What kind of specs should a PC have to run CMx2 well?

[sburke]

yeah it's way off topic.  Sorry. I am just old and my attention span is short and wanders… oh look squirrel! 

[LongLeftFlank]

"What kind of specs should a PC have to run CMx2 well?" 

Yes, it is OT. Can we confine this to advice and anecdotes on the above, svp?

Non-techie question:  Which operating system is the least of a system hog (i.e. doesn't compete with CM)? I feel like the exponential increases in computing power over the last 20 years seem to get sucked up in the bloatware. Cheers! 

Edited September 3, 2018 by LongLeftFlank

[PIATpunk]

a clean install (including format of HD) of the latest win10 from a usb stick and then it's a case of following prompts on various tweak sites to remove all the built in crap you don't need.  Particularly removing not needed startup items and services.  Cortana can easily be fully removed these days and frees up about 60MB+ RAM all by itself - for example.  Have a look at winaero tweaker and for those who aren't afraid to operate in a command prompt, research install_wim_tweak (advanced users only).

[Thomm]

A hardware thread like this one should be stuck to the first page in my opinion.

I just did a few hours of research for buying a new PC. What I came up was this:

Dell XPS Tower
Intel Core i7-8700 CPU
16 GB, DDR4, 2.666 MHz
M.2 PCIe-x4 SSD, 256 GB
Hard Disk 2 TB (7.200 1/min)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB DDR5)

... for 1236 €    (10% reduced offer)

Actually, I admit that this is overkill for my needs. Personally, I would have ordered the smaller XPS tower:

Intel i5-8400 Processor
8 GB, DDR4, 2.666 MHz
SATA-HD, 3,5, 1 TB (7.200 1/min)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4 GB GDDR5)

... for 809,10 €  (10% reduced offer)

(... but then it turned out that the PC will be bought for me, anyway.)

I shall be more than happy to report how CM runs on it.

Best regards,
Thomm
 

Edited September 4, 2018 by Thomm

[Bulletpoint]

10 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I feel like the exponential increases in computing power over the last 20 years seem to get sucked up in the bloatware.

There's an element of that, but CPU computing power is not increasing exponentially any more, and hasn't for some time.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Bulletpoint

[Lethaface]

10 hours ago, Thomm said:

A hardware thread like this one should be stuck to the first page in my opinion.

I just did a few hours of research for buying a new PC. What I came up was this:

Dell XPS Tower
Intel Core i7-8700 CPU
16 GB, DDR4, 2.666 MHz
M.2 PCIe-x4 SSD, 256 GB
Hard Disk 2 TB (7.200 1/min)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB DDR5)

... for 1236 €    (10% reduced offer)

Actually, I admit that this is overkill for my needs. Personally, I would have ordered the smaller XPS tower:

Intel i5-8400 Processor
8 GB, DDR4, 2.666 MHz
SATA-HD, 3,5, 1 TB (7.200 1/min)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4 GB GDDR5)

... for 809,10 €  (10% reduced offer)

(... but then it turned out that the PC will be bought for me, anyway.)

I shall be more than happy to report how CM runs on it.

Best regards,
Thomm
 

Built a new pc last year (goal: discrete high end gaming system; no LED arrays or extra overclock capabilities, just high spec quality components).

i7 7700K
Nvidia 1080
MSI mobo 
16GB DDR4 (matched set of high spec ram)
M.2 PCIe-x4 SSD, 256 GB (Samsung evo)
3TB SATA
27" 1440p 165hz IPS (with Nvidia Gsync)

Now this wasn't a cheap build as some components were very expensive, but am very pleased with it. Only the monitor was around €800 already and the 1080 wasn't much less iirc. Gsync is a culprit (adds 200), but it's worth it as the days of VSYNC perf issues or tearing frames are over.

It does run CM very well. There is massive difference when compared to my previous system (first gen i7 build with updated GFX card). Especially on larger battles, I can play those smoothly now even in RT.

The problem with posting builds are that they change every few months. When building a pure CM system I would invest in a CPU. CM is happy with higher clock frequencies. GFX wise any decent recent GFX card will rock your boat. Also, the m.2 PCIe SSD's are REALLY fast. So while they aren't rock cheap, I would 100% advise one. 

 

@Thomm depending on what you want to use it for, but I guess gaming: for 50% more (or €427) I would definitely go for the higher spec system. Half of that difference can be explained already by the m.2 PCIe SSD. The i5 is a fine CPU but 2GB extra VRAM is a lot. I expect the i7 will outperform the i5 in CM by quite a margin.

