Plz Help, my computer SOTA fell down.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Father Guido Sarducci, Aug 29, 2020.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Father Guido Sarducci

    Father Guido Sarducci Avatar

    Messages:
    53
    Likes Received:
    151
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Greetings all you sota sinners,

    Eulogy for an old computer;
    My computer fell from grace last night. It's was with me through sota thick and thin for 6 long years. It was a very good computer in it's time, but it time to bury the dead. Yes I could have taken it to the computer shop and fixed it, but it's still out of date. I could barely fit sota onto it's hard drive, so it's best if I just close the coffin and move on.

    Confessional;
    I'm not very smart when it comes to computers. I buy my computers based on the opinions of others who know allot more than I do.

    So, is this still a pretty good setup for playing sota or what? I need to buy one that can last me another 6 years, so what do you think?

    Recommended:
    • Processor: Quad Core 2.8 GHz or faster
    • Memory: 12 GB RAM
    • Graphics: DirectX 11 Compatible NVIDIA GTX 1070 / ATI Radeon HD 5870
    • Hard Drive: SSD
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2020
    Net and majoria70 like this.
  2. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

    Messages:
    7,944
    Likes Received:
    9,015
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Location:
    Hemut
    That should run the game just fine. The key piece being the SSD. You really actually need to have one to play this.
     
  3. Ravalox

    Ravalox Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Moderator SOTA Developer

    Messages:
    1,731
    Likes Received:
    4,953
    Trophy Points:
    125
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    Greetings! There will be many here with sage advice, I will give you some that will hopefully be of help ...

    Get at least 16GB RAM. 16 is becoming the new standard, if you can afford it and want to "future proof" a bit try to get 32GB ... one constant is that in general, as time goes on applications use up more RAM.

    I think the GPU specs are sufficient. There have been reports of issues with the 20xx NVidia series woriking well with Unity, but I will leave that for other players to fill in more details ...

    Absolutely get an SSD. If at all possible get a computer that can make use of an NVME M.2 SSD. The most current ones can transfer around 3.5GB a second. where even a standard SATA SSD will cap out at around 500MB.

    I also recommend using an I7 CPU (or better) rather than the I5 or lower.
     
    Echondas, Scanphor, Net and 3 others like this.
  4. Father Guido Sarducci

    Father Guido Sarducci Avatar

    Messages:
    53
    Likes Received:
    151
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Thank you both very much. I will try and find the super stuff and see where that leads, as I do have some $socked away for just such a hunting trip.
     
    majoria70, Anpu and Ravalox like this.
  5. Scanphor

    Scanphor Avatar

    Messages:
    553
    Likes Received:
    977
    Trophy Points:
    63
    All great advice :D - the only point I'd expand on slightly is that final point - I use an i7 in my main PC and an i5 in my secondary one and to be honest in the real world there isn't much between them in game performance 99% of the time. The new hex core i5's (8th gen and onwards - and with 12 threads from 10th gen) are very good indeed and you can pay a fair premium for an i7. If cost is a strong limitation I'd take a recent i5 machine with an M2 NVME SSD over an i7 with a SATA SSD for example, or an i5 with a higher spec GFX card. Take a look at :

    https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-10700K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-10600K/4070vs4072
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  6. Feeyo

    Feeyo Avatar

    Messages:
    1,716
    Likes Received:
    2,520
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Aelasar’s Forest
    I would recommend a AMD Ryzen 7 3700/3900, 32GB of RAM. The motherboard for the Ryzen 7 CPU probably has a M2 slot if not 2 of them build in. Get yourself an M2 NVME instead of the SSD.
    You can always insert more SSD's if you need more storage.
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  7. dayero

    dayero Avatar

    Messages:
    180
    Likes Received:
    280
    Trophy Points:
    18
    I think a lot more information is necessary for sound advice. Most importantly, do you play other games with high requirements, run any other demanding software or intend to dabble in vr in the coming years? Do you have a strict budget or going for ideal cost/performance ratio?

