Should I focus on getting a better CPU, or GPU?

[Abundant]

For forged alliance?

If it is CPU, what is the minimum requirements for high/highish settings

If it is GPU, same as above.

I assume it's CPU, but I'm not sure.

Specific models could help as well.

[ColonelSheppard]

I dont know what settings you want to change in order to change the CPU load lol


GTX 460 is 180$ should be fine for most current games still, but if you want to save money you could aswell go forsomething in the 100$ range
With an I5 2500K you are mostly save, but an AMD FX-8150 would be cheaper for also good performance (130 vs. 200 i think)

[Duck_42]

CPU is where I'd recommend you focus. No one else on FAF is going to complain about you running at 20fps vs. 60fps (and you can lower the graphics to improve FPS). However, they will complain if your PC is forcing everyone else to run at a sim speed of -2 instead of 0.

The FA sim runs on a single thread, so having more than 2 cores will only improve FA performance marginally. Take a look at http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html. That page should give you a rough idea of how well a particular CPU will do (relative to other CPUs) in FA.

[ICKEN]

The question is what you want. Do you want more fps or a higher simspeed?

for fps you need if your cpu is not total crap a better graphics card
for sim speed you obviously need a better cpu

just post your current setup and i will tell you what you should upgrade

GTX 460 is 180$ should be fine for most current games still, but if you want to save money you could aswell go forsomething in the 100$ range
With an I5 2500K you are mostly save, but an AMD FX-8150 would be cheaper for also good performance (130 vs. 200 i think)

ignore that
gtx 460 is shit for the money and old. i5 2500k is also 3 years old and not really cheaper than a new i5 4xxx. do not buy any amd. the AMD FX cpus have a lower sim speed than the 5 year old phenoms which already have a lower sim than core2duo´s from 2006 (at same clock - goes for fx aswell as for phenom)

and dont forget your ram they always say ram speed does not matter but in supcom it DOES. for example a new i7 4770 is at least one sim speed faster with a ddr3 2400 ram than with a ddr3 1333 ram.

[E8400-CV]

Yeah... with comparing DDR3 1333 cl.9 with DDR3 2400 cl.9 perhaps.

The 2500K / GTX 460 story was nice 3-4 years ago. Not now. A core i3 4130 will probably beat the 2500K in supcom.

i7's only bring a small increase in clockspeed, 33% more cache and HT. For supcom you don't need HT. An i5 4690 would be very nice already.

I would really ignore the AMD's yeah. Don't know where Sheppard sees 'good performance' for the FX-8150, but 1348 points in Passmark is lower than what the faster Core 2 Duo's got (E8600: 1372). Even the room heater AMD FX9590 sits 10% below the 3-4 year old 2500K.

The AMD's might be nice when you do renders all day or some other use where you can use a ton of (each rather slow) cores, but not for FAF. But that in that case you would need to seriously factor in energy consumption costs; especially in Europe. Where I live one calculates with €2 per year for 1W continuous draw (excluding A/C). And that FX9590 draws a lot more for less performance.

[IceDreamer]

Best bet is to just get a 4670K and a decent cooler, overclock it, then spend whatever you have left on a GPU, NVidia if you're right at the very very top, AMD if you're more in the midrange. The R9280 at £160 is an absolutely phenomenal card which will run anything you throw at it, and certainly won't struggle with SupCom.

[Flipper]

Best bet is to just get a 4670K and a decent cooler, overclock it, then spend whatever you have left on a GPU, NVidia if you're right at the very very top, AMD if you're more in the midrange. The R9280 at £160 is an absolutely phenomenal card which will run anything you throw at it, and certainly won't struggle with SupCom.

For Haswell (which a 4670K is), don't trust the normal benchmarks for stability. I've overclocked mine, tested using standard apps, and all seemed fine. I let it roll and started playing ladder matches. 2 lockups and 2 losses. Lower settings back to stock and no more lockups. Test stability of your overclock using Forged Alliance. Play an AI game with tons of units and stuff going on. Use the replay to test stability with. Nothing sucks more than being up in a game and about to win and having it suddenly lock up - instant loss for you!

[Pus007]

Should I focus on getting a better CPU, or GPU?

Really depentant on what you have

Given that it is 2014 it should be a human right to enjoy FAF in all its glory and beauty without slowing down sim speed
So both CPU and GPU should be decent, having one crap and another overkill is just stupid. So aim for the best possible balance as long as you have a decent enough CPU to not affect sim speed in the games you want to play.

I would say any i5 processor with a K is more than good enough. Not that much preformance boost in the later i5 generations/sockets. Newer is better, but not worth it if you then also have to upgrade motherboard etc when you could have avoided it. The "K" processor just because they overclock very good even on stock cooler giving a good preformance boost.

Lots of decent GPU's that can run the game without having to ruin gfx settings, for economy i like the Geforce 750 TI model, also have shadowplay that is excelent for capturing without and FPS loss.

If you need even cheeper GPU even the GTX 550Ti and 650Ti are good enough, but Shadowplay require Geforce 600 or 700 models or higher, so for that reason alone i would not get the older 550 even if you could manage to buy it somewhere.

[CrayzyNath]

I have a question related to the topic:
I have a really old (7+years) and crappy PC.
So im considering getting a New one.
I have a litte budget (300-400€ max) and already was looking for indiviual components for my New PC (because thats cheaper), but them i saw this thing. Its a german page, but even if you are not familiar with german you should find the PC specs.
http://www.aldi-nord.de/aldi_multimedia_pc_system_926_925_1840_24055.html

Its 400€ and seems too be not too bad, and not that big. But im wondering if its
1. Worth the money.
2. Able to play some 4v4/5v5 games of supcom.

[rxnnxs]

you might as well have a quick look into this thread:
http://www.faforever.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3046&p=74031#p74031
maybe you post your benchmark times there? please! and, tell us more about your system please.

if you have an old cpu, try to overclock it, maybe get some faster ram if possible.
i had an gtx 460 and it was good some years ago (remember that FA is way older) and i had to lower the quality to play it on 1920 x 1080 flawless.
the system is an overclocked core duo e8400 and when i play i use the Core Maximizer. read the other thread for more information about that.

anyway, now i have a gtx 770 and the leap forward is amazing. everything is on high and i can zoom in and turn the camera and look into the sky and to the horizon and it all is shown flawlessly. the shields and so on. its awesome! and i do not hear a noise from the card. skyrim runs also totally smooth. with the gtx 460 it was very loud and the gtx460 was in my opinion a silent card. now, i only hear the fan of the CPU and the harddrive when it is accessed and that fan is a big one.
but if you like to play setons, get a decent new cpu.
with my (old) cpu i can not watch replays faster than +5 when it comes to minute 30 and upwards at big maps.
so you have to decide: awesome grafic: new card, no hang in huge games: CPU.

to make it short, get an i5 or i3 with a high frequency. if there is still money, get a 750 at least (maxwell, frozr i would prefer). if you have more money, get the 4770K.
but you better wait some months (until the end of the year and wait for boards that allow you to overclock the 4770K even better).
and wait for maxwell chipset for the 7 series..