Which CPU/GPU to play X4 foundation in highest quality?

[bitsbytes]

Hi,

what type of CPU, graphic card and NVMe SSD is needed to be able to
- play X4 in highest graphic quality and getting 60 fps at minimum at Full-HD and 4k resolution
- to minimize the time to save and load the game, as my current save file is big, currently last up to 1min.

My current system is nearly 8y old: Win10 Pro, CPU Intel Xeon E5-1650v4, GPU: nVidia RTX 2070 Super, SSD: Samsung EVO
Issues:
- FPS low, between 17 and 25 fps
- ships do not move fluent anymore (I need a CPU with more horsepower and maybe higher single thread performance)
- load and save times are quite big around one minute

Wishes / Requirements:
- I need an Intel based system as I have some additional requirements for recording
- I would like to stay with nVidia cards, need zero fan mode up to 60°C for office work and the card may not become too loud

I want a high end system which may cost up to €4000 in total (and plan to use it another 8-10y), so costs over time are again tolerable.
But I do not want the absolute high-end which ends up in
- too costy
- too loud
- too much energy sucking components.

In terms of NVMe SSD I am planning to get something in the range of 1-2 TB, possibly Samsung SSD 990 PRO 2TB

Examples what I do not want:
- i9-13900KS is sucking up to 320W this is a no-go, I also want to be able to use passive cooling
i9-13900K with a TDP of 253W is at the edge what I would tolerate
- GPU should be as silent as possible and may not cost more than €1000, at maximum €1500
I would also use an older model like RTX3070 or RTX3080 if this would bring benefits in terms of price, noise, energy efficiency

Many thanks for your advice.

[CBJ]

- play X4 in highest graphic quality and getting 60 fps at minimum at Full-HD and 4k resolution

Before anyone answers your question more specifically, I just need to point out that X series games are not the sort of games where it is possible guarantee a minimum framerate regardless of in-game circumstances. No matter what hardware you have, there will always be situations where the framerate drops, because there are no artificial limits on how much can be going on in your game. Whether it's because you've landed yourself in the middle of a massive battle, or have created a huge trading empire with thousands of station modules, or simply because you've explored everywhere and have zoomed out on the map with all the options on so that you can see every ship and what it's doing all at once, you will find scenarios where the game simply cannot maintain a particular framerate. Obviously the hardware you choose will affect the starting-point for the game's performance, but we wouldn't want you to go out and spend a fortune and then be disappointed that it doesn't achieve what you were hoping for!

[magitsu]

Yours should be fine with slight cpu upgrade. Just keep MSAA at 2x at most. It's a performance hog. Clouds might also chug. Then in the map view filter allied moves off.

6.0 gives very significant improvement in save/load times. Previously I didn't feel a massive change even from hd->ssd (mainly how fast the very last loading assets popped in, like the station trader).

I have nvme and 5800x3d. But honestly the most significant change from even Ryzen 2600 was how much noisier my cooling got (Dark Rock Pro 3). It was perfectly playable before, mainly Second Impact Flashpoint chugged a bit but to no-one's surprise since it has clouds, asteroids and constant big battle. X4 performance didn't improve as much as Paradox grand strategies, Terra Invicta... i still have 1070Ti with the 5800x3d. I play 1440p.

I think it's probably too late to hop on previous AMD socket if starting from scratch. So 13 series or 7700+. Wait for the x3d reviews for this gen since you seem to be building for a very long term.

[LandogarX4]

CPU: 13600K with good cooling
RAM: DDR5 6400 CL34
GPU 4070 Ti

Going higher spec than that (13900K and 4090) will only bring negligible performance improvements but at a much higher price.

[chew-ie]

@LandogarX4

I'd say 4070 Ti is a bit overpowered and not needed for this game. My 3060 can handle X4 just fine in 4K UHD on my 43" display. I'm using these settings in 6.0 beta:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <!-- graphic options -->
  <fullscreen>false</fullscreen>
  <borderless>true</borderless>
  <antialiasing>msaa_2x</antialiasing>
  <upmode>fsr_balanced</upmode>
  <presentmode>fifo_relaxed</presentmode>
  <colorcorrection>0</colorcorrection>
  <gamma>1.00</gamma>
  <capturehq>false</capturehq>
  <gfxquality>0</gfxquality>
  <!-- high gfx preset -->
  <shaderquality>2</shaderquality>
  <shadows>3</shadows>
  <softshadows>true</softshadows>
  <ssao>3</ssao>
  <glow>1</glow>
  <lodfactor>1.00</lodfactor>
  <effectdistance>0.90</effectdistance>
  <distortion>true</distortion>
  <disableradar>false</disableradar>
  <radarquality>0</radarquality>
  <ssr>false</ssr>
  <ssrquality>low</ssrquality>
  <texturequality>high</texturequality>
  <chromaticaberration>true</chromaticaberration>
  <volumetric>1</volumetric>

