About a year ago, I asked on these forums for help to add/upgrade my RAM, and got EXCELLENT advice and even a half dozen links to amazon/ebay/new-egg listings.
I'm hoping to repeat that success, but this time for a video card upgrade.
1) My goal is to run 150+ mods, including a high end shader, and maintain a 40+FPS.
2) I havent set a firm budget yet, but under $500 is an absolute. $300-400 is where I'll be most comfortable (if it meets my minecraft needs).
3) I am not a comp wiz, a network guy, or a coder of any kind. Please speak in simplified terms.
4) I **WILL BE** installing this new card myself, and will need one that comes with some instructions on how to do so.
---------I recently replaced my internal hard drive and installed a new OS, so I CAN follow instructions-----
As far as the system I'll be adding to... let some picture tell my story;
My usual FPS:
But, often (especially when loading chunks or viewing many entities):
Here are my sys specs:
The MOBO:
Sorry for the pics... i dont remember how to do spoilers.
I build massive structures in survival mode, and I want them to look as awesome as some of the other creations i see done in creative.
To understand what I'm aiming for click these links;
I would suggest getting a GTX 960 temporarily, and just wait until NVidia's Pascal or AMD's 3xx series to get a much better one.
If you want way more power, I would get a GTX 970. It is about twice the price of the GTX 960, but you get way, way more power.
I agree with this, although the 960 may not be able to play MC with something like SEUS and then 150+ mods.
On the other hand, that CPU would probably bottleneck a 970 and actually maybe even a 960 if the CPU isn't being overclocked. Not a bad bottleneck but still.
Your usual framerate with a HD 68XX card is 15fps? Something not right there, you should be getting a lot better performance than thay, "Generic PnP Monitor" points to a lack of proper drivers. Make sure you have up to date drivers installed before purchasing anything.
Also, why on earth are you dedicating 12GB of RAM to Minecraft? Completely unnecessary unless you're running say.. a 512x resource pack, which I doubt. 4GB is plenty.
Nah, the graphics card. Usually Windows displays monitors as Generic PlugnPlay if there are no drivers manually installed by the user. Windows 8.1 does include drivers for most modern graphics cards out of the box, but they're not supposed to be used on a permanent basis.
If you right click on the desktop, is there an AMD Catalyst option at the top? If yes, open it up and note the driver version on the about page (or whatever page it is, can't remember).
Your usual framerate with a HD 68XX card is 15fps? Something not right there, you should be getting a lot better performance than thay, "Generic PnP Monitor" points to a lack of proper drivers. Make sure you have up to date drivers installed before purchasing anything.
Also, why on earth are you dedicating 12GB of RAM to Minecraft? Completely unnecessary unless you're running say.. a 512x resource pack, which I doubt. 4GB is plenty.
I'm thinking more like 2 GB RAM. I was running one of the big modpacks, Infinity/Direwolf20 etc can't remember and my 1 GB dedicated was fine.
@OP Actually the 12 GB dedicated could one of the reasons it's running so slow.
EXACTLY the kind of advice I am looking for. You guys rock.
My thinking is; update vid card to 970, and update CPU soon. Does that make sense or am I missing something?
Now, tell me straight, Docs.... how bad is my CPU, and should I update it too/first?
PS... namezs, thanks for the heads up on that parts site... i think im gonna like it.
Oops, sorry about them being the same link. Ill fix that. Also, your CPU isnt the *best*, but if you would want to upgrade (your best choice is either wait until Intel's broadwell or skylake, or AMD's ZEN), you would have to upgrade your motherboard.
Honestly,if I were you, I would get a 960 and a new CPU and then upgrade the GPU when you need it
I'm not sure whether your graphics card is the main cause of the framerate drop. It could very well be that your graphics card is fine with rendering low-res Minecraft textures and shaders on low-poly models, but your CPU can't keep up with loading and simulating all the chunks, entities, and whatever else is in all those mods you installed. Minecraft has poor multi-core performance, so it's likely that the task of running Minecraft is dumped on only one or at most two of the cores in your quad-core processor. I think if you ran a quick test, we could get a better idea of whether or not your CPU is bottlenecking your performance. Open up Task Manager while you're running the game, and keep an eye on the CPU usage. In theory, if your CPU is the cause of the the bottleneck, then Task Manager will list Minecraft as using exactly 25% of the CPU (i.e., 1 out of 4 processor cores) almost constantly. If that's the case, then upgrading your graphics card won't do very much to help unless you also upgrade your CPU.