    To work through all the parts quickly
    - Ram: 16gb should be enough, but RAM is dirt cheap right now, so i'll recommend 32gb anyway.
    - Disk: Definitely an Nvme SSD. If you have huge amounts of data, consider an extra HDD, but for OS and all other software a decent SSD makes a huge difference.
    - CPU: dont go big unless you know what you need it for. cpu is rarely the bottleneck these days. something like a ryzen 5 3600 will probably do easily.
    - GPU: Honestly, if you or anyone you know got a spare graphics card just to make the pc run for now, i'd put it in and wait. The Nvidia 3000 series is released at the end of september and prices for older cards are going to drop significantly. Or buy one of the new cards if you do need max performance. the 3000 series unlike the 2000 series is supposed to bring a decent increase in performance.
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  8. Net

    Net Avatar

    Messages:
    3,727
    Likes Received:
    11,178
    Trophy Points:
    153
    NVME SSD for system and games is great.
    I highly recommend external HDD if you need cheap back up storage for data, but if you can afford it, I would get large internal SSD even for data, maybe cheaper SATA one, it is so much nice to have large internal SSD to quickly look for stuff, edit multiple pictures and copy data while you are also doing something else. And it is nice not to hear the internal harddrive and not to struggle with all its limitations.
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  9. Father Guido Sarducci

    Father Guido Sarducci Avatar

    Messages:
    53
    Likes Received:
    151
    Trophy Points:
    8
    After shopping around my small town, I looked offline, I looked online, I found I could go really crazy, or just buy an off the shelf PC and buy another updated computer. I can always give the out dated computer to one of my kids or something.

    Every (all in one) computer has their own descriptions that are not strait forward because nothing is standardized these days for a guy like me to understand what they're buying, SO, what do you think about this one? Will it play sota?

    CPU : AMD RYZEN 7 3700X
    RAM : 16 GB DDR4
    STORAGE : 512 GB PCIe/NVMe M.2 SSD
    VGA : NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX2060 SUPER 6 GB
    OS : WINDOWS 10 HOME

    $1200.00 with a 3 year warranty.
    What do you think? Adequate or no?
     
  10. Katu

    Katu Avatar

    Messages:
    454
    Likes Received:
    777
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Finland
    You definitely should wait 2 weeks, to get the new Nvidia RXT 3000 series GPU.
    I very strongly recommend, that you wait for those. 17. day this month they hit the stores and they beat everything and cost the same or less. Do not buy GPU now.

    nvidia rtx 3070 will be offered with almost same price tag and it will outperform that and every 2xxx gen nvidia.

    Two weeks.
     
    Net, Father Guido Sarducci and Gia2 like this.
  11. macnlos

    macnlos Avatar

    Messages:
    442
    Likes Received:
    1,310
    Trophy Points:
    43
    I'd rather have this Asus Tuf laptop at $1266... But if you do get the above, you'll need to upgrade that storage to 1 or 2TB.

    https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-7-4800H...9140985&sprefix=asus+tuf+2020,aps,179&sr=8-13
     
    Net and Father Guido Sarducci like this.
  12. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,678
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Yes, this will play SotA.

    [edit] And it should be able to play it pretty well.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2020
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  13. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,678
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    @Father Guido Sarducci
    Once you do get a new PC, if you turn off SMP (symmetric multi-processing) in the BIOS setup then you'll get a bit better frame-rate. It's sometimes a bit hard to find that setting though.
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  14. Scanphor

    Scanphor Avatar

    Messages:
    553
    Likes Received:
    977
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Whilst I'm not going to disagree entirely - the 3000 series looks very promising but we need to see how actual benchmarks / game performance / price and availability look when they do start to come out (I'm very tempted myself ;) ) - its a fundamental law of the universe that whenever you ask for PC buying advice someone will always pop up saying "if you just wait till the X comes out, it will be soo much better than the X-1 that's out just now". In real world terms whilst the cards are due to release fairly imminently it will be longer than that before they become widely available - and even longer before most pre built PCs on shelves will have them. And those that do will initially carry a price premium.

    Its always true in PC land that something better is around the corner so its always a matter or how much you have to spend, how urgent your need for a new PC is and how long you want to wait. If you wait say 3-6 months for the 3000 cards to become mainstream, then the next big thing(tm) will only be a few months / weeks away, etc etc
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  15. Net

    Net Avatar

    Messages:
    3,727
    Likes Received:
    11,178
    Trophy Points:
    153
    • The 2xxx cards are not bad, but the 3xxx is around corner, I would personally wait, not to get 3xxx card, but to see how much the 2xxx drop in the price. If you see a good deal on 2xxx card now, I think it is okay to grab it, GPUs are easy to upgrade and much less hassle than CPUs where you need to worry about cooler or main SSD where you need to reinstall the system.
    • 16 GB of RAM is okay, RAM is also easy to upgrade later, though if you wanted your PC more future proof 32 GB would be better option.
    • 512 GB of SSD is enough for the system and SotA, but I would highly recommend bigger SSD, there is increasing number of games that take over 100 GB of your drive. Though you can always get much larger secondary SSD and keep the primary one just for the system.
     
