So I’ve just started EVE after several years of playing games just about exclusively on consoles. I play on a 17 inch laptop which, despite the years is still holding up - barely. The specs are roughly these:
Core i3, 3110M, 2.4 GHz
6 gigs of RAM
2 gigs of graphics memory I believe, nothing much to speak of.
I’ve scaled down a bit from what the game gave me by default, but there’s still noticeable framerate dropping and the whole experience is far from remarkable. The game itself is enjoyable though, so I might be considering a new rig, as my laptop could be due for an upgrade anyway.
So now I’m turning to the community for suggestions on what to look at hardware-wise if I wanted to run the game smoothly at decent settings. I’m not looking for the highest possible performance, more a bang-for-your-buck rig. I would be looking for a desktop PC instead of a larger laptop this time.
My setup is a bit old (DDR3 generation), but its great for gaming.
Im running a triple monitor setup (Not quite full HD, 4298x768) at max graphics with full FPS. I only have to premptively turn down the graphics to medium during large null blobs.
i5-3570K (O.C. to 4.3GHz)
16 GB Ram
GTX 960FTW 2GB model
As you can see with the GFX card, you dont need anything too hefty, would probably suggest atleast a GTX1060, or if you have the budget a GTX1070.
CPU can be anything decent, that wont be your bottleneck.
If youre not multiboxing, even 8GB of ram would be fine, but I suggest 16GB at a minimum. Its cheap.
If you’re purchasing new hardware for gaming I recommend you consider the following:
M.2 SSD. A regular SSD is OK but slower. A mechanical hard drive should only be considered as a second drive for archival storage - they are an order of magnitude slower.
16Gb of RAM. It’s cheap - don’t settle for less.
Discrete graphics. Midrange 60 or 70 series cards from ATI or Nvidia will deliver the best value.
Quad core CPU. Games won’t use more so invest in clock speed rather than additional cores.
Dual monitor. Once you’ve used a dual monitor system, you’ll wonder how you survived without it.
Good quality gaming keyboard and mouse. This is the interface between you and the computer - spend a little more than you need to, you’ll be glad you did.
Computers don’t go obsolete as quickly as they used to. My 4 year old system (AMD FX-8350, GTX-770) is still plenty fast for everything I do and it will likely be a few more years before I get the itch to upgrade.