Attila Computer & Hardware Recommendations

[craziii]

Same, I may play a ton of different games, but I upgraded for Rome 2. Everything else is secondary.

if that is the case I stand corrected If rome 2 is what matters most to you, than a nvidia gpu makes the most sense since this is the case, you need to attach some disclaimers on your recommendations, like this is for rome 2 or total war series only, not for general gaming.

[craziii]

290 is 240$ right now bro 290x, the best one was 300$ it has gone back up in price since. you can still get other versions of 290x for about 280$ it is an auto win for amd atm unless you have some super strong blinding bias or plays total war games only

[Copperbad]

Ty for weighing in on the card. I did some more reading and have decided that I'm ok with owning the hardware. Bottom line is that it was a good card before the floodgates broke, and still is after. Though some of the tinsel washed away in the deluge... It's a shame that by keeping it i'm, in effect, supporting NVIDIA for misleading their customers. But I do also supported CA by playing Rome 2 so...yea.

If one of you tech-savy fellows has the time, would you mind weighing in on the hardware in my rig and giving me a rough idea of what I can expect out of Attila? I'm contemplating upgrading to a new screen, but i'm not sure if it's worth it at this point.

[craziii]

Ty for weighing in on the card. I did some more reading and have decided that I'm ok with owning the hardware. Bottom line is that it was a good card before the floodgates broke, and still is after. Though some of the tinsel washed away in the deluge... It's a shame that by keeping it i'm, in effect, supporting NVIDIA for misleading their customers. But I do also supported CA by playing Rome 2 so...yea.

If one of you tech-savy fellows has the time, would you mind weighing in on the hardware in my rig and giving me a rough idea of what I can expect out of Attila? I'm contemplating upgrading to a new screen, but i'm not sure if it's worth it at this point.

base on ca's own stickied performance thread right here, you can do max quality. just not extreme, fully max out. even a 980 sli can't run extreme max out with acceptable fps. the weirdest part is how the game is only using 50% of the cpu n gpu. with only 50% load, why such low fps? there is no bottle neck. crap engine or coding, take your pick. or deliberate! conspiracy

[Yerevan]

Is it confirmed that Attila is more demanding than CPU and GPU wise ?

[craziii]

Is it confirmed that Attila is more demanding than CPU and GPU wise ?

google for benchmarks of the game.

[Musteline]

So a gtx550ti won't be any good i guess, what do you think is the cheapest gpu that will be able to play games with 60fps 720p until 2018?

[craziii]

I think if you don't care about graphics and set it to the lowest. all you need is a decent cpu to make the game work. 550ti would still work on the lowest preset I believe. especially when you just want to game in 720p.

[Musteline]

I think if you don't care about graphics and set it to the lowest. all you need is a decent cpu to make the game work. 550ti would still work on the lowest preset I believe. especially when you just want to game in 720p.

Here is the thing, in rome 2 i could play with custom graphics, in a mixture of high and medium, while taking off useless effects like shadows and , and fine fps, but when there were big battles, with lots of soldiers in a blob, the animations would stutter, while the fps would still be mostly fine, but it would look so ugly i couldn't play.
I need a new gpu for witcher 3 too, still have to find the money since brasilian prices are higher than in usa, i guess my i72600 would do fine for one more year or 2, so i need a gpu that can have fighting power until 2017 or 2018, do you think a gtx970 would survive until then?
EDIT: a gtx970 is 576 dollars while a r9 280x is around 384.

[Seifen]

Due to PS4 and Xbox One's slow start, we are not sure yet how these consoles will influence game development, it is too early to tell which GPU will last you a long while.
In general, I think it is a bad time to buy a 'futureproof' GPU.

However if you are thinking of buying a relatively cheap "bang for the buck" GPU that will play current games at high settings and good framerate, I would recommend a r9 280x* (around 180-200 euro where I live) or
if you must absolutely get a Nvidia card a 960* (prices start at around 220 where I live).

(I'll be using these benchmarks as reference: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...60,4038-4.html)
*The r9 280x was from the get go a 770 competitor and you can see from these benchmarks that, since the Omega driver (AMD's performance enhancing driver), the 280x is consistently performing better than the 770 and 960 for the most recently released games.