  16. Father Guido Sarducci

    Father Guido Sarducci Avatar

    Messages:
    53
    Likes Received:
    151
    Trophy Points:
    8
    :)
    :)
    :)
    :)
    :)
    :)


    Thank you everyone for such good, knowledgeable and well thought detailed advice.

    Here are some things that float around in my mind throughout this potential buying spree:
    • I spent over $1,000.00 in our crown shop in the past month and well over $10,000.00 over all within our game and I still have all those assets, which are not ever outdated. Some of those assets could be worth less if sold, yet the same applies to any real world stock portfolio if outright sold for liquidation.

    • I purchased my old top of the line super computer 6 years ago for around $3,000.00 (it may have cost closer to $4k, I don't remember). With upgrades and repairs over the past 6 years costing all total (est) $2,000.00 (labor/hardware/software/+time+travel invested). So, $4-5,000.00 over 6 years (312 weeks), is $12.83 to $16.03 per week in over all costs to keep things top of the line and sharp (not including internet costs).
    • I could have purchased an "adequate computer" 6 years ago with the current recommended minimum specs for far less $ and though it may not have been as super fast or advanced as my super computer, it would have cut that $4-5K invested down to $2-3K total costs over the past 6 years, meaning $6.00 to $8.00 per week in over all acquisition and operating costs.

    • The slowest piece of hardware, will always govern the speed and rendering of any PC.
    • Now that I'm physically older, the slowest hardware are my fingers and the lowest graphics are my eyes.

    • I also looked into "All in One Computers". There does seem to always be "the next best thing coming out". Such new innovations often look good in an engineer's papers and afterward fail due to long term use. I use my computers almost ever waking second of my day. How those "All in One" computers stay cool is beyond my understanding, because all my computers run hot and my old main computer has it's own air-conditioner it gets so hot. "All in One Frying Pan of Components?". They look nice, but I will pass on buying one. They also don't seem as easy to DIY upgrade.

    • Though the aforementioned cheap $1200.00 computer is only adequate,
      it seems also cheap enough over the next 6 years to be expendable, easily replaced and still be more cost effective x2 than my 6 years old, yet still fully updated PC which is currently dead being repaired.

    • SOTA is a simple program when compared to the other more hardware speed demanding games.
    • Using a super hardware buffed computer to play a low hardware demand game is not very cost effective for it's usage time $.
    • SOTA is a time demanding game, and burring up a cheap computer playing it seems more long term cost effective even when later fully replaced.
    Adequate vs Super? I just don't think I'm that good of a player to notice, and when I do notice, it's doesn't seem important enough for the added or even doubling of initial acquisition and weekly operating costs, "just for the long term playing sota".

     
    Barugon likes this.
  17. Katu

    Katu Avatar

    Messages:
    454
    Likes Received:
    777
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Finland
    But if you are spending 500$ for a GPU, you might as well wait 2 weeks to get the latest that can carry you easier on the 6 year journey.
    Bout $100 difference, 400->500.

    Sota is very demanding on hardware side and that RAM comparison is bit different in here than in some static asset shooting game.
    8gb is unplayable, 16gb is ok, 32 would be great for this.

    Also, getting old and slow physically slower, One would think that getting smoother, sharper image would be better than slide show.

    You do what you gotta do ofc :)
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  18. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

    Messages:
    15,678
    Likes Received:
    24,293
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    SotA is CPU bound and the difference between say a 2060 and a 2080 won't show.
     
  19. Katu

    Katu Avatar

    Messages:
    454
    Likes Received:
    777
    Trophy Points:
    55
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Finland
    Even thou you quoted me bit out of context there ( was more referring to Ram and overall requirements ), I can see me bottlenecking GPU ( old 970 ) 100% and CPU is doing just fine ( i7-7700k ,4,58Ghz@4cores) at 70%.
    So that statement cannot be 100% truth either. Also, difference between 2060 and 3070 is supposedly same as 2060 and 2080TI. So I'm sure there's difference there.
    Anyhow, not interested in anykind of debate on this subject.

    Two weeks and better bang for the buck.
     
    Father Guido Sarducci likes this.
  20. Net

    Net Avatar

    Messages:
    3,727
    Likes Received:
    11,178
    Trophy Points:
    153
    It might if you are playing in 4K:p Or at maximum details.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.