  <!-- snip -->
  
  <res_width>3780</res_width>
  <res_height>2160</res_height>
    
  <!-- snip -->
 
</root>  

[Falcrack]

I have an i5-12600K and 3060Ti. I have graphics set at maximum (SSAA 4X), but with SSAO off because I honestly can't tell the difference and it eats up a lot of fps for no apparent visual gain. I get around 40-50 fps most times (which is quite smooth for me), sometimes quite a bit more, sometimes a little less. I am using 1920x1080 resolution.

[Wargear]

I'd have to agree with other posters here and suggest a modest upgrade of CPU and GPU. I run a 5950x and a 3090 in 4k at 120hz and in 6.0 the frame rate is much better than 5.0 even if I swap out to my 3080 hotspare the FPS doesn't change much. Remember, for the most part X4 is CPU bound and so it sounds like you should consider an X670 based MB and 7xxx3d chip and keep the GPU to keep costs modest unless you have other games to play which would benefit from an all out upgrade.

[|K.O.S.H.]

ATI Rage 128!

No, seriously, your CPU is the bottleneck .
I got a 1070, but better CPU, I have at least 20 fps everywhere in space and on stations und usually 30 to 60.
But I wisely chose a CPU with good single thread performance...

[Falcrack]

ATI Rage 128!

No, seriously, your CPU is the bottleneck .
I got a 1070, but better CPU, I have at least 20 fps everywhere in space and on stations und usually 30 to 60.
But I wisely chose a CPU with good single thread performance...

This advice regarding single threaded performance may be dated with 6.0. The new jolt physics engine more efficiently uses multiple cores.

[CBJ]

Yes and no. There is more benefit to having more cores than there was before, but single-thread performance is still going to be the limiting factor in most cases.

[bitsbytes]

Ok many thanks for your contributions so far, well, I will need to think about it.
I was just busy with a "dirty Excel job", looking for components, not yet finalized.

I think I will go for the i9-13900K. I read with ASUS boards you need to set the power target in the BIOS otherwise it igores the target of Intel and sucks 320W as well.
Somebody told that you can either use the default of 240W or even set it to 125W and claimed that it doesn't rob too much gaming performance.
At least lower values up to 160W (what the TDP of my Xeon is) would not increase cost.
And then I also do not need a water pump solution, maybe I will choose the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4.

Then I also will try your suggestions for different, more selective Graphic settings.
X4, as you assumed, is not the only game that I play (I also liked CP2070).
But I think I will first try 1st to keep the RTX 2070 Super and check the new graphic settings in combination with the more powerful CPU.
If I would buy a new graphic card, then it would either be RTX 2070 or maybe RTX 2070 Ti.
I like the MSI offerings / silent blowers, maybe I get the MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Gaming X Trio 8G, where I am undecided whether I take the normal or the TI version.

Regarding NVMe SSD, I think I will go for a 2 TB Samsung 990 Pro. I hope that CPU and fast NVMe will be beneficial for this game.
For RAM I think DDR5 6400 is fast enough, more money I do not want to spend.

[jlehtone]

My current system is nearly 8y old: Win10 Pro, CPU Intel Xeon E5-1650v4

Intel says: Launch Date Q2'16. That is technically under 7y, but "nearly 8y" remains true.

My CPU (i7-6700K) is about same age and I do consider the AMD 7xxx3D options.
Not that I would have urgent need. I don't (want to) know the FPS metric in the game. Seems fine still.

[bitsbytes]

I purchased the base System at 2014 with an E5-1650v3.

Approx 2y ago I upgraded the CPU to an E5-1650v4 (bought it used from eBay to a good price).
Little bit more performance and runs 10°C cooler. Currently at energy profile "balanced" the core temperatures are between 29-31 °C.

I only upgraded as the initial plan was to use this PC until service end of Win10, that would have been 2y more, 11y!
But now my plans changed and I am really thinking about upgrading faster.

Currently I am struggeling with Cases and PSU. Not so easy.

