I was forced to get a hugely expensive Motherboard for my Mom's Build... she needed CPU Power real bad & I got her a 4.7 Ghz 8-Core that REQUIRED Liquid Cooling, & the CPU runs at 220 Watts & needed a AM3+ Socket. Turned out to be awful few Motherboards that support AM3+ 220W, & finally got her a Motherboard for 500ish bucks & needed a 1,000W PSU to boot... For comparison, my Build runs a FM2+ 3.7 Ghz Quad Core CPU that only needs 95W, badass Fan Heatsink, & powering fine with a 650W PSU. Terrifying the difference between 1 Ghz in terms of needs... D:
That's the common way of looking at it, sure. And there's no fault in believing it. But when you spend time working with server class motherboards that *start* their low-end pricing over $500, you realize the extra quality and attention to detail, and what they can do for a rig overall. There's nothing quite like a strong, stable, reliable motherboard that takes anything you throw at it. I've had far too many DOAs or weak boards that died in the first week. I steer clear of them now. One of the last servers I setup for a small company was on an ASUS motherboard that (if memory serves) was right around $750 - just the motherboard. It was a thing of beauty, firm as a rock, performed just as solidly. Had a few features I wasn't previously aware of, some of which they utilized. I left the server in their hands with no question of whether or not it would fail. RAM speeds are debatable, especially if you're running a L1/L2 cache on your hard drives, and/or using a RAMdrive (both of which I am). A memory overclock did quite a bit for me in terms of drive throughput, so yes - that too can help. CPU/system overclocking I definitely recommend nowadays, especially with the overabundance of encapsulated water cooling solutions you can just drop in as easy as any CPU heatsink. I've been watercooling since 2004 with the original Reserator 1, and it can (today) easily boost single-thread performance by 10-20% or more. In CPU bound games like Empyrion, that matters. I even run my rig with sub-ambient water now, right around 11 C, which lets me push it to 4.9 if I need to. Considering the stock clock is 4ghz, it's an almost 25% overclock. I currently use a decent gaming motherboard with my 6700k, and the next time I upgrade I'll be investing extra cash into an even better motherboard - possibly server class over $500. After having done it for many decades now, I'm a firm believer in the PSU+Motherboard as being the backbome of any rig. Take my word for it - don't skimp on either.
I'm afraid to Overclock... I dunno how to do it right, hear it blows stuff up if done wrong, & even Software DESIGNED to safely handle the OCing for you can screw it up & blow stuff up...
Anymore overclocking is actually quite easy. Most motherboards have an "overdrive" built in where they will automatically do it themselves. But you can also just google your motherboard/proc and see what steps others are doing, then slowly and incrementally do it yourself. You then test it with something like Prime95 in Windows to see if it's stable for an hour. There are only a couple variables that really matter for junior-level overclocking: the CPU Multiplier, and the Front-Side-Bus (FSB) speed. 13 years ago it was absolutely a dangerous thing and an easy way to fry a chip. But not anymore, not unless you're intentionally reckless.
Sweet... in that case, I still hope for my current Build to last at least a couple more years, but when it does come time to build my new Rig, I may well get the same Water Cooler for me I got on Mom's Rig to use it to keep a CPU Overclock cool. Maybe then I can have Badass Graphics Card and CPU Power that's not just Modest at best at the same time. Plus I bet in a couple years Empyrion will still be going strong & this will still be an epic place to ask for Computer Force Powers aid. P.S. My apologies to the OP for how Off Topic i'm getting... but honestly I think the OP has gotten bout as answered as it can get, but this other stuff is good stuff too.
at least there not pulling a ARK or Stellaris where in arks case relase DLC in beta and till this day have game breaking bugs still not fixed, or in Stellaris case have a finished games, ignore the outcry to fix space battle lag but end up with DLC logic, i for one will see empyrion if it highly improves till beta if that ever hits, good, but if they pull a ark or Stellaris or not lag improvements in this coming year my review will change from best survival game ever to, lost hopes
I'd say loading times are okay. The bigger the game, the longer the loading times will be. The current loading times are better than GTA 5, Total War: Warhammer and other big games. But once the main loading part is over, other loading screens are very short. There isn't much that can be done, but if you're really annoyed by it, move the game to a faster HDD or to an SSD for best results. When I moved the game to an SSD, it loaded about 80% faster.