*The 960 is known to have a relatively small memory bus and 2GB of VRAM. What this means is that the 960 will start performing worse than its competitors at higher resolutions. This should not affect you as much however if you are only going to play at 720p.

I would like to mention that it would be wise to ignore the recommendations in the first post as they are outdated.
Lastly you should know that preview benchmarks indicate that Attila will perform significantly worse than Rome 2. If these benchmarks hold true, we are looking at 300+ euro GPUs for Attila at maxed settings with playable framerates (playable: 30fps).

[craziii]

I am 100% certain 970(3.5gb fast ram + 500mb slow ram) will not last till 2017 or 2018 for general gaming, but 980(costs about 550$ us dollars) will. So does a 290x though. 3 AAA games already released with 4gb vram requirements for high graphical settings. people would falsely tell you that if you game in 1080p that you don't need alot of vram, but the texture settings is what eats it up not just resolution. If you can, I highly recommend waiting till start of summer, end of Q2 2015 for the release of amd 3XX cards. even if you must get 980, it would push down the price to 300$(usd) or less.

witcher 3 min requirement is i5 2500k + 660 gtx 6gb ram. is your cpu a k version where you can oc it to 4.4 ghz or higher? cuz if you can oc it to 4.4 ghz, should be easy with sandy b cpus. it would last you till skylake cpu is out. for gpu, how is the price difference between 280x vs 290 in your country? in the usa 280x is 220 vs 240 for 290. 20$ for 30% performance difference. I would 1000% go for the 290.

about the lag in big battles. do you still have it in rome 2 emperor edition? patch 16? cuz blobbing is largely gone with formation attack and how units all stop dead in their tracks once they make contact with enemy units(which I hate very much) rome 2 already uses 4 cpu threads but still mainly uses 1 core, so single core ipc is very important. even if you have battles where you have 40 vs 40, a 4.4 ghz i5 sb cpu should handle it with no problems. I have no idea if unoced i7 2600 is the problem or your 550 ti.

wait 4 months to get the current top end cards at 40% discounts or splurge and buy the 390x in june! for 50% or more performance over 290x, about 40% over 980. I would wait. I have a 290 when I bought it during the holidays(at the time I had no idea 3xx were increasing performance by such a large amount) for cheap, but I would still 100% upgrade again in june if the performance is really 50% or more. 50% is my upgrade threshold.

[Musteline]

I am 100% certain 970(3.5gb fast ram + 500mb slow ram) will not last till 2017 or 2018 for general gaming, but 980(costs about 550$ us dollars) will. So does a 290x though. 3 AAA games already released with 4gb vram requirements for high graphical settings. people would falsely tell you that if you game in 1080p that you don't need alot of vram, but the texture settings is what eats it up not just resolution. If you can, I highly recommend waiting till start of summer, end of Q2 2015 for the release of amd 3XX cards. even if you must get 980, it would push down the price to 300$(usd) or less.

witcher 3 min requirement is i5 2500k + 660 gtx 6gb ram. is your cpu a k version where you can oc it to 4.4 ghz or higher? cuz if you can oc it to 4.4 ghz, should be easy with sandy b cpus. it would last you till skylake cpu is out. for gpu, how is the price difference between 280x vs 290 in your country? in the usa 280x is 220 vs 240 for 290. 20$ for 30% performance difference. I would 1000% go for the 290.

about the lag in big battles. do you still have it in rome 2 emperor edition? patch 16? cuz blobbing is largely gone with formation attack and how units all stop dead in their tracks once they make contact with enemy units(which I hate very much) rome 2 already uses 4 cpu threads but still mainly uses 1 core, so single core ipc is very important. even if you have battles where you have 40 vs 40, a 4.4 ghz i5 sb cpu should handle it with no problems. I have no idea if unoced i7 2600 is the problem or your 550 ti.

wait 4 months to get the current top end cards at 40% discounts or splurge and buy the 390x in june! for 50% or more performance over 290x, about 40% over 980. I would wait. I have a 290 when I bought it during the holidays(at the time I had no idea 3xx were increasing performance by such a large amount) for cheap, but I would still 100% upgrade again in june if the performance is really 50% or more. 50% is my upgrade threshold.