[adeine]

I think I will go for the i9-13900K. I read with ASUS boards you need to set the power target in the BIOS otherwise it igores the target of Intel and sucks 320W as well.
Somebody told that you can either use the default of 240W or even set it to 125W and claimed that it doesn't rob too much gaming performance.
At least lower values up to 160W (what the TDP of my Xeon is) would not increase cost.
And then I also do not need a water pump solution, maybe I will choose the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4.

I wouldn't be so sure. Most games aren't CPU bound to the extent that X4 is, so power limiting the CPU to any noticeable extent will likely have an impact on X4's performance.

For X4 what you want is the best per-core performance you can get.

[bitsbytes]

Good point, many thanks.

Well, the new PC will be quite expensive and I am not in a rush.

I think I should better wait, until Intel CPUs become more energy efficient, instead of having to throttle them too much ( kind of "wasted money").

As there are some other inponderabilities I will maybe wait for later CPU generations / optimizations.

Maybe Raptor Lake Refresh in Q3/2023 or Lunar Lake with new LGA1851, where Intel claims "Ultra Low Power Performance".

Then I will continue to make best use out of the current HW as long as Win10 is officially supported.

BTW, I made good experiences by changing the Graphic card settings as suggested, now I am getting around 30-35 fps in space, which is already a lot better than before and looks still fine.

Started with graphic default options "high" (not very high anymore) and fine tunded two parameters:
- using now SSAAx2 instead of SSAAx4 (super-sampled anti-aliasing)
- turned off SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion)

I think this way I can live with it good a little longer, thanks for the good recommendations.

[Imperial Good]

Modern processor's TDP is the maximum power they will use, usually when under heavy operation. With AMD max power is some multiple of TDP. In reality most applications will use nowhere near that much power and you can either power limit them or let them thermal throttle to a level you find acceptable.

For that reason something like the i913900k (non-KS) with appropriate overclocking supporting motherboard would likely be what you are after. You can tune the power limits to what you find appropriate and it will still offer a lot of performance, up to 24 cores worth. If you want a little bit more efficiency you can try lowering the performance core boost and core voltage which is where most of the power ends up being wasted. For high thread count workloads it has 16 efficiency cores so even at reduced power limits it should be no slouch.

It may be worth looking into AMD if they are at all capable of your workflow. Something like the up-coming Ryzen 9 7950X3D would likely suit your efficiency and performance needs perfectly, and even supports AVX512 (unlike current generation Intel consumer CPUs). AMD CPUs like the 7950X do generally have worse idle power consumption than Intel though but if set to Eco mode power limits their efficiency is extremely good in demanding all core workloads, beating the stock i9 13900k massively. In theory the 7950X3D will be even more efficient and performant.

For GPUs, the RTX 4000 series is currently the most energy efficient from Nvidia. Something like the RTX 4070-ti might be suitable for what you are after. If you want more than 12 GB VRAM you would need to either use the more expensive RTX 4080 or less energy efficient RTX 3090 that might be going cheaper now. I think all Nvidia GPUs support passive cooling under low workloads and you can always reduce the power limit a little if your thermals are struggling or you want more efficiency under load.

I recommend at least 32 GB of DDR5 memory (2x16 GB DIMMs). If your professional workflow requires more you may want to consider 64 GB or however much you need.

Such a system should easily sustain 60 FPS or more in most situations in X4. However, as always, due to the sandbox nature of X4 it is possible for the player to create complex situations that could dip below that.

In terms of NVMe SSD I am planning to get something in the range of 1-2 TB, possibly Samsung SSD 990 PRO 2TB

In theory those are fantastic NVMe drives, however there have been reports of some people having difficulty playing X4 with modern Samsung NVMe drives. Currently the cause is not known.

[Maebius]

I think you should wait on the new AMD X3D reviews before deciding. They're less than a month away.

Even then, benchmarking results on 7900/7950 X3D might be misleading (for starters) due to their design.
Much like there were problem initially with Intel's performance+efficiency cores.

I strongly believe/hope that the 7800 X3D will have good results, but motherboard and DDR5 prices are a bit steep for my taste.

But, passive cooling? The cost of having passive cooling is usually much more than getting quality quiet-as-can-be fans.
I wouldn't go that way.

