Which specs are needed for high performance?

[Comander-07]

Hi all, long time X Fan here. I have heard about performance problems with this game (which to be fair isnt uncommon for X games)
I wanted to know which kind of specs you need to get good performance at 1440p? Or maybe 100fps at 1080p.
I got burned so hard on Rebirth I want to make sure I can actually enjoy this one.

[Comander-07]

Escrito originalmente por Asmosis:

Yup, somebody did ask. You in fact. You're welcome.

It would probably be good for you to go watch "let's game it out" for a bit which pretty well demonstrates what i said, and what you asked for.

Im asking for specific specs. Like I said, raw data. Specs and performance.

I didnt ask for "This game is totally well optimized, it runs just like any other sandbox game"


To quote myself

>Just give me your system specs and what objective performance you get (like fps) pls

I know how x games work, I just want solid data :D I dont need arguments about how much the engine has been improved or why its better than X3, or why I shouldnt use many small fighters over big ones. All I want is solid data because Im going to build a new PC soon and want to know which CPU to use for it. Im going to make that decision myself too, so I dont want some arguments about CPUs and brands.

Just solid data pls

[KungFury]

You know, in 2 days AMD will announce their new ryzen CPUs which will likely be 20-25% faster than the predecessor in single core performance. So if you buy a new PC, this will probably become the fastest CPU for X4.
I will upgrade my 3600 to the fastest 5000 single core and expect an increase in performance of 30%.

[Comander-07]

Escrito originalmente por SenilerAlterZirkusaffe:

You know, in 2 days AMD will announce their new ryzen CPUs which will likely be 20-25% faster than the predecessor in single core performance. So if you buy a new PC, this will probably become the fastest CPU for X4.
I will upgrade my 3600 to the fastest 5000 single core and expect an increase in performance of 30%.

they definitely wont have a 25% gain in single core performance, that would be massive. Its probably more 15%.

[KungFury]

There are already a lot of leaked benchmarks (search for them) which show 20-25% but we will know that after the official release. Sure they could be fake but I hope they are not.

[Comander-07]

Escrito originalmente por SenilerAlterZirkusaffe:

There are already a lot of leaked benchmarks (search for them) which show 20-25% but we will know that after the official release. Sure they could be fake but I hope they are not.

AMD, the company known to overpromise and overhype, speaks of 10% IPC gains and 5% clock gains. Thats not going to be 25%

[GG]

Escrito originalmente por Asmosis:

It's CPU bottlenecked, so the additional ram and GPU performance doesnt help at all. You could probably hit max performance with a 1080Ti/2070/3050, going higher isnt going to help.

Correct. More ram only helps run games with a lot of assets. (Rust, Ark, Minecraft) and a good gpu only helps run games with a lot polygons. (Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6). X4 is a simulated economy game in space.
The universe in X4 is mostly empty space. Just like in real life. X4 only has stations, ships and some asteroids sprinkled around for mining with the odd planet or star as a background. Not a lot of assets to load there compared to a game like Just Cause 3.

Buying more ram or a RTX 3090 won't make the game run at 100 FPS during battles or in cramped sectors. Only a poweful CPU will do that. And that cpu doesn't exist yet.

[Valhalla Awaits]

There isn't one. No current hardware on earth can run this game butter smooth at a high framerate. The bottleneck is the CPU rather than the GPU in this game. So you'll be needing a CPU that comes about in around 8-12 years before it becomes possible to run the game smoothly. That being said... as long as your ok with the FPS dropping into the low 20's during major battles and 40's in high traffic areas, then you'll be wanting the fastest CPU you can get. 10900k here, with a 2080ti and those are the framerates I'm reliably getting. (Though the fps can be in the 100's in low density areas.) CPU is always 90-100% usage, gpu only sees 40% usage on average. Oh be aware this game CAN require more than 16GB of ram if you play long enough, if you only have 16GB of ram, the game crawls once it dips into page file territory.

[Alith-Ahnar]

Escrito originalmente por Comander-07:

Escrito originalmente por SenilerAlterZirkusaffe:

There are already a lot of leaked benchmarks (search for them) which show 20-25% but we will know that after the official release. Sure they could be fake but I hope they are not.

AMD, the company known to overpromise and overhype, speaks of 10% IPC gains and 5% clock gains. Thats not going to be 25%

Don't mix the GPU promises with the CPU, AMD did deliver with each ZEN release.
ZEN 3 is supposed to have a unified cache this will indeed have for gaming a bigger positive impact then for regular productivity applications.

So if AMD says up to 25% gain there will be a use case that they hit said 25% and gaming could be one of those that benefits the most.
This said until we have silicon in hand and a diverse benchmark suite all is speculation.

[Comander-07]

Escrito originalmente por Alith-Ahnar:

Escrito originalmente por Comander-07:

AMD, the company known to overpromise and overhype, speaks of 10% IPC gains and 5% clock gains. Thats not going to be 25%

Don't mix the GPU promises with the CPU, AMD did deliver with each ZEN release.
ZEN 3 is supposed to have a unified cache this will indeed have for gaming a bigger positive impact then for regular productivity applications.

