Hardware Advice

New Citizens Q&A
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Wasn’t sure where to put this, can a mod move it to the right channel if I have guessed wrongly. Looking for some tech advice.

I’ve recently started to play the game a lot again after several years dipping in and out when RL time allows. My SFF PC, which was given to me by a friend when my last one died is pretty old, but seemed to do well enough for what I needed it to.

When I most recently came back I was shocked to realise my GPU was now listed as the minimum spec on the eve website, a Radeon HD 2400 XT which could only support Eve in 1024x768 on minimum settings. Although it coped well enough with that the PC would BSOD if I tried to boost it any higher. Anyway it was enough for me to get my eve mojo back, as I saved up for a new GPU.

Last night I installed a Nvidea 1030GT (it is a dc7900 SFF so I can only fit low-profile cards with minimal wattage requirements) and was fiddling around with the settings and it even coped with settings on high. Holy crap, I have never seen Eve look so good! I was literally amazed that the game could look so beautiful!

So it got me to wondering about what else I could upgrade. The thing is, I dont want to spend too much because although I can put the GPU in a new rig, everything else would be rig specific. And I am unsure even if upgrading these things would actually give me a performance upgrade, as I say, everything is on high right now and it seems to be coping fine so I hoped someone could give me some advice.

I have an E8400 CPU Core 2 Duo 3.16Ghz (I know!), I was wondering whether to try to upgrade this, I have seen slightly better ones e.g. E8600 for about £15. I think, but am not sure, there might even be other quad core CPU’s that fit the motherboard. I always thought people said Eve was CPU-intensive rather than GPU-intensive. It spikes when I undock but otherwise eve seems to use about 30% of the CPU.

I could also upgrade my RAM from 4x2GB to 4x4GB, although that would cost more (about £100). A single eve client seems to use about 1GB at the moment. It being DDR2 RAM it would obviously be worthless when I eventually upgrade the whole rig, but if the performance boost would be noticeable in the shorter term it might possibly be worth it.

It also just occurred to me that I could put an SSD in the rig. But I am unsure if this would do much in terms of the performance of eve itself. As I say, the PC does everything else I need it to just fine.

So, yeah. I just hoped a kindly soul might see this and give me some advice. I do appreciate that the rig is ancient, but shelling out an extra grand on a new PC just isnt appealing to me right now, I need a new car as well, and obviously that takes precedence over everything else. Would like to squeeze everything I can oout of this one first at a minimal outlay if I can.

Thanks in advance o7

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Read this. This should give you an idea what to upgrade … generally, I would say you need a better CPU and more RAM, as you have already indicated.

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Yes I saw that yesterday, ironically just after I had upgraded the GPU. The thing is, would those things actually give me a performance boost? I mean, sure in an ideal world I would have an i7 and 16GB and a 1060, but … sigh, I guess it is all relative.

I think the thing is, obviously I am not going to be able to fit an i7 into my current motherboard. So that’s down to a completely new rig. I’m also not going to be able to fit a GTX 1060 in a low profile slot. So again, that down to a completely new rig. So, bearing in mind that both of those things hold true, is it even worth upgrading the RAM or better to just save my money until I can afford a completely a new PC in a few years?

That dev blog basically says “if you go for top of the range everything you will have the recommended requirements” that doesn’t really help at all. I am not looking for an optimum rig, I am trying to upgrade a budget rig.

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This is experience from another game that is extremely RAM hungry and upgrading from 16 to 32 GB definitely helped in stabilizing my system when I tried to play this game. I am not sure how much it would help with EVE because my clients rarely go beyond 2GB even in large fights. Technically, 8GB should still be more than enough RAM for EVE and other applications.

Judging by your description, you have a rather ancient computer, even older than my previous machine with a Radeon HD5770, 12 GB ram and a Phenom X4 870. On that machine I could play EVE reasonably well. Only on large fights my performance dropped to 1-2 FPS even with all settings on low/minimum/turned off.

The annoying thing now is that I have a Ryzen 7 1700x, 16 GB RAM and RX 570, and in big fights I still only get between 2-5 FPS, while people with weaker machines get way better performance. Yet, outside of big fights with normal gameplay (missions, flying around, anoms) I have 160 FPS on high settings. Either I am doing something wrong or some component combinations don’t yield good performance even if they meet the recommended specs.

