What CPU would you pick for FA?

[Lionhardt]

So my gaming rig has been dead for over a year now (that's also why I have not been spamming the maps forum with WIP pictures, lol) and I am planning on building a new one. I looked only into Intel CPUs so far. What I found is that for instance the i5-8400 has with 2,4 Ghz a lower base clock than my old CPU (i5-2500K) with 3,3 Ghz... given that FA is so CPU intensive and only uses one core I am wary about this. What CPU would you recommend in the 200 - 400 dollar range if you had to pick one for FA?

[Yakmann]

Boost clock is more relevant than base clock in this case. In the 200 price range, the Ryzen 5 1600 is a good all around choice. Of course not the highest single core performance in this price range.
But what good will the best CPU do you if another player in your game plays on a potatoe? I wouldn't only buy a CPU for FAF, you should consider everything you want to do with your PC.

If you buy a modern CPU for 200 dollars/euros you shouldn't have a problem with FAF. AMD isn't shit anymore.

[Franck83]

Since FA is mainly on heavy 2 threads, choose a high IPC (instruction per clock processor) with strong single performance.

In that price range you can take the best.

Best -> i7 - 8700k
Cheaper -> i5 - 8600k
Cheaper -> i3 8350k

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/965-3/performances-jeux-3d.html

Then memory speed as a great impact on FA performance. DDR4 - 3200 mghz may be a good Performance / Price choice.

[JoonasTo]

Then memory speed as a great impact on FA performance. DDR4 - 3200 mghz may be a good Performance / Price choice.

From my experience memory speed really doesn't matter much. Going from 1200 to 1800 MHz only gains like 10 points in the performance index scale(with same timings as well, in reality your timings with 1200 are likely to be much tighter and difference in performance thus smaller) whereas overclocking the cpu with 200 MHz will easily net you the same amount so comparatively, it's pretty worthless to pay extra for faster RAM and money is much better invested in a better processor.

[biass]

gday lad

i have this thing: https://www.pccasegear.com/products/23493 from when i built my PC in 2014.
A discontinued item that apparently sold for $230.00 AUD
it's perfectly fine for FA, if you can find a new model better then this one for around the same price it's only going to serve you well.

[Franck83]

Then memory speed as a great impact on FA performance. DDR4 - 3200 mghz may be a good Performance / Price choice.

From my experience memory speed really doesn't matter much. Going from 1200 to 1800 MHz only gains like 10 points in the performance index scale(with same timings as well, in reality your timings with 1200 are likely to be much tighter and difference in performance thus smaller) whereas overclocking the cpu with 200 MHz will easily net you the same amount so comparatively, it's pretty worthless to pay extra for faster RAM and money is much better invested in a better processor.

In your test the game speed was not capped at +10 ? I do not have to time to check but ram speed seems to impact mod performance by a large marging.
http://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=14955

Ryzen seems more ram speed reactive because of the infinity fabric architecture.




In Ashes of singularity, ram speed impacts about 25% performance (see at 9:14 the following video)

[Morax]

At this point if you see building a new PC, even if it's mainly for Forged Alliance, you would be wasting money to get anything less than an i7.

Hyper threading not only helps a ton in FaF but it will allow you keep stability in frame rates. Current and future games make a huge use of that feature over # cores.

What's your budget?

Right now it really really sucks to build a PC due to ddr4 memory price spike coupled with the retarded digital currency craze driving video card prices out of control...

Fucking $900 for a GTX 1079 right now...

[Lionhardt]

Yea, I intend do use the GPU from my old rig until prices drop again. Can't reuse the old ram though, as that is partially toast and also... old and incompatible anyway. I dunno how much I want to spend. As much as I have to for something decent... I can also reuse my old power supply and of course the hard drives. I intend to buy a better case though. One that has decent dust filters. My old one does not have any. So far my favorite seems to be the Be Quiet be quiet dark base pro 900. That's around 200 depending on the variant. A decent Mobo... so far I have in mind the ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-E (220 Euro) and well, the best ram I found was G.Skill DIMM 16 GB DDR4-3200 with 3200 Mhz and CAS 14 for 230 Euro. Well yea and a processor that is future proof plus a Noctua DH-15 (80 euro) probably. So that's around 1100 for those parts. I think < 20% more if necessary is reasonable margin. GPU will be updated at a better point in time.

[TheKoopa]

At this point if you see building a new PC, even if it's mainly for Forged Alliance, you would be wasting money to get anything less than an i7.

You are absolutely wasting your money if you are getting a godamn overpriced i7 for GAMING

Unless you do video editing or rendering, an i5 is always the better alternative

[Lionhardt]

I wouldn't mind the i7's additional speed for cutting down on compilation times. Also I am an avid multi tasker, with several virtual desktops at all times ( at least on Linux), so... I guess the i7 would come in handy there. Not sure about how much better it is at these things than an i5 though. But rendering it is about 2 times as fast. No idea if rendering is comparable with multi tasking and compilation though. Probably not with the latter.