EVE General Discussion

Dear Capsuleers,

I have decided that it is finally time to upgrade my PC.
Unfortunately performance/money value is very important to me. Having a computer that runs at least 2 EVE clients very smoothly is a must.

The first question I would have is what sort of configuration you have got and what is your EVE experience with it on single and dual clients.

I am also clueless what sort of CPU to buy. AMD or Intel. Since AMD is somewhat cheaper for the same CPU benchmark value, I am considering it; however to reach the same score the CPU needs to have 2-4 more cores than an Intel CPU (which are always more expensive).

Since I know that EVE uses stackless python, an interpreted language thus limited to a single core, the question arises: is it worth having fewer but higher performance cores (Intel) than many smaller performance ones (AMD).
Even though I guess EVE uses threads and process in the background (that can be parallelized and thus making many cores useful), I am no 100% sure.

When you run EVE, how many of your cores are being utilized by it of the total number of cores of your machine?

Also any advice what to pay attention to when building the machine is much appreciated. Memory, GPU, Mainboard, HDD etc..

my machine is a bit of a monster.

i7-2600k @ 3.4ghz
16GB DDR3 1666Mhz RAM
ATi Radeon 5850 (the "weak" link)

I can easily run EVE at around 135fps, and with very little way of issues no matter I throw at it ; So far it survived playing Shogun 2, 2 EVE Clients and Killing Floor all at the same time with barely a hint over 45% CPU use and 50% RAM.

the flip side is that my rig is expensive - it cost nearly £1000 ($1555.34 / 196,969.06ISK)...

In terms of cpu then they're all quite adequate. A quad-core Intel cpu from 4-5 years ago is fine for running 3 clients here.

If you intend running two clients then I'd suggest 4 cores. The Eve client isn't in any way multiprocessor-aware but extra cores means background Windows/Mac/Linux processes are less likely to have an impact.

As far as graphics goes then it has to be NVidia for the simple reason that Eve uses PhysX for in-station characters - if a NVidia card/chipset is present. If you fit AMD (ATI) then it will use the cpu.

Its a minor thing if you don't care about the station eyecandy (I don't) but NVidia cards tend to have less "issues" in Eve, and they seem to get fixed faster.

As to gfx model - no idea, someone else can advise.

Since you don't get too many (good) responses yet, I'll leave my experience here. I run a home-built system that has grown over the years. So some parts are new, some parts are very old.

I'll list from oldest to newest:
Asus M2N SLI-Deluxe motherboeard
AMD Phenom II quad-core with something like 2.7 Ghz or so
8 GB DDR3 ram / Edit: actually only 4GB!
Geforce GTX 560 TI with 1 GB ram

So while the motherboard is from the last decade, the graphic card is pretty new and was not too cheap.

The system runs multiple EVE clients fine. Because of the new graphic card it also runs triple A shooters with best details and HD resolution. If you don't play those, you can go with a smaller card. I strongly advise buying a GeForce card though. As it already has been said, CCP has deals with nVidia and those cards simply work better with EVE.

An AMD processor will do fine. I currently (at work) don't know how the processor load with EVE is, but I don't think the game uses the processor and RAM to the full potential.

My OS (Win 7) is installed on a SSD, but the games are on a HDD.

In conclusion, you need a good (but not awesome) processor, 4 to 8 GB ram and a good GeForce card. Preferably a great GeForce card.

Yes, that's also a good point. After my old graphics card died during summer, I got a bigger case with 6 big (but silent) fans. Unfortunately that is still not enough cooling in the summer. Currently I let my case open because of that.

Lets make this simple.

Want to save money, intel. Idc how much it costs... it is like buying a car that gets 10mpg vs 20 mpg. The amd is going to use a ton more power while doing less work.

Think new car power vs old 50s. Sure they sound good but in a race a new hondas gona beat that stock v8.

The amd chips suck... AMD came out and said they gave up fighting intel because intel won. Why buy the loser?

Next is get good parts...

You leave no budget, location, etc. So what do you want?

i5 3570k (no need for an i7 should last you a long time)
670 (no need for a top top end but this will also last you a long time)
16 gig ram (so cheap why not, nothing loading into the page file = zip zip + prefetching FTW)


Also you don't get "powerful" fans... wow... you get large, low RPM fans...
Also overheatin guy... WTB better GPU... Ya I run with out AC so far... 90F ambient temps with a 470 (needs a small power plant to run) NO heat issues 2x eves and not that I use WIS but no issue with WIS.

Called dust might want to clean the **** out.

o7 fen. . . . . it all depends on your budget. I was able to run 2x clients on a Core 2 Duo E8600. So you don't need a ton of processing power.

I've had great luck with an I5-2500K with 16GB of RAM and a GTX-275 graphics card.

You could probably be fine with a low end I5 and 4-8GB of RAM and a mid

Best thing you could do for multiple clients is to get a shedload of memory. You can get more than you will ever need in it's lifetime (About 16-20Gb) for the cost of a single 1-,15 TB HDD, and I'd say even12Gb of RAM will be more than enough. So, don't cut corners with RAM, as it is comparitively dirt cheap (~25e x 4GB).

I'd also suggest getting an Nvidia card. Say, a GTX 560 TI 448 core version if you can find any, would probably be great - should cost about 300 euros/dollars I believe, depending on manufacturer. Nvidia just because I keep hearing about ATI cards having a headache over physics simulation / Nvidia PhysX enabled games such as EVE. Granted this is all a couple of years ago, so could be they've improved since.

Yes, I have also noticed that the amount of memory and the speed of the memory increases performance greatly.. The less the process need to touch the virtual memory (HDD), the smoother it runs.
I will not stop at 8GB of memory for sure, lets see how much the motherboard supports :)

Even though there are tons of memory for cheap, is it worth to buy the cheaper version of them? I know that the MHz the memory is ticking on is one of the measurable properties that indicates the speed of the memory, what else to watch out for?

Just make sure you're running a 64bit operating system if you have more than 4GB of memory. A 32 bit OS will not recognize additional memory above 4GB (roughly).

Personally, I've found 8GB to be the sweet spot, unless your computer needs to do some heavy number crunching outside of gaming.

Any quad core chip made within the last 3 years or so will be more than enough to handle EVE. Although it does help to get a chip that is clocked over 3.2 GHZ, especially if you don't plan on overclocking the processor. I have machines running EVE on both AMD and Intel chips and it really doesn't make a difference in performance as long as the clock speed is reasonably high. AMD chips tend to be a better value, especially the 3 core Phenom II, which has a decent chance to be unlocked into a fully functional quad core processor (and overclocked to boot!).

A good entry level video card to run at 1900x1080 is the NVIDIA GTX 460 or ATI HD 7770. They won't allow you to turn everything up to max, but they will give you respectable frame rates with medium detail. Of course you can dump more money into this as needed, although the latest high end cards are overkill. For instance the experience on a single monitor with all settings maxed at 1200x1080 on a $300 GTX 570 will be virtually the same as a $600 GTX 680.