Computer Specs/Help

[Fredrick Robertson]

I have an "ok" computer, but i cant run every game i want. What can i upgrade or do to improve my quality for games. What specs could i get better of?

Specs:
Intel Core i7-6700 Quad-Core 3.4GHz
NIVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
16GB DDR4-2133MHz
1TB SATA III Hard Drive
120GB SATA Solid State Drive

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

What games do you have a problem with?

Your graphics card is bit below GTX 980 tier and is kinda ok for 60 fps 1080p gaming at good quality settings but not all games will hit above 60 fps on ultra with it. The 3 GB variant is also a bit slower and have less VRAM increasing and increase the RAM usage a bit.

I would suggest upgrading the graphics card first but the current ones has been out for 2 years time and are still expensive so I wouldn't do it now but wait until the next gen is out so you get more of an update / get to pay less. For now just drop the visual quality until the game run decent enough.

If you can't drop the quality until it run decent enough then the problem would be your CPU or RAM speed but that's much less likely within reasonable limits considering what you already have. Higher clocked RAM with tighter timings and higher clocked CPU would be better and now more cores start to show and advantage too but your CPU is still good and Intel isn't all that picky about RAM speed.

I assume chances are you could overclock your RAM a bit, maybe at say 1.35 volt it could run at 2666 MHz or so with no problem or whatever. I don't know. Maybe higher too. That would help to some extent. Some games like Arma 3 like fast RAM.

But mostly I assume it's a graphics card issue and if that market had developed more normally maybe that would had been more obvious but now graphics cards has been very expensive and not updated for a long time.

[Fredrick Robertson]

Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism původně napsal:

What games do you have a problem with?

Your graphics card is bit below GTX 980 tier and is kinda ok for 60 fps 1080p gaming at good quality settings but not all games will hit above 60 fps on ultra with it. The 3 GB variant is also a bit slower and have less VRAM increasing and increase the RAM usage a bit.

I would suggest upgrading the graphics card first but the current ones has been out for 2 years time and are still expensive so I wouldn't do it now but wait until the next gen is out so you get more of an update / get to pay less. For now just drop the visual quality until the game run decent enough.

If you can't drop the quality until it run decent enough then the problem would be your CPU or RAM speed but that's much less likely within reasonable limits considering what you already have. Higher clocked RAM with tighter timings and higher clocked CPU would be better and now more cores start to show and advantage too but your CPU is still good and Intel isn't all that picky about RAM speed.

I assume chances are you could overclock your RAM a bit, maybe at say 1.35 volt it could run at 2666 MHz or so with no problem or whatever. I don't know. Maybe higher too. That would help to some extent. Some games like Arma 3 like fast RAM.

But mostly I assume it's a graphics card issue and if that market had developed more normally maybe that would had been more obvious but now graphics cards has been very expensive and not updated for a long time.

I actually do not know how to overclock and i have a 1920x1080 monitor and play that each time because i know that is best for it. But with some games, like ARK and House Flipper, i have very hard times playing this game due to low framerate and lowest quality on.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

To overclock the multiplier of the CPU it would have had to be an i7 6700K and I think to overclock the RAM you'd still want to have a Z170 or Z270 series motherboard. So it may not be possible as is.

I think ARK has always been a heavy game / poor performing one.

https://ark.intel.com/products/88196/Intel-Core-i7-6700-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_00-GHz
Processor Base Frequency
3.40 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency
4.00 GHz
Memory Types
DDR4-1866/2133, DDR3L-1333/1600 @ 1.35V

https://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz
Processor Base Frequency
4.00 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency
4.20 GHz

The max turbo is likely just for one core. I don't know what the max turbo for four cores is.
https://www.overclock.net/forum/5-intel-cpus/1575627-i7-6700-non-k-z170-what-overclock-possible.html#post24476369
i7 6700 4C: +300 MHz = 3.7 GHz.
i7 6700K 4C: +0 MHz = 4.0 GHz.

So stock when using all cores the 6700K would clock 300 MHz or 8.1% higher. I think a reasonable overclock there is 4.5 or so GHz. Don't really know. That would be 22% higher or 12.5% against the stock 6700K.

Some ASUS motherboards may have let you set the multi-core turbos to the maximum turbo multiplier. I don't know if that have ever worked on the i7 6700 but if so that would had been 4.0 GHz, and before there was a possibility to overclock by changing the bus frequency instead but Intel tried to disable that.

All core turbo on an i7 8700K with no OC would be 4.3 GHz or 16% higher, it may have some other tweaks increasing performance a bit higher due to them too. The stock RAM speed is 25% higher at 2666 MHz and it's got 6 cores or 50% more of them.

So if you eventually would had wanted a faster CPU Z370 and i7 8700K would had been some upload and the future i9 9800K 8800K 8900K or whatever should be an 8 core chip.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/
Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
Minne: 8 GB RAM
Grafik: NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better
That's not recommended.