On an unrelated note, 16 GB of memory for Minecraft, even with 150 mods, is overkill. That said, I have nothing against being overkill, and having 10 extra gigabytes of memory isn't going to negatively impact anything.
Im smart enough to know that there is a LOT going on in a computer, but I never would have thought that having TOO MUCH RAM would slow things down... thats an easy enough fix... Ill also pull all my mods and run a test pure vanilla. wait one.
Im smart enough to know that there is a LOT going on in a computer, but I never would have thought that having TOO MUCH RAM would slow things down... thats an easy enough fix... Ill also pull all my mods and run a test pure vanilla. wait one.
More RAM in your system will never slow anything down. However I have heard that if you specifically allocate more than about 4gb to java that may hurt performance in minecraft because it'll try to use it all, but then also work harder to clear and rewrite much more excessive information that should never be in the RAM in the first place. Again I'm not 100% sure of this, but I do know you will not gain any performance by giving mc more than 3-4gb of ram, and even that is kinda overkill.
Except for extreme cases, ram is probably not ever going to be the bottleneck with minecraft. Same goes for just about every other game. Also you're getting plenty of performance there.
Here is 2G ram, no mods, and video settings backed way down.
CPU problem, aint it?
Sure looks like it, yep. You'll probably benefit more from a CPU upgrade than GPU for this specific task, though with Skylake coming out in August it *may* be a good idea to wait (if not for Skylake, for the dropping Haswell prices).
One last test, then. Run the fully modded version, but set all your video settings to minimum. If your framerate still drops to 0 whenever you move around into new chunks, then that's pretty definitive evidence that the video card isn't the cause of it.
About a year ago, I asked on these forums for help to add/upgrade my RAM, and got EXCELLENT advice and even a half dozen links to amazon/ebay/new-egg listings.
I'm hoping to repeat that success, but this time for a video card upgrade.
1) My goal is to run 150+ mods, including a high end shader, and maintain a 40+FPS.
2) I havent set a firm budget yet, but under $500 is an absolute. $300-400 is where I'll be most comfortable (if it meets my minecraft needs).
3) I am not a comp wiz, a network guy, or a coder of any kind. Please speak in simplified terms.
4) I **WILL BE** installing this new card myself, and will need one that comes with some instructions on how to do so.
---------I recently replaced my internal hard drive and installed a new OS, so I CAN follow instructions-----
As far as the system I'll be adding to... let some picture tell my story;
My usual FPS:
But, often (especially when loading chunks or viewing many entities):
Here are my sys specs:
The MOBO:
Sorry for the pics... i dont remember how to do spoilers.
I build massive structures in survival mode, and I want them to look as awesome as some of the other creations i see done in creative.
To understand what I'm aiming for click these links;
Neuschwanstein Castle
Regia Anglorum
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
-Swervish
I would suggest getting a GTX 960 temporarily, and just wait until NVidia's Pascal or AMD's 3xx series to get a much better one.
If you want way more power, I would get a GTX 970. It is about twice the price of the GTX 960, but you get way, way more power.
i5 4690 // GTX 970 // 8GB RAM // NZXT H440
I agree with this, although the 960 may not be able to play MC with something like SEUS and then 150+ mods.
On the other hand, that CPU would probably bottleneck a 970 and actually maybe even a 960 if the CPU isn't being overclocked. Not a bad bottleneck but still.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-Albert Einstein
Current setup: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PJzPD3
Oh, and by the way, if you wanted links for the 2 I suggested you, here...
960 (less powerful):
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#sort=d0&page=1&c=208
970 (more powerful):
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#sort=d0&page=1&c=208
i5 4690 // GTX 970 // 8GB RAM // NZXT H440
EXACTLY the kind of advice I am looking for. You guys rock.
My thinking is; update vid card to 970, and update CPU soon. Does that make sense or am I missing something?
Now, tell me straight, Docs.... how bad is my CPU, and should I update it too/first?
PS... namezs, thanks for the heads up on that parts site... i think im gonna like it.
Your usual framerate with a HD 68XX card is 15fps? Something not right there, you should be getting a lot better performance than thay, "Generic PnP Monitor" points to a lack of proper drivers. Make sure you have up to date drivers installed before purchasing anything.
Also, why on earth are you dedicating 12GB of RAM to Minecraft? Completely unnecessary unless you're running say.. a 512x resource pack, which I doubt. 4GB is plenty.
K95 RGB / Logitech G502 PS / Alienware AW3418DW / ViewSonic XG2703-GS / Sennheiser HD 598
um... am I understanding you right? Monitors have drivers?