[Scoob]

Graphically, I'm finding my current 3070 to be pretty good for 1440p gaming in general, including X4. However, I can see that my 3900X isn't as well-utilised in X4 as in other titles, so its single-threaded performance can be excessively taxed in X4 in some situations. v6.0 does seem to generally better utilise the CPU - I suspect the new Jolt physics is key here - but I still get low fps situations during larger battles for example. These low fps situations seem to be split into two categories. The first is where it can clearly be observed that one of X4's threads is dominating a given Core, seeing it running at or near the max Ghz for this CPU, while other threads are somewhat less utilised. The second is where ALL resource usage plummets along with fps, with CPU and GPU utilisation lower with less work being done. I think 6.0 is helping lessen these situations somewhat, but that's more from casual observation than proper testing.

As it's much reduced in price now, I was considering a 5800X3D might be a viable "drop in" upgrade for my system, with nothing else needing to be changed. However, that'd leave me with a 3900X, around which OCD would compel me to build a new system...that's just how it works lol. That 3900X would make for a great all-round "workhorse" PC for other (generally non-gaming) tasks.

Considering I'd likely end up building a new PC from the spares (well, one spare part lol) anyway, I thought it's perhaps better to wait for the 7000X3D's and build something around one of those. A much bigger buy-in cost of course but, ultimately a better system. I'd be water cooling it, so would need a new CPU block at the very least.

At the end of the day though, it's ONLY X4 that's asking for more CPU power, when considering the various games I play. Many others seem to take better advantage of multiple Cores, so I don't see one super-busy thread being the limiting factor.

If the X3D CPU's were out now and I was spec'ing up a new system, I'd likely go with the following:

7900X3D - best base clock of the range, good boost and that extra 3D Cache is shared over six, rather than eight threads...there might be an advantage there. Will need a new water block.
32GB DDR5 - ideally 6,000MT stuff, as I understand that's the sweet spot for Infinity Fabric / RAM speed ratio for 1:1. This stuff is pricy though.
M.2 NVMe - With PCIe 5.0, one fast drive should be great, with the option for a second down the line. I currently run two PCIe 3.0 NVMe Drives in RAID0, which gives me PCIe 4.0 speeds while retaining low latency. More GB for the money back in 2019 when I did the build. 4.0 M.2 drives were EXPENSIVE back then.
Stick with the 3070 for the time being. It's still not gone below the price I paid for it and has proven a solid 1440p gaming card thus far. It's got a water block already.
PSU is covered, I'll reuse my existing 860i as I have an 850w spare to pop into the 3900X build.

The thing is, outside of X4, I'm happy with my existing system's performance. Even in heavily modified X4 (5.10) it's generally fine - outside of the aforementioned larger battles - it's just that I can't get involved in those larger fights outside of an "RTS" role where I'm commanding the action, fps is too low (dips into the 30's). I'd LOVE to be able to see such fights play out at a solid 60fps, but I'd likely need at least DOUBLE the CPU grunt - bearing in mind that single core bias X4 has - to ever see that. I doubt a 7900X3D will double the single core ability of my older 3900X...then there's the whole low resource utilisation issue that occurs from time to time.

So, yeah, for X4 - the ONLY title that's making me consider upgrading the PC currently - something with excellent single core performance is key for those situations where the game gets bogged down by the demands of one thread. I think the 7000X3D's have great potential here. GPU-Wise, well, the 3070 has been great and certainly not the limiting factor (at 1440p 60hz) in any scene I've noticed. RAM, 32GB should continue to be more than enough.

Anyway, I rambled a bit as I too have considered various options to make X4 run better. Keen to see how 6.0's performance is come release as, outside of a few blips (usually in heavy combat) it's been fairly decent thus far.

[bitsbytes]

Many thanks for further informations on this topic, esp. regarding X4 perf requirements, but also regarding issues with Samsung NVMe. I need to look at it.
Can you tell me, what type of problems do you mean?

As I wrote earlier, I need to take an Intel system for two reasons:
- all AMD boards come with header for TB, requires this separate Thunderbolt card with the silly cable between mainboard and TB card
- with Intel I will be more on the safe side when connecting certain USB components like e.g. USB3 recording interface
and possibly also Corning optical USB3/2 extension.
Last recently I had issues with USB3 port with FL1100 chipset, on an USB3 port from Intel C612 chipset from mainboard all worked again fine.

I would have liked to switch to AMD, but I think as long as I am doing also recording, I better stay with Intel.

[chew-ie]

Many thanks for further informations on this topic, esp. regarding X4 perf requirements, but also regarding issues with Samsung NVMe. I need to look at it.
Can you tell me, what type of problems do you mean?

This, about Samsung SSD 990 PRO (1TB or 2 TB). No full disclosure though, just 2 people reporting problems with the SSD being a similarity of both cases.