So if AMD says up to 25% gain there will be a use case that they hit said 25% and gaming could be one of those that benefits the most.
This said until we have silicon in hand and a diverse benchmark suite all is speculation.

the thing is AMD never even claimed 25% single thread performance increase

Escrito originalmente por Valhalla Awaits:

There isn't one. No current hardware on earth can run this game butter smooth at a high framerate. The bottleneck is the CPU rather than the GPU in this game. So you'll be needing a CPU that comes about in around 8-12 years before it becomes possible to run the game smoothly. That being said... as long as your ok with the FPS dropping into the low 20's during major battles and 40's in high traffic areas, then you'll be wanting the fastest CPU you can get. 10900k here, with a 2080ti and those are the framerates I'm reliably getting. (Though the fps can be in the 100's in low density areas.) CPU is always 90-100% usage, gpu only sees 40% usage on average. Oh be aware this game CAN require more than 16GB of ram if you play long enough, if you only have 16GB of ram, the game crawls once it dips into page file territory.

Thanks! How busy is busy for you in terms of ships?20fps really is the point where it stops being fun for me

[GG]

Escrito originalmente por Comander-07:

Thanks! How busy is busy for you in terms of ships?20fps really is the point where it stops being fun for me

20 ships fighting at once or 20 ships destroying a station will probably lower your FPS to 30 or even 15. Your never going to get 60fps or even 40fps in large battles with this type of game. There's just too much for the CPU to process at once.

For me with a ryzen 5 1600, I get 60fps most of the time but it goes down to 40-30 on busy docks and in busy sectors. In large fights I get about 15 to 30 fps. Fps is about 25-30 on the map screen as well. Not sure why that is though.

[Alith-Ahnar]

Escrito originalmente por Nova:

Escrito originalmente por Comander-07:

Thanks! How busy is busy for you in terms of ships?20fps really is the point where it stops being fun for me

20 ships fighting at once or 20 ships destroying a station will probably lower your FPS to 30 or even 15. Your never going to get 60fps or even 40fps in large battles with this type of game. There's just too much for the CPU to process at once.

For me with a ryzen 5 1600, I get 60fps most of the time but it goes down to 40-30 on busy docks and in busy sectors. In large fights I get about 15 to 30 fps. Fps is about 25-30 on the map screen as well. Not sure why that is though.

Not really i run between 130fps and 60fps in normal game play depending on how intense the traffic number of entities is around me.
At my HQ it drops to ~40 due to workforce and station traffic.

All this with a R5 3600x previous a R5 1600 did see comparable yet better numbers then you back then.

[KungFury]

I have a ryzen 3600 and I have 55-80 fps most of the time (WQHD with a gtx 1070 and 16 GB ram). Only in big battles (over 50 ships) it can go down but this depends on the situation. In Asteroid fields it can go down below 30 fps, without asteroid fields it is most of the time playable (30-50fps).
But so far I was never in very late game where you command a thousand ships or so.

[Gregorovitch]

Escrito originalmente por Comander-07:

Thanks! How busy is busy for you in terms of ships?20fps really is the point where it stops being fun for me

With i7 8700k, standard and not OC'd, and 1080ti the only time I have gone below 20FPS for any noticeable length of time was a big battle (say 120 of my ships vs maybe 50-60 Xenon ships) around a Xenon shipyard located in the middle of an asteroid field.

In most battles and around stations, even with a sizeable fleet in play, I am not getting less than 40FPS except very occasionally for short periods.

I would agree that <20FPS is bordering on unplayable, especially in combat, but the circumstances where that happened were extreme and there are ways to get around it (for example defeating the enemy fleet in detail away from the station before tackling the station itself or simply going for an OOS engagement should that work out OK).

In other words in practice you can predict situations likely to cause extreme FPS drops like that and work around them. Otherwise I find ~40-50FPS tolerable for big fleet battles in open space even if much less than ideal, but of course YMMV.

Seems to me if you got a top of the range i9, OC'd it to within an inch of it's life, equipped it with a very good cooling system (which it important as CPUs do slow down when they get hot by design), got a good quality case with excellent fan slots and placement, maybe get some premium fan units and go to some trouble to design your airflow paths (getting hot air out of the box and cool air into it is an important factor), you are going to improve on my numbers. Not by that much, certainly not anything like double or even 50% better, but a noticeable amount.

Of course the best possible performance would come from building a fully water cooled system but that's a lot of work, difficult and very expensive. But it would enable you to crank the CPU clock speed beyond any other solution.

I believe the top i9's have the fastest single core performance available right now, whether the new Rizen chip about to drop can beat it remains to be seen as I understand it.

[CunkFeatures]

AMD 4000 owner here.

No matter what, everything will slow down eventually. Just depends on ho hard you play, stations and ship numbers etc.

Only good frames you'll see is miles away outside of the map looking at nothing.

Note how Egosoft do it in their videos. Take a new game, record some smooth shots, put headphones on and pretend to be playing it live. And don't forget in Rebirth when they stated this game is not a 60fps fps.

Really, I'd just like smooth menus, maybe a pause button for that to work. Atm its rather painful with my massive empire.

[Comander-07]

Thanks a lot, minimum 40fps was what I was hoping for! Will definitely do the big battles OOS