Edit: I'm on windows 10 without tweaks. IIRC never installed cortana, there is an option during install AFAIK. The 'ads' don't really bother me, like they don't bother me when I see them elsewhere. I think it's a fine OS for a personal (gaming) computer. All the startup clutter doesn't really matter anymore with the SSD and plenty of RAM available. 

Edited September 4, 2018 by Lethaface

[Artkin]

Buy K versions of Intel CPUs if you play CM. The gains when overclocking are beyond substantial. It's friggin ridiculous.

[Thomm]

12 hours ago, Lethaface said:

 

@Thomm depending on what you want to use it for, but I guess gaming: for 50% more (or €427) I would definitely go for the higher spec system. Half of that difference can be explained already by the m.2 PCIe SSD. The i5 is a fine CPU but 2GB extra VRAM is a lot. I expect the i7 will outperform the i5 in CM by quite a margin.

Thank you for the encouragement! I do not even know what I will do with all that horsepower, since I am upgrading from an old laptop that effectively prevented me from playing games (the exception being small/medium CM battles), which was probably a good thing. Now that I think of it, I think what I am looking for the most is a quick start-up time. Ridiculous, I know, but the laptop required ten minutes to boot in the end, and I do not want to experience this again! Other than that, I will probably buy "Arma 3". Not to mention future CM games, of course.

Update: I now learned that I can get licenses for the numerical software I am using over the internet. This means that the system will, indeed, be used for serious work, and suddenly the extra power is justified.

Side note: At the moment we are stuck in the ordering process because the Dell website does not accept any of our credit cards. And the 10 % discount period ends today. It is like a carrot dangling on a stick: "Look what a nice system we have for you! But we won't let you order it, you fool! Muahhh!!!!"

Best regards,
Thomm

Edited September 5, 2018 by Thomm

[Hister]

42 minutes ago, Thomm said:

Thank you for the encouragement! I do not even know what I will do with all that horsepower, since I am upgrading from an old laptop that effectively prevented me from playing games (the exception being small/medium CM battles), which was probably a good thing. Now that I think of it, I think what I am looking for the most is a quick start-up time. Ridiculous, I know, but the laptop required ten minutes to boot in the end, and I do not want to experience this again! Other than that, I will probably buy "Arma 3". Not to mention future CM games, of course.

Update: I now learned that I can get licenses for the numerical software I am using over the internet. This means that the system will, indeed, be used for serious work, and suddenly the extra power is justified.

Side note: At the moment we are stuck in the ordering process because the Dell website does not accept any of our credit cards. And the 10 % discount period ends today. It is like a carrot dangling on a stick: "Look what a nice system we have for you! But we won't let you order it, you fool! Muahhh!!!!"

Best regards,
Thomm

 

I will pop a well seasoned champagne when we will have only one or two payment options that will be globally accepted without this "we do not accept this card" nonsense. I trully will.

[Thomm]

5 hours ago, Hister said:

I will pop a well seasoned champagne when we will have only one or two payment options that will be globally accepted without this "we do not accept this card" nonsense. I trully will.

After trying for two days, including direct email contact with Dell support, we were still not able to place an order there.

We then ordered the PC from a local retailer (Mediamarkt) at 1335 € (which still seems to be reasonable).

Here is a another reference system offered by the German magazine PC Games Hardware and Alternate:

        Intel Core i5-8400
        Geforce GTX 1060 (6 GB)
        Asus-Mainboard Prime B360-Plus
        250-GB-SSD (Crucial, MX500 series)
        1.000-GB-HDD (Seagate)
        16 GB DDR4-2666

... for € 1.249,-

Best regards
Thomm

 

 

 

[Lethaface]

4 hours ago, Thomm said:

After trying for two days, including direct email contact with Dell support, we were still not able to place an order there.

Strange that they don't offer any other options in such a case, they're losing out €. I have had some ordeals with DELL over the years (profesionally), although I must say that they have generally proved to be a reliable and adequate company; they certainly didn't have problems taking money lol.

Anyhow since you have found Mediamarkt accepting your €, the point is moot.

With regards to your very recognizable 'startup requirement' and the reference system offered by the German magazine: the Samsung EVO (you hopefully have ordered) is vastly superior to the Crucial MX500 series. The main reason for that is the interface: the Crucial MX500 utilizes a SATA interface whereas the Samsung EVO series utilize a M.2 / PCIe 3.0 interface. 