Well i dunno if have it in rome 2 emperor edition, last time i played was between patch 10 and 14 and i didn't need 40 vs 40 to lag,20 vs 20 was enough, my cpu isn't k version so i can't overclock it.
I guess i will wait to see the price for 390x,top of the line gpu is normally double or triple the price when its recently released though i better find a job to pay for it

[craziii]

if you can't afford the 390x, get the 980 when it releases, the 980 price would drop to around 300 usd.

[SPARTAN VI]

Sorry if this was mentioned earlier, but I just found some GTX 670 benchmark results for Attila. It's satisfactory at high settings (~30+ fps), struggles with max (aka ultra?) settings, and falls on its face (as expected) at extreme. For reference, the GTX 760 and R9 270X should be around the same area in performance.

[Biggus Splenus]

I haven't been here for a while, I hope everyone has been helping out the new comers

Just updated the Very Good tier list. GTX 960 is the best card in that price range for USA customers, but it's likely that everywhere else in the world that this card still costs too much (eg. like here in AUS), so I've made the R9 280 the recommended, but put a note in the top about the 960. I've also opted for the Crucial MX100 instead of a Sandisk; the value of this drive is ridiculous.

Next tier will upgrade to an i5 I'll get working on that now.

Also, Attila is about to release!

[SPARTAN VI]

I went ahead and built out the Entry tier for the OP:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($104.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-E33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($45.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston Savage 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($32.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 4GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($28.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($38.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $530.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

At this price point, you really need to compromise on a fancy case and full featured motherboard in exchange for maximizing gaming performance. The system above will outrun the systems up to the "good tier" on the OP, it just wont win any beauty contests. It wont max out Attila either, but it will get you playing at "quality" settings at the very least. Source: http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/2...ila/3#pagehead

[Biggus Splenus]

I went ahead and built out the Entry tier for the OP:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($104.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-E33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($45.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston Savage 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($32.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 4GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($28.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($38.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $530.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

At this price point, you really need to compromise on a fancy case and full featured motherboard in exchange for maximizing gaming performance. The system above will outrun the systems up to the "good tier" on the OP, it just wont win any beauty contests. It wont max out Attila either, but it will get you playing at "quality" settings at the very least. Source: http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/2...ila/3#pagehead

- After seeing alQ's tests on core and HT performance, I'm almost convinced that an i3 is minimum. I might take you up on this one
- Having 4GB of RAM in one stick is much cheaper, I'll copy that over too, good idea, along with a better priced HDD and lower tier MoBo. Money saved here can be poured into the CPU
- Unfortunately I'm a strong believer in getting a good case. You'll have it for a long time, it'll last multiple upgrades and probably multiple builds too; plus it's partly responsible for thermals, noise, dust filtering (therefore the life expectancy of most components), and keeping your components protected from every other nasty thing out there I know it doesn't contribute to performance, but honestly, the Corsair 200R is probably the cheapest case I can recommend.
- Final thing. That EVGA PSU is just 80+ certified. I think a PSU is incredibly important and I would never recommend something like that. Bronze is the lowest.

[SPARTAN VI]

- After seeing alQ's tests on core and HT performance, I'm almost convinced that an i3 is minimum. I might take you up on this one
- Having 4GB of RAM in one stick is much cheaper, I'll copy that over too, good idea, along with a better priced HDD and lower tier MoBo. Money saved here can be poured into the CPU
- Unfortunately I'm a strong believer in getting a good case. You'll have it for a long time, it'll last multiple upgrades and probably multiple builds too; plus it's partly responsible for thermals, noise, dust filtering (therefore the life expectancy of most components), and keeping your components protected from every other nasty thing out there I know it doesn't contribute to performance, but honestly, the Corsair 200R is probably the cheapest case I can recommend.
- Final thing. That EVGA PSU is just 80+ certified. I think a PSU is incredibly important and I would never recommend something like that. Bronze is the lowest.

IDK, I was actually on the fence about G3258 vs the i3 4150. I went with the i3 4150 because out of the box it's a stronger performer and most people don't plan to overclock. The G3258 has a good amount of OC headroom and performs decently in R2TW when OC'd. I don't know how a OC'd G3258 would compare to the i3 4150.

