Hello all,
Time passed, I grew up, had a wife and a child and a time consuming work (thanks god, until Covid won’t play totally sh*t on my Company).
But recalling my romantic nights spent flying my Hyperion Vanguard I decided to “think about” start X3tc again.
In this case, “think to” is equal to play, so I watched again all ship stats and restarted planning my new journey.
Meanwhile I was just thinking about hardware, I was in a q9650 back then, I perfectly know that the best thing to do is to grab a powerful single threaded cpu and overclock it.
So my intention is first to build a X3tc dedicated machine.
Preferring to stick with ddr3 and “old” parts, Pentium 1151 anniversary edition (do not remember the code) is in my mind.
Any advice?
Thanks
[X3tc] New game after 7 years... Maybe...
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Re: [X3tc] New game after 7 years... Maybe...
If you truly only care about X3, well, I am running a used Dell Optiplex 9020 with i5-4590, 8GB DDR3 and GTX 1050 Ti (one of the fastest 75 watt cards). No issues here, just a little stuttering in my 60+ station complex systems. You could get any similar cheap used Dell (I would get a tower, avoid small form factor) with IMO at least an i5-3000 series, stick in almost any reasonable 75 or less watt GPU and it would work well.
You said core 2 quad 9650? I had some core 2 quad 9550's, almost the same as the 9650, and I'd say the i5-4590 runs about twice as fast.
That said, there have been a lot of great advancements in PCs in the last few years. AMD Ryzen is king of almost every CPU category, bringing tons of horsepower at affordable prices. Nvidia's 3000 series GPUs are releasing, they have some stability issues at the moment but it should be resolved before too long. They are bringing more value than we had last gen, which has also driven the used GPU market to be cheaper... AMD Radeon Navi cards are coming very soon and should be even better value. I would look into some PC hardware videos and see if you might want to build a "real machine" instead? I would if I had any money...
Even if you get a cheaper Ryzen CPU, if you pair it with a decent AM4 motherboard, that will be a great platform for later upgrades. You can still go the Optiplex route, but with Ryzen's value, and increasing need for more CPU cores, it's getting harder to justify spending money on old hardware.
Either way I would get an SSD for your main system drive. Those have gotten quite a bit cheaper also.
For reference, single-core passmark scores:
Core 2 Quad 9650: 1297
i5-4590: 2083
AMD Ryzen 2600 (popular last-gen 6c12t Ryzen): 2262
top current Ryzen single core, 3800 XT: 2900
top current Intel single core, i9-10900K: 3180
You said core 2 quad 9650? I had some core 2 quad 9550's, almost the same as the 9650, and I'd say the i5-4590 runs about twice as fast.
That said, there have been a lot of great advancements in PCs in the last few years. AMD Ryzen is king of almost every CPU category, bringing tons of horsepower at affordable prices. Nvidia's 3000 series GPUs are releasing, they have some stability issues at the moment but it should be resolved before too long. They are bringing more value than we had last gen, which has also driven the used GPU market to be cheaper... AMD Radeon Navi cards are coming very soon and should be even better value. I would look into some PC hardware videos and see if you might want to build a "real machine" instead? I would if I had any money...
Even if you get a cheaper Ryzen CPU, if you pair it with a decent AM4 motherboard, that will be a great platform for later upgrades. You can still go the Optiplex route, but with Ryzen's value, and increasing need for more CPU cores, it's getting harder to justify spending money on old hardware.
Either way I would get an SSD for your main system drive. Those have gotten quite a bit cheaper also.
For reference, single-core passmark scores:
Core 2 Quad 9650: 1297
i5-4590: 2083
AMD Ryzen 2600 (popular last-gen 6c12t Ryzen): 2262
top current Ryzen single core, 3800 XT: 2900
top current Intel single core, i9-10900K: 3180
Re: [X3tc] New game after 7 years... Maybe...
Actually I want to build sort of a retroPC just for X3TC.
My main PCis another story.
So yes, of course I will use a low power VGA, probably a cheap GTX1050 that has plenty of power to handle anything at HD resolution for X3TC, but maybe I am wrong beacuse I do not know DX9 performance of GTX1050, maybe X3TC would be less smooth compared on a prior generation VGA. I do not know.
The very sensible thing is the CPU, the single threaded game engine will without any doubt have an impact on it, sooner or later during the game.
I want this to be later of course, so I was thinking of a heavily overclocked Pentium Haswell or a 3570k delidded for his clocking. It all depends from what I will found floating around...
I already have two old Intel SSD320 in Raid-0, they are SATA-2, but are fast enough.
My main PCis another story.
So yes, of course I will use a low power VGA, probably a cheap GTX1050 that has plenty of power to handle anything at HD resolution for X3TC, but maybe I am wrong beacuse I do not know DX9 performance of GTX1050, maybe X3TC would be less smooth compared on a prior generation VGA. I do not know.
The very sensible thing is the CPU, the single threaded game engine will without any doubt have an impact on it, sooner or later during the game.
I want this to be later of course, so I was thinking of a heavily overclocked Pentium Haswell or a 3570k delidded for his clocking. It all depends from what I will found floating around...
I already have two old Intel SSD320 in Raid-0, they are SATA-2, but are fast enough.
Re: [X3tc] New game after 7 years... Maybe...
Seems like you know what you're looking for then. If you're searching the used market then just check any CPU on https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html for a good idea of its single-core performance. I don't know whether those rankings factor in OC. I've heard less than 10% of users actually OC their hardware so probably not. I wish I could OC but I don't think it's an option for Dells.
Anyway, while the game was a bit of a beast at release, it came out in 2008. I really don't think you'll need quite as much CPU as you think, unless your goal is massive complexes with minimum slowdown.
Also like to point out that X4 has pretty high requirements. I don't meet the minimum GPU. Something to think about.
Anyway, while the game was a bit of a beast at release, it came out in 2008. I really don't think you'll need quite as much CPU as you think, unless your goal is massive complexes with minimum slowdown.
Also like to point out that X4 has pretty high requirements. I don't meet the minimum GPU. Something to think about.