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@Khanid_Voltar

i guess with your pc age (sorry for that i know it hurts) you did the right thing as far as i know
i played on a old PC (AMD x250? with 6GB ram and a old nVidia) was bad so i had a notebook after that … it died just a few days ago and now i hav a new notebook with 1060GTX, SSD PCIe, i7-7700HQ, …

the really only thing is that the grafics look better … i had never the probelm with the cpu, the ram, die harddrive/ssd or what ever … so buy a cheap ne graficcard is the right thing as far as i see it …

safe your money for the Car and for a better PC … no need to waste your hard earned money on stuff for this pc … if you are lucky and you get a part for free or really cheap (10£) ok do it but if not dont worry … enjoy the game with better grafics rest is not that important

JuuR

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The current Eve client is 32 bit - 8Gb of RAM is sufficient. CCP have been talking about a 64 bit client for a while now and it will benefit from 16Gb RAM when it eventually ships.

Processor upgrades are problematic - you can’t go far without upgrading the motherboard and memory - at that point might as well look at a new machine.

Replacing the hard drive with an SSD will help and the SSD can be moved to a new machine.

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my system is an i5 6600k oc 4.5 ghz with 16gb ddr4 ram an ssd, three monitors, and I can run 9 accounts simo on low settings and watch youtube, browse the web, etc… on a gtx 960 ftw 4gb edition.

I use about 60% ram and around 40% cpu, gpu is around 75-80% load on low settings with all the accounts on.

Runs flawlessly…

running win 7 64 bit of course.

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A list of requirements, including the minimum requirements can be found here:

That said, my computer is older as well and seems to run Eve fine. On a GTX 650 I can still run Eve on max alright; despite the lag, but I agree that it does look wonderful! Personally I think the 8GB RAM is good (that’s what I have), but if you can afford to boost it more and find it at a good price, then I would go for it for sure, it will help a little bit.

However, personally, it if was me, I would rather put the money to a new PC instead of upgrading a old computer since it will be better, and cheaper, in the long run. The old PC will get more and more outdated quicker compared to something that has newer parts.

Best of luck! :slight_smile:

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I’d upgrade the casing and switch to ATX. That will ensure you can get easier/better/cheaper upgrades in the future. You’ll just keep struggling with the limitations of your casing, which results in way more expensive, and more difficult to get, bits that perform less than normal sized ones.

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Upgrades are tricky, you need to be sure your platform can handle upgrades before you buy them. Example. I have a z170 chipset on my mobo. I know then, I cannot use the later intel cpu’s as they require a newer chipset. so Im stuck with said cpus and ram, for upgrades, for the life of my mobo because of its grade in the consumer line. I have a lot to choose from but there are limitations as always. you can only do so good, future proofing for an upgrade.

Id love to get a hyper threaded cpu, for example, and Im okay with this restriction but, Im stuck with skylake architechture, not that that is a bad thing, just saying, I cant move on to a newer cpu because of design. It helps to know this in advance of your purchase or build. just et some reading in and youll know what to get, and what to avoid! I read on ukoverclockers, extremeoverclockers.com, etc… these are pretty good communities in regards to hacking hardware, overclocking and customizing things all computer related. newegg is where I get my parts from and I build my own projects.

I only give myself five years for upgrade on said build. After that I get a new machine. if there is no upgrade i plan for in the five years, no biggy, ill get get it on the next by.

for 500$ you can get yourself a VERY nice machine, self build, from newegg or sources like them, and have ddr4 ram, a decent gpu and cpu, and power supply on a fairly respectful mobo… if you need or want help in a build. send me a pm… i love putting builds together. Im no pro, but Ive been around computers pretty much since they came out to consumer level, I was around 11 years old the first time I started to learn DOS on my dads 486d. that was like a 266mhz cpu back then lmao. wow…

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As someone else said, 8GB RAM is enough. Upgrading the CPU further from E8400 to E8600 is an 11% clock speed increase, that does not translate to a 11% performance increase, not going to do much for you imho. To be honest, your GT1030 is probably the most expensive component in your rig…

An SSD is absolutely very nice, but it being a SFF PC I doubt you’ll have room for two 3.5" HDD/SSD slots. If you have only one, you might need a pretty big SSD and that costs a decent amount of money.

The question is, what do you want to do with EVE? Do you want to run multiple Omega accounts simultaneously? Get the best quality image? The most FPS?

I suspect you best monitor your performance through Windows task manager and see if there’s any bottle necking (RAM/CPU/GPU), you can monitor your FPS like this:
https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/202836245-FPS-Monitor

If you want my honest opinion, IF this rig can currently perform acceptable quality for you, don’t spend anymore money on it. It isn’t really worth it. Wait with buying a new PC until you have the money and it is worth it to you.

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