Yeah, a solid case can do wonders for airflow, sound, and simply keeping your sanity when building/upgrading. But with such a tight budget, I had to go purpose-built for PC gaming only, and convenience/airflow/aesthetics came second. That said, the Fractal Design Core1100 offers a good value at that price point; it lacks a lot of the convenience features (e.g. thumb screws, tool-less brackets, cable management, sound dampening, etc.), but it does have USB 3.0 ports, rounded edges (wont cut up your fingers when working under the hood) and no frills aesthetic.

Regarding 80+ certification, the only difference between bronze and base 80+ is 2-5% efficiency @ 115V, don't know about 230V. I don't know if it's worth the jump, but here's the same machine witha 600W 80+ bronze PSU. The build below is only cheaper because of mail-in rebates (which I honestly don't like to consider as part of the price).

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($104.75 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-E33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($45.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Kingston Savage 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($32.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270X 4GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($216.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($28.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: EVGA 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $513.58
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Im looking to upgrade my rig at the moment, rather than build a whole new one. I only have three gigs of RAM, so obviously I need to get a bit more (Looking at 6-8 just to be good.)

Right now my two main concerns are my CPU and my GPU.

My CPU is an Intel Core i7 960. It's always run very well for me, but it is quite old and Im worried it's not good enough anymore. I haven't had any noticeable problems yet, and I haven't seen any games that use more than 50% of it in Task Manager, so maybe it's fine?

My GPU is an nVidia GTX MSI 650 2GB. I pretty much hate it. From what I understand, it's an okay middle of the line graphics card, but I've had nothing but trouble with it. I've had to underclock it be about -150 MHz, otherwise I'll get black screens and kernel errors. I thinking about getting the 960 here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814487091

But I would prefer to get more opinions before dropping two hundred bucks on... Well, anything.

[alQamar]

Hey guys, it happens quite often that splenyi states investing in an i7 CPU is pretty useless for playing Rome 2, perhaps even Attila.

I am trying to figure out how true this still is and ran my Rome 2 hyperthreading test again - with stunning results.
Have a look: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14366419

Today I will focus on testing Attila's multicore and hyperthreading capabilities and report them, in comparison to Rome 2 in the Attila benchmark thread.

Im looking to upgrade my rig at the moment, rather than build a whole new one. I only have three gigs of RAM, so obviously I need to get a bit more (Looking at 6-8 just to be good.)

Right now my two main concerns are my CPU and my GPU.

My CPU is an Intel Core i7 960. It's always run very well for me, but it is quite old and Im worried it's not good enough anymore. I haven't had any noticeable problems yet, and I haven't seen any games that use more than 50% of it in Task Manager, so maybe it's fine?

My GPU is an nVidia GTX MSI 650 2GB. I pretty much hate it. From what I understand, it's an okay middle of the line graphics card, but I've had nothing but trouble with it. I've had to underclock it be about -150 MHz, otherwise I'll get black screens and kernel errors. I thinking about getting the 960 here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814487091

But I would prefer to get more opinions before dropping two hundred bucks on... Well, anything.

Hi Zebra, nice to meet you again.

I suggest you to keep the CPU as it is still a good one, especially with overclocking and a good aircooler. For the RAM I can recommend A-Data, Corsair, Kingston.

DDR 1600 MHz CL9 should be fitting as your CPU is not designed to support more than 1066 MHz interally anyway. Upgrading to 8 GB (2x4) makes sense though to enable the advantages of Dual-Channel.

However it is a 2 sided coin to invest into this RAM, you may use it for a new CPU as well like current i5 / i7 Devils Canyon, I think upgrading to a Devils Canyon in a year or two for a used one would be a good choice. So your investment on the RAM is not wasted in the future. If you plan to upgrade the CPU to a next gen it will only support DDR4, so your money is wasted then. So it is depending your future plans
http://www.computerbase.de/2011-01/t...formancerating

The CPU is not the best anymore as you can see here in the comparison, this is why I suggest to Upgrade for a Devils Canyon in about 2 years.

For the GPU you should definitely wait for the GTX 960TI instead. The approximately price is about 250 € but it is only a bit slower than a "full" 970 and should have 4 GB VRAM bundled with a 256 bit memory bus, too.

Hope it helps you out.