This means the Samsung EVO (i have the 960 500GB) offers 3.200MB/s read speed and 1.500MB/s write speed, while the MX500 offers 560MB/s read and 510MB/s write respectively. I see now that the Samsung EVO 960 'only' costs €80,-  for 250GB and €150,- for the 500GB version. 

In other words, my system starts up instantly. That is, it takes a few seconds for the 'BIOS screen procedure' to finish and than almost instantly I get the windows prompt. For this to work the OS needs to be installed on the SSD of course, although I have moved 'my documents' etc to my HD.

In any case, congratulations with the new system! I'm sure you'll enjoy it, it will play CM and ARMA3 fine.

[Lethaface]

5 hours ago, Thomm said:

After trying for two days, including direct email contact with Dell support, we were still not able to place an order there.

We then ordered the PC from a local retailer (Mediamarkt) at 1335 € (which still seems to be reasonable).

Here is a another reference system offered by the German magazine PC Games Hardware and Alternate:

        Intel Core i5-8400
        Geforce GTX 1060 (6 GB)
        Asus-Mainboard Prime B360-Plus
        250-GB-SSD (Crucial, MX500 series)
        1.000-GB-HDD (Seagate)
        16 GB DDR4-2666

... for € 1.249,-

Best regards
Thomm

Another thing that I noticed after my previous post: the '1.000 GB HDD' is a bit underwhelming, as there are 2TB (and 3 or 4TB) HDD's available for more or less the same price (from €20,- more). 

Since your (also) dutch I can advise the following website for (regularly updated) reference system builds: 

https://tweakers.net/reviews/6497/desktop-best-buy-guide-september-2018.html

PS I see they also advise on the Crucial MX500 (1TB), which strangely enough implement a SATA interface over a M.2 connector. So, they are vastly inferior with regards to read and write speed compared to the Samsungs 960 series that use a PCIe interface. I haven't actually tried comparing them in a setup, so I don't know if I would notice the difference with regards to speeds. I do believe in math though, 6x read speed and 3x write speed is substantial.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Lethaface

[Offshoot]

11 hours ago, Lethaface said:

I haven't actually tried comparing them in a setup, so I don't know if I would notice the difference with regards to speeds. I do believe in math though, 6x read speed and 3x write speed is substantial.

A lot of the maths that is presented is from synthetic benchmarks. Real-world tests are perhaps a better indicator, as in this video. A lot will also come down to the other hardware and software being used. In the linked vid the guy concludes that a NVMe drive would help in video editing, but I have seen others say this is not the case because where it would matter the CPU is the bottleneck.

For myself, I recently bought a MX500 because where I am I was able to get twice the capacity for the same price compared to the Evo 960.

 

 

[Thomm]

Thank you all for the information!

Best regards,
Thomm

Edited September 6, 2018 by Thomm

[Lethaface]

15 hours ago, Offshoot said:

A lot of the maths that is presented is from synthetic benchmarks. Real-world tests are perhaps a better indicator, as in this video. A lot will also come down to the other hardware and software being used. In the linked vid the guy concludes that a NVMe drive would help in video editing, but I have seen others say this is not the case because where it would matter the CPU is the bottleneck.

For myself, I recently bought a MX500 because where I am I was able to get twice the capacity for the same price compared to the Evo 960.

 

Thanks for the interesting video!

Based on his video I would draw a different conclusion though (different than that of the video author). A significant faster boot time or load time for games (which ofcourse depends on the rest of the hardware and the game), is worth it for me as a 'boot' disk and or disk where I put my stuff one that I want to load quickly. Price per GB might be double, but so are certain load times. 

Anyway obviously in a budget system one wouldn't go for a highend SSD like the 960. But when your building a highend machine and spend 1500 (or in my case more like 2500) on it in total, It's my opinion that a 50-100 euro difference is worth it. It might be double the price, but that price is still in proportion to the build.

Maybe if one goes for a SSD only setup that the NVMe's get very expensive. I need at least a few TBs of storage, which would become quite expensive if I build that on 960 evo's. 

Like everything, in the end it always comes down to requirements.

[Jock Tamson]

My new PC is a 8600k, running overclocked to 4.9 Ghz.  GTX 1080, 16GB RAM.

It replaces a 2500k  overclocked to 4.7 Ghz, GTX 1080, 16 GB RAM.

CM performance is a bit better, but it is not a night and day improvement.  It is not as big a leap in frame rates as you get from turning off shadows, for example.