I don't know where these are from:
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=23214&game=ARK:%20Survival%20Evolved
i5 4670K, GTX 1050Ti 4 GB. You beat both of those.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/517142892062745731/
"lol right now the rec specs are a titan and a i7 4970 so dont expect ultra, not unless your loaded at least"
There is no 4970, may have ment 4790 which is similar but worse than your CPU, Titan a bit faster graphics card.
Was it this Titan?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series#GeForce_700_(7xx)_series
2688:224:48 core config 837 MHz clock 6144 MB RAM 288 GB/s 4500 gflops
Your card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_10_series
1152:72:48 core config 1506-1708 MHz clock 3 GB RAM 192-216 GB/s 3470-3935 gflops
If so you're not all that much behind. Half VRAM size and a bit worse memory bandwidth and total compute capacity but not much.

[[☥] - CJ -]

ARK should be running fine with that system, even with a 3GB GPU, so it could be due to the HDD its on

Also, if your OS is on the SSD, make sure you have enough free space, OS drives and lacking space dont mix.

[Fredrick Robertson]

Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism původně napsal:

To overclock the multiplier of the CPU it would have had to be an i7 6700K and I think to overclock the RAM you'd still want to have a Z170 or Z270 series motherboard. So it may not be possible as is.

I think ARK has always been a heavy game / poor performing one.

https://ark.intel.com/products/88196/Intel-Core-i7-6700-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_00-GHz
Processor Base Frequency
3.40 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency
4.00 GHz
Memory Types
DDR4-1866/2133, DDR3L-1333/1600 @ 1.35V

https://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz
Processor Base Frequency
4.00 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency
4.20 GHz

The max turbo is likely just for one core. I don't know what the max turbo for four cores is.
https://www.overclock.net/forum/5-intel-cpus/1575627-i7-6700-non-k-z170-what-overclock-possible.html#post24476369
i7 6700 4C: +300 MHz = 3.7 GHz.
i7 6700K 4C: +0 MHz = 4.0 GHz.

So stock when using all cores the 6700K would clock 300 MHz or 8.1% higher. I think a reasonable overclock there is 4.5 or so GHz. Don't really know. That would be 22% higher or 12.5% against the stock 6700K.

Some ASUS motherboards may have let you set the multi-core turbos to the maximum turbo multiplier. I don't know if that have ever worked on the i7 6700 but if so that would had been 4.0 GHz, and before there was a possibility to overclock by changing the bus frequency instead but Intel tried to disable that.

All core turbo on an i7 8700K with no OC would be 4.3 GHz or 16% higher, it may have some other tweaks increasing performance a bit higher due to them too. The stock RAM speed is 25% higher at 2666 MHz and it's got 6 cores or 50% more of them.

So if you eventually would had wanted a faster CPU Z370 and i7 8700K would had been some upload and the future i9 9800K 8800K 8900K or whatever should be an 8 core chip.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/346110/ARK_Survival_Evolved/
Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better
Minne: 8 GB RAM
Grafik: NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better
That's not recommended.

I don't know where these are from:
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=23214&game=ARK:%20Survival%20Evolved
i5 4670K, GTX 1050Ti 4 GB. You beat both of those.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/0/517142892062745731/
"lol right now the rec specs are a titan and a i7 4970 so dont expect ultra, not unless your loaded at least"
There is no 4970, may have ment 4790 which is similar but worse than your CPU, Titan a bit faster graphics card.
Was it this Titan?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series#GeForce_700_(7xx)_series
2688:224:48 core config 837 MHz clock 6144 MB RAM 288 GB/s 4500 gflops
Your card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_10_series
1152:72:48 core config 1506-1708 MHz clock 3 GB RAM 192-216 GB/s 3470-3935 gflops
If so you're not all that much behind. Half VRAM size and a bit worse memory bandwidth and total compute capacity but not much.

Wow, um... ok. Thats a lot to process, but wow you know computers and what to find, thanks for the heads up and maybe in the future i will get a better intel core if it comes out. Or Ark will get better.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Theres nothing wrong with your CPU bud, so pay no mind to that.

[Fredrick Robertson]

☥ - CJ - původně napsal:

Theres nothing wrong with your CPU bud, so pay no mind to that.

whats my HDD, OS, and SSD

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

I don't know what version of Windows you are running or if you are running lots of other programs slowing you down.
Click ctrl-alt-delete and task manager and see what the CPU percentage is when you aren't doing anything special.
Also you could use some program which chart your CPU clock like MSI Afterburner if that's capable of doing so (right click the graph and choose settings and just click the CPU clock one, play some game and return to it and see what it's been) to see if it actually hit 3.7 GHz or if it doesn't because if it doesn't maybe your CPU or power delivery to it is getting too hit and doesn't clock as it should or something. If you only have the Intel stock cooler (https://i.imgur.com/egFD543l.jpg) and poor air flow in the case maybe that's a possibility.
The HDD is your harddrive, where I guess you may have your games, however since you've got "lots" of RAM swap unlikely is an issue for you and it will only affect load speeds not really how fast the game run when the loading is done. The SSD would load games quicker but it's kinda small for putting lots of games on and writing lots of data to it wear it out eventually and loading times IMHO doesn't matter all that much so I wouldn't worry about it.