd suggest you to post your current specs here, maybe someone might come up with something. Actually, show that prebuilt PC you're considering too. And maybe tell us your budget for the upgrade? You might be getting a lot more from that money than you anticipated.
And "my W7 machine is getting slower" - slower meaning "With all this modern software and games, my hardware just isn't keeping up" or "My Windows 7 wasn't been reinstalled for some time now and it's getting really frustrating to work with"?
Edit: Forgot to mention here, some motherboards in prebuilt PCs (usually Dell and HP, but there can be many others) may come with a PCIE x16 slot with severely limited power availability, i.e. some Dell boards limit their PCIE power to 25W out of typical 75W, so you may want to be careful.
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Actually, show that prebuilt PC you're considering too.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerpc-gamer-xtreme-desktop-intel-core-i5-7400-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-1tb-hard-drive-black-gray/5867839.p?skuId=5867839
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-desktop-amd-ryzen-5-1400-8gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-570-1tb-hard-drive-recon-blue/5901707.p?skuId=5901707
These are the two computers I'm looking at right now. For each of those I would probably upgrade the RAM to 12 or 16.
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....Why did you ask about a GTX 730???
Both of those systems are pretty good. Personally, I would go for the Dell, given that the RX 570 is a vastly more powerful GPU than the 1050Ti (Powerful enough, I believe, to balance out the Ryzen's slower processing speed).
Regarding upgrades: The very first thing you should do is put an SSD in there. 8GB is enough for most gaming workloads, and both systems are effectively bottlenecked by that HDD.
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I'd definitely say the AMD system is the better of the two for general usage. Ryzen is a great general purpose architecture from what I've seen even if it's a little slower on the single core performance. The only caveat, specifically because of FSOpen, with the AMD graphics card is the less than stellar OpenGL performance compared to nVidia.
I've been using an R9 Fury for the past year and it handles the retail campaign with the 2014 Media_VPs perfectly fine but I do notice ships warping in or departing causes some momentary but noticeable hitches. I don't know how nVidia systems do with the current builds of the engine but AMD's OpenGL performance is definitely something to keep in mind since we're running OpenGL here.
If it's feasible I'd look into the price difference for something equivalent to that Ryzen system between BestBuy and building one yourself.
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You wouldn't save any money by trying to build a system with a RX 570. Because right now you can't do that, they're completely out of stock and going for $350-$400 on ebay. It's 2014 all over again with GPU prices skyrocketing because of cryptocurrency mining.
For the 1050ti build you'd save around $200 or thereabouts if you build it yourself. If you're really against building one yourself you might be able to get a better deal from some of the retailers who will often offer to build you a PC if you buy all the parts from them. Though you might be better off just getting the 570 prebuilt since it's a better machine and you have no other options for that GPU range. All of the Polaris cards are out of stock and so are the GTX 1060s.
Regarding CPUs, the R5 1400 is a much faster processor than the i5-7400. At stock clocks the i5 will have a ~6% single thread advantage but the Ryzen will have a 40% multicore advantage. If you allow the Ryzen to overclock then it will destroy the non-overclockable i5 in both single and multicore, by 3%-4% ST and 50-60% MT depending on how far you OC it. So you just get a $20 CoolerMaster Hyper212 Evo, smack the clocks up to 4Ghz and you have a much faster CPU than the i5-7400.
And even if you don't want to play with overclocking, you'll most likely never notice the 6% single core performance gap while you'll definitely notice the 40% multi-thread performance advantage.
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According to this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_y31bfknw), if it isn't just a driver error, the market could be flooded with used RX series graphic cards (but probably still on warranty) in a matter of couple months. You may find building the base of your PC now and shoving a better GPU there later a satisfactory solution. At least that's what I think. You could either wait for this probable "flood" or just hunt down a nice find somewhere.
From what it looks like now, there is an interesting trend in prices, at least in my country. An RX 580 is nearly equal in price to a 1070, and for about $150 - $200 more you can get the cheapest 1080...
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Thanks for your advice. A reason I'm kind of leaning toward the Dell is that I've had good experience with Dell products over the years while I've never heard of this other brand before.
Also, the Best Buy link just says "Windows 10" for what its OS is. Since it's a newer computer, is it safe to presume that that means 64-bit Windows 10 (and not 32-bit)?
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Yes.
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....Why did you ask about a GTX 730???
Originally that's what I was looking at but then people told me it's not a good card anymore so I wanted to find better choices.
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That Dell AMD Ryzen 5 1400 link I posted...
I looked on Dell's website, and for effectively $120 more than the Best Buy computer it said I could get an AMD Ryzen 7 1700X processor.
Is $120 worth that upgrade in your opinion?
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Do you plan on doing things that would benefit from 8 cores and 16 threads like streaming, 4K video encoding, or running multiple virtual machines off 1 PC? If yes then yes.
Otherwise, no, you're wasting money.
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Do you plan on doing things that would benefit from 8 cores and 16 threads like streaming, 4K video encoding, or running multiple virtual machines off 1 PC? If yes then yes.
Otherwise, no, you're wasting money.
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/inspiron-5675-gaming-desktop/ddcwrdsk923s
This is the computer I'm kind of leaning towards right now. So in your opinion, it'd probably be a better use of money to pick the "add a 256 GB SSD" upgrade instead of the "upgrade to AMD Ryzen 7" option?
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The R7 1700 is definitely a very good CPU but its power is wasted if you're not planning to do heavy multitasking. The 4C/8T Ryzen 5 should have more than enough power for gaming and desktop tasks. So yeah, I don't think you need the power of a 16 thread CPU and you'd be better off with an SSD for improved boot times and load times in the few games you can put on it.
If you feel like you need a stronger gaming CPU you'd be better off spending $20-$30 on an after-market cooler and then overclocking that R5 1400.
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Thanks for the info.
Something else I've heard about lately is liquid cooling (Dell offers a liquid cooling system upgrade on certain computers for $100). Is that a good thing for a moderate gamer like I anticipate myself being? From what I've heard, it reduces noise from normal cooling but there's also a danger of leaking.
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Probably not worth it. It's probably an AIO for just the CPU which won't help with the noise from the graphics card and case fans when they're under heavy load. It won't help much with noise and with a Ryzen CPU you'll hit silicon limits way before you hit thermal limits with just a basic air cooler.
So it won't help with performance and the noise difference will be minimal since you already have relatively noisy graphics card and case fans.
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Liquid cooling? Nah. Ryzen CPUs are very cool (i think 1400 has 65W TDP and 1700X 85? can't remember) and they will definitely work just fine with a stock air cooler, you could even overclock it pretty high.
I'm just wondering what kind of motherboard and PSU is going to be placed there. I mean, typical consumer grade, or these cut down, propertiary Dell devices...
By the way, looking at PC Part Picker, I was able to build a nearly identical (6GB GTX 1060 instead of RX 570, proper motherboard and a bit faster RAM) PC, but for $750... I just want to ask anyone to confirm it, I may have missed something.
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Good luck trying to find a GTX 1060 anywhere, let alone for standard retail price. Stock usually gets depleted in literally minutes after restocking.
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Alright, I got a little bit confused, but I still see 1060's with a price which will make this setup $770 - $790... A small, single-fan one (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137094&cm_re=gtx_1060-_-14-137-094-_-Product), Gigabyte (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125881&cm_re=gtx_1060-_-14-125-881-_-Product), MSI (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137018&cm_re=gtx_1060-_-14-137-018-_-Product)...
"In stock. Limit 1 per consumer."