My SSD is Budget Model & that was the only way in hell I could afford one at all... & I still notice a diff over a HDD.
SSD are a must these days and are relatively cheap compare to just a year ago. my game loads in no time on my laptop even.
Last I looked they were still averaging 500 to 700 on the low end... then by some miracle just when I was about to give up & only HDD, I stumbled upon a SSD Brand i'd never heard of called "Mushkin" who had a modest budget SSD for 200 - 250ish bucks & was a respectable 1TB Capacity... Mushkin MVP... ^_^ Outta curiosity looked in on it cause still preserved the Link & it's 260ish bucks for the 1TB now & seems to have evolved & managed to come out with a 2TB version. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226596
hotukdeals.co.uk - a place to go for folk this end of the pond I might move my empyrion game folder over onto the SSD - Ive never messed with Steam folders really, I'm using my 500GB SSD for movie files only and have it in uncompressed mode. I heard that for large or compressed files , that uncompressed filesystem is better under Windows at least.
Steam Library Folders have received a lot of changes and improvements over the last year+. I have a repository on my main SSD (C drive) for software/games, another on my E: (ReFS storage RAID 1 drive) for moving games to that I want to keep installed but am not currently playing, and one on my RAMdrive (R drive) which I am actively playing and want the best performance out of. You can easily move an installed game between Library folders (drives) without having to re-install/re-download, and it even keeps all installed mods/etc. I recommend Library Folders now to everyone that wants to manage game space better.
This thought process is wrong, higher end boards usually have better vrms and other additions for overclocking. Also better ram speeds have been shown to impact game performance, especially with Ryzen or Intel i7 lines.
@Tyrax Lightning My SSD is faster than your SSD I disagree. Ram speeds are negligible in gaming. Maybe if you are hashing out coins..... but in gaming, the difference is negligible. But hey, if I got a fancy machine, and its not doing what I expected in comparison to price I paid, I'd be upset too...... Like that Logan Paul Youtube guy went and bought a $6000 comp to play Fortnite..... Overkill. Windows 8.1 Enterprise (x64) i7 2600 (no k) @3.9 ghz 120gb OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 16GB of G.Skill DDR3 (2x8 @1333) Asus P8H61-M LE/CSM R2.0 Motherboard, Bus Clock: 103 megahertz Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Easily running 42 FPS on basic settings. If I set to max, maybe I'll see it drop, now and then, to 28 FPS What else are you running in the background? If you got a lot of other processes, or even network activity it can add to latency and degrade performance.
Actually, it's true Faster RAM speeds can smooth out the graphics and make the game a lot more lag free even if it doesn't add to the average framerate.
Its absolutely true faster RAM is better for gaming, thats a scientific fact. Go plug some 500 mhtz RAM into your machine, if it will even take that old stuff, and then slap some 4000mhtz RAM into that same machine, and go play GTA 5, drive down the main city street FLAT OUT and watch the HUGE difference. The CPU uses the RAM for sections of the Map to be loaded, if RAM slow, video card is waiting for data from CPU for to long, ---------GLITCH GLITCH GLITCH you get the picture, V-RAM can cause the same issues if to slow or not enough and system has to try and scramble for more RAM. RAM and V-RAM are so much more important than some think. Its true most games are built well within the RAM requirements to run, most PCs have reasonably fast RAM nowdays, but when your talking about gaming at the top level, where you dont want to be killed by that bullet that takes less than 200 thou of a second to go across the map, now your RAM, and CPU and Video AND Motherboard and SSD are all put to the test and need to be super FAST.