<--ashamed
Nah, the graphics card. Usually Windows displays monitors as Generic PlugnPlay if there are no drivers manually installed by the user. Windows 8.1 does include drivers for most modern graphics cards out of the box, but they're not supposed to be used on a permanent basis.
If you right click on the desktop, is there an AMD Catalyst option at the top? If yes, open it up and note the driver version on the about page (or whatever page it is, can't remember).
K95 RGB / Logitech G502 PS / Alienware AW3418DW / ViewSonic XG2703-GS / Sennheiser HD 598
I'm thinking more like 2 GB RAM. I was running one of the big modpacks, Infinity/Direwolf20 etc can't remember and my 1 GB dedicated was fine.
@OP Actually the 12 GB dedicated could one of the reasons it's running so slow.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-Albert Einstein
Current setup: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PJzPD3
I've just now noticed that those screenshots are with 140ish mods running. What framerate do you get with vanilla Minecraft?
K95 RGB / Logitech G502 PS / Alienware AW3418DW / ViewSonic XG2703-GS / Sennheiser HD 598
Oops, sorry about them being the same link. Ill fix that. Also, your CPU isnt the *best*, but if you would want to upgrade (your best choice is either wait until Intel's broadwell or skylake, or AMD's ZEN), you would have to upgrade your motherboard.
Honestly,if I were you, I would get a 960 and a new CPU and then upgrade the GPU when you need it
i5 4690 // GTX 970 // 8GB RAM // NZXT H440
I'm not sure whether your graphics card is the main cause of the framerate drop. It could very well be that your graphics card is fine with rendering low-res Minecraft textures and shaders on low-poly models, but your CPU can't keep up with loading and simulating all the chunks, entities, and whatever else is in all those mods you installed. Minecraft has poor multi-core performance, so it's likely that the task of running Minecraft is dumped on only one or at most two of the cores in your quad-core processor. I think if you ran a quick test, we could get a better idea of whether or not your CPU is bottlenecking your performance. Open up Task Manager while you're running the game, and keep an eye on the CPU usage. In theory, if your CPU is the cause of the the bottleneck, then Task Manager will list Minecraft as using exactly 25% of the CPU (i.e., 1 out of 4 processor cores) almost constantly. If that's the case, then upgrading your graphics card won't do very much to help unless you also upgrade your CPU.
On an unrelated note, 16 GB of memory for Minecraft, even with 150 mods, is overkill. That said, I have nothing against being overkill, and having 10 extra gigabytes of memory isn't going to negatively impact anything.
The Mod List
with all mods running
Im smart enough to know that there is a LOT going on in a computer, but I never would have thought that having TOO MUCH RAM would slow things down... thats an easy enough fix... Ill also pull all my mods and run a test pure vanilla. wait one.
More RAM in your system will never slow anything down. However I have heard that if you specifically allocate more than about 4gb to java that may hurt performance in minecraft because it'll try to use it all, but then also work harder to clear and rewrite much more excessive information that should never be in the RAM in the first place. Again I'm not 100% sure of this, but I do know you will not gain any performance by giving mc more than 3-4gb of ram, and even that is kinda overkill.
i5 6600k 4.6ghz / MSI 280X / 8Gb 2666 DDR4 / Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 / TX550M / 500Gb 850 EVO / NZXT S340 / Corsair K65 / Corsair M60
Running zero mods
Well technically, forge is still in there.
Here is 2G ram, no mods, and video settings backed way down.
CPU problem, aint it?
Except for extreme cases, ram is probably not ever going to be the bottleneck with minecraft. Same goes for just about every other game. Also you're getting plenty of performance there.
i5 6600k 4.6ghz / MSI 280X / 8Gb 2666 DDR4 / Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 / TX550M / 500Gb 850 EVO / NZXT S340 / Corsair K65 / Corsair M60
Sure looks like it, yep. You'll probably benefit more from a CPU upgrade than GPU for this specific task, though with Skylake coming out in August it *may* be a good idea to wait (if not for Skylake, for the dropping Haswell prices).
K95 RGB / Logitech G502 PS / Alienware AW3418DW / ViewSonic XG2703-GS / Sennheiser HD 598
Someone asked for the AMD 'about/information' screen:
One last test, then. Run the fully modded version, but set all your video settings to minimum. If your framerate still drops to 0 whenever you move around into new chunks, then that's pretty definitive evidence that the video card isn't the cause of it.