Review With low-end config - (mainly below min spec 2GB VRAM graphics card)

[Miniding]

Hi all!!

I promised to make a review on how X4 run on my config that is a bit Under minimum specs…

For remind :

Intel Core i5-4670k 3.4GHz (4 cores)
16GB DDR3 1600 MHz
SAMSUNG EVO 840 128GB (system and X4 on it)
ASUS GeForce GTX 950 - 2 GB

Game setup :
Resolution : 1980x1050 (16/10 - 22") full screen
Antialiasing : FXAA Medium
Mode : Triple buffer for VSync
Graphic quality mode : High

I split the review in 2 parts, each on having it's own frame rate :

1- Menu and Space fly:
Seems to be optimised well as my config make 55-60 FPS most of the time
CPU used at 75% average
GPU full except memory controller that is 50% used

2- Landing & stations
There, my graphic card seem to show its limits
I am at 20 to 35 FPS regarding smokes when ships land or lot of ships in sight (drops Under 25 FPS are rare but I Don't want to lie, it's remarquable)
CPU used at 75-90% average
GPU Full and crowling a bit as FPS tells…

As you can see, X4 is running on that kind of config and almost well enough, IMO.
Rendering shots :
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... reenshots/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... A61BA0E6D/

I'm looking to buy a MSI GeForce GTX 1070Ti 8Gb but wait for the oportunity…

Hope this will help some that feared their config wouldn't run X4 and go for it!!
Only played half an hour and train to handle menus, navigation and else but enjoy it for now!!

[Celthon]

I know this was made months ago...but hoping for update/reply: as time has gone by were/are you still able to play the game with the "low-end config." -- I have a 2GB vram GTX 960 card and had read that the vram being under 3 GB would cause the game to be unplayable. In the OP you'd said you had only played about half an hour, so wondering if you ran into problems as time passed and game was patched?

Thank you for your time and assistance.

[Falcrack]

I had your same card (GTX 960 2 GB), paired with an i7-7700K and 16 GB RAM, when the game launched. I found out that indeed, with this card, there will be inevitable graphical glitches due to insufficient RAM. If you are careful with the settings and where you fly, you can keep these glitches to a minimum, maybe restarting every 30 minutes to 1 hour. But inevitably, there will be glitches, and when there are, they will not go away, until you restart the game.

I upgraded to a GTX 1060 6 GB card around Christmas, and all these problems with graphical glitches went away.

I admit though, I haven't tried recently with the GTX 960. I have that card installed on my wife's computer now, but as that is an i3, the CPU may be the limiting factor there.

[Imperial Good]

That config was hardly low end...

[SumUser]

According to the steam page:

MINIMUM:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 (64-bit), Windows 8 (64-bit), Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit)
Processor: Intel i5-4590 3.3GHz or AMD equivalent
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 780/970 or AMD equivalent (Vulkan support required)
Storage: 12 GB available space

So, his system is under spec, especially the video card (nvidia x50s are fairly light for modern HD gaming, even at 1080p, without dropping graphic settings, which then place even more load on the cpu... plus the v memory is low).

[Ragman]

If you are ok with longer loading times and sometimes after few hours quit and load the game again, you can play it with 2GB vram, 8GB Ram.
Latest patch made performance lot better, not map view tho, but ingame yes. I have played 100h+ for testing it. Huge asteroid fields and big battles can be little though but it depends your specs.

[valos]

Processor:
the Ryzen 5 1600 are very far from be used at this full capacity, and so I'm not thinking you problem come from her

Ram:
I have 16gb of ram and x4 can use pretty much every thing
he it's can be unusual, but 16 GB is not to much

graphic card:
My Rx 480 are use at this full capacity and 6gb of Vram are used of the 8Gb I have
I agreed GTX 950 - 2 GB it's your more impressive Bottleneck make your graphic setting as low as you can.

Latest patch made performance lot better, not map view tho, but ingame yes. I have played 100h+ for testing it. Huge asteroid fields and big battles can be little though but it depends your specs.

I agree, I don't have crash anymore since the 2.21

[Imperial Good]

I run the game on an I7 920 (no OC), 18 GB of DDR3 @ 1.333 MHz using a GTX 760 (4GB) with it installed on a 10 year old low RPM mechanical 1TB drive. I play at 1080p as well.

Yeh so their system is actually pretty high end. Only low end part of it is GPU, with the real issue being the 2GB memory on it. Their CPU and storage is massively faster than mine. X4 is mostly CPU bottlenecked as well so their performance is likely a lot better than mine on average despite a 25% weaker GPU with half the memory.

The topic should rather be a review playing with a low end 2GB video card...

[Mileron]

I originally played on an i7-940 (not OC) with a GTX 750ti 2GB.

I had to close the game every hour or so to get rid of various graphical aberrations ( missing faces, major map lines, missing map items, etc) but it worked relatively well outside of that.

Now that I'm running an i5 8600k (not OC) and an RX 460 4GB the game's a lot smoother and only really slows down a bit if I try to pre-plan too many commands with too many ships simultaneously.