I was just wondering, with all the changes R3E is likely to go through, will the minimum system requirements change and if so, how soon are we likely to see those changes implemented? I'm already pretty close to the bottom rung of the ladder system spec wise, would be handy to know how soon I'm going to upset the missus by upgrading the expensive parts
R3E is not very taxing on the systems as opposed to other sims. I have all the packs and cars except some cars that are not even new and I don't have Sonoma but everything runs smooth. For example, I registered 60fps at Suzuka with 13 AI cars, it dipped to 46fps at the lowest. This is almost everything to the max at 1080p on my TV. If I were you I'd have a look at a CPU and GPU, ones that gets you the most bang for the buck and set price alerts on newegg. You can either go with an APU/GPU combo like an AMD A8/A10 Kaveri for around 170$ or you can get my CPU (FX-6300) for 124$ and get a casing with lots of cooling capacity (I got the coirsair carbide 330R) and a GeForce GTX 750Ti KR-OC. This is the best bang for the buck unless some more expensive parts go on sale by more than 18%!
Thanks for the reply, I have a current build list HERE which I'm aiming for over the next 6 months or so. The real question is though, if R3E is to receive updates to textures, dynamic lighting, shading etc, how much of that is going to be able to be turned off later down the line, sure everything runs smooth now, even my current system runs smoothly with some things above minimum, but what about a year down the line? Surely the minimum specification will have to change to accommodate?
@Ronin_GTDave I just noticed your located in the UK! Here in Canada I check newegg.ca as a reference and monitor shopbot.ca. I will probably upgrade my cooling solution first and OC that puppy again...was running 4.4Ghz flawlessly until my H60 cooler failed. If I were you I'd monitor SSD drives first, the prices vary a LOT from week to week! Your specs looks nice, just don't go cheap on the mobo! Too bad your current one is not compatible with the 9590 because it looks like a nice mobo!
@GroovyMotion I think there is a review out there somewhere that actually tested the 9590 on my mobo, yeah here it is, by all accounts it works but gets things very hot, it's not an issue though, unfortunately it's well out of my price range anyway lol. Good little motherboard anyway, plenty of room for upgrading, next up will be graphics card in a month or two. Thanks for the feedback so far guys.
@Ronin_GTDave yeah your mobo looks quite good and honestly, in many games our AMD's have a bottleneck so you don't really need the latest and greatest FX. What kind of cooling you want to run? I am tempted in the Corsair H110i GT, it looks mighty impressive!
@GroovyMotion I have a 300mm desk fan I plan to mount To be honest, I haven't thought that far just yet, I'll keep it stock once I've got everything together for a while and then start to think about upgrading the cooling and overclocking properly, I have 4 decent case fans, in tandom with the stock heat-sink fan at the moment which will do the job for now, new processor later down the line will mean a new water-cooled heatsink and fan combo though but I'll cross that bridge as I get to it. Always open to suggestions though. Edit: That Corsair H110i GT is a monster! If sector3 would like to pay me to play R3E i'd certainly buy one of those lol.
The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is probably the defacto gold standard for heat sink recommendations that are affordably priced, while having good performance. Liquid cooling is an option... if you are fine with dropping ~$100 or more on a unit. Although I generally feel that extra money could be better spend on a graphics card, better cpu, or an ssd. Liquid cooling is rather a luxury after you have solid parts. Performance wise, you wont realistically get way better better performance on a mid range part by water cooling. To me it doesnt make a lot of sense unless you have a high end part needing sufficient cooling if you overclock massively, and an air cooler doesnt cut it.
@nate that's the thing I'm finding at the moment, I've only recently found myself getting in to overclocking, but it's a great way to take a mid range part (such as the CPU) particularly AMD and make it competitive with the higher end products, take the review I linked to earlier in the thread, they found that an overclocked FX-8320E was a match for and in some cases beat the much more expensive and power hungry FX-9590. That's more than enough for most of todays needs and that Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO looks perfect for my CPU cooling needs in the future, good call.
@nate the 212 EVO is decent and water cooling is not necessarly the best solution...my H60 was actually hotter than many great non-water cooling. Although, the H110i GT is almost in a league of it's own and it's even not recommended for Haswell CPU's as it's too powerful for them to take advantage! @Ronin_GTDave You are right, the 8320 is a great performance value, as my 6300 was for a year. For myself, I don't need any parts upgrade because so far R3E has been extremely smooth and I am so addicted to it that I neglected all my other steam games! I will upgrade once I feel it's necessary and not a luxuty, especially with my salary!
Right there is the other thing, the only thing I will be using my PC for at the moment is R3E, to race with my mates, aside from that I'm teaching myself 3D Modelling on 3DS Max and Maya, those are the only things I need to be able to do. May revise my build and go for the 8320E CPU instead, save some money and just overclock it for any rendering I do, means I can probably double up on RAM that way too without breaking the bank (anymore) to do it.
3DS MAX and Maya takes me back 15 years ago! I used to be in 3D modelling/animation and my favorite was LightWave, started in version 3! Just be careful with OC and renderings, I have lost so many renders that way!
@GroovyMotion Nice! Never looked at lightwave before, looks pretty sophisticated though, may look into it later down the line. This was my first attempt at 3D modelling, a simple logo for a Championship we ran on GT5 at RoninGT. It took 12 hours to render with 4GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM and this CPU (Different mobo) and the same graphics card. Would one of the Admin or moderators mind moving this thread to the general discussion board please?
Yikes that's a lot of time, you should lower render settings or lower AA or size. This is what I loved in LightWave, the rendering was quite fast. Try lowering reflection/refraction and do some test renderings. Try using bump maps, you can find quite a lot of free textures online.
I can`t see any reason why the min specs would change. I think S3 will just optimize the graphics so that the specs remain constant despite any improvement.
Yeah for some reason they are really great at optimizing the code, yes PCars looks a bit better but to be honest I really like the graphics in R3E as they are. Yes they could be improved but the idea is to get the best simulation possible without taxing the system
Are you planning on making upgrades soon or a while from now when your current PC just isnt enough anymore? Setting out a plan is decent, but a year from now, different parts will be mainstream, along with much different prices than currently available. There are lots of good resources out there that talk about parts fairly in depth, but for purposes right now, its probably pointless to talk about if you dont want to upgrade this week That said, there really isnt much reason for anyone to be looking at an AMD 9590. That thing burns hotter than the sun and uses so much power to function. Will require a specialized mobo that can handle its huge power requirements, and a liquid cooler. Its just not feasible when the 8350 is the same chip. The 9590 is just factory overclocked and binned higher. For the purposes of gaming, the money saved by NOT getting a 9590 can be put into a fancier graphics card But you said you werent considering that cpu anyways lol
Yeah this is why I recommended the 8320...the 8350 while running a little hotter is a black series, this is something to think about but it's currently 45$ more expensive. That 45$ can be put towards decent cooling and it dissipates less heat.