 

[LongLeftFlank]

Thanks for the contributions all. After stripping away all the general gearhead talk , this seems to be the summary of CM specific specs advice to date, as far as this non-techie can tell:

- CM puts more stress on memory/CPU architecture
-  favour higher speed CPU cores vs more slower cores
- Buy K versions of Intel CPUs
- AMD backend cores are not full cores
- CM is happy with higher clock frequencies
- Nvidia (GTX) graphics cards are better than AMD, especially for laptops and  avoid Intel cards
- Consider an extra case fan in a desktop build
- Windows with bloatware removed leaves more resources for CM than a Mac OS (no doubt some Mac evangelist will argue this but please don't derail the thread!).

What else? 

I care *solely* about optimizing for CM performance here. I have other devices for general computing. Cheers! 

[A Canadian Cat]

SSD drives can help with load times. What you listed there covers the most important things though.

[Erwin]

+1 re SSD's.   I have an old machine which still runs everything pretty well on SSD's.  

[Jock Tamson]

Windows / bloatware is a non issue.  If you are using 64 Bit Windows - and you should be - then any 32 Bit application will be able to address a full 4GB of memory address space.  Provided, of course, that you have 8GB of RAM or more.

[GAZ NZ]

As a long time player of all games in the series

Just Upgraded to

Ryzen 5 2600x

Win 10 64 bit

Mem  G skill trident CL14 16 gig 3200mhz ddr4

GeForce gtx1080 8 gig

X470 Aorus ultra gaming motherboard

Samung Evo SSD ( faster transfer rate drive) 500 gigs

 

I had been using an 8 year old 

Amd Athlon I3  CPU

Older Memory ddr3 8 gigs

Geforce 1050

Older Mobo

Upgraded to SSD 2 years ago

 

Older System was crashing with cmbs

Got an SSD which improved loading and some performance

Had to run on lowest settings with my older pc specs

A medium map on lowest setting could take a minute to load or longer if lots of action going on in map

 

 

My new system I'm playing runs CMBS with all settings maxed out and loads in around 15-20 seconds on a medium sized map same size etc as one I mention above

Not sure what the crucial factor is to speed up the old engine 

My GPUs fan doesn't spin when running game

Stays idle

Hardly using the GPUs specs / no heat

Combined with my fans cooling system

GPU temp stays very low

Glad I upgraded

It does make a difference to cm

Plus I can super multitask with ryzen

I also play other main game titles

 

So if you thinking of upgrading you get  better performance 

But don't expect too much with the older graphics engine it was based on

 

I'm still testing full specs with bigger battle vs lag

Haven't seen any so far

Just got my new PC a week ago 

Cheers

Gaz

[Artkin]

Bloatware always adds up. HDD's cant keep up. And SSD performance wasnt stellar when I tried 2nd or 3rd gen ssds. I'm sure theyre faster now. 

 

[Erwin]

Recommend 1TB or 2TB SSD, with maybe a 2TB conventional HD for BU.  Have found that the SSD can keep an older computer running current software just fine - so one saves on at least one generation of high end computer one doesn't have to buy.

[McMortison]

A bit late to the party, but have you considered a cloud gaming solution like e.g. Paperspace & Parsec or Shadow.tech? 

I went for the Shadow.tech option (as I am from Europe). As long as you have a good internet connection u can run the VM on a old Mac/Win PC/ Linux and even Android.

Runs really well.

[Hister]

On 9/3/2018 at 4:51 PM, Hister said:

Hi Long Left Flank. 

I am getting my new rig next week and will report back how it handles it. i7 8700k, MSI 1070 Ti Gaming, Asrock Extreme 4 motherboard, 8gb of 3.000 MHz RAM, Samsung evo SSD. If you can wait until then with your purchase...

So I needed more then one week, lol.

I tried CMBS and CMRT on stock and OCed CPU. I can say results dissappointed me but didn't surprise me that much. I still can't have decent FPS non OCed or CPU OCed to 4,7 MHz. I can only achieve 40+ overall FPS in the most demanding scenarios if I set the 3D model quality to fast and set shadows and shaders to off. As soon as I set it to balanced frames drop too much. The biggest FPS killer for me is 3D model quality at balanced and above followed by the shadows (who flicker a lot and in general look very crappy anyway).   

Game is "bottlenecking" itself and no matter what kind of monster rig you bring into play there won't be great difference it seems. I can also dispute previous statement that OCed i7 8700k proves much better with the game - in my case I spot no difference.