Upgrading to new PC. Looking for smoother gameplay.

Guys and gals,

I need some input from a few of you that are much smarter than me with this "how hardware interacts with PS2" issue I'm trying to get past. I currently have a 2-3 yr old ASUS G75 series laptop. It has an i7 (2.3Ghz), 8GB ram, and a GTX 660M w 2GB. I have to play in very low settings to feel like I'm getting consistent FPS.

I'm looking to go the desktop route, and I'd like some advice on what things to look at to get a much better experience from the game.

What CPU? What speed?

What GPU?

Will an SSD make much of a difference?

What specifications should I look at to reliably keep 60fps in high/ultra graphics?


Thanks for any and all input.

You need the biggest homp-chomping CPU you can find.

Seriously: mine does 3.9 Ghz, and I still struggle with big battles.

Moderate end GPU will work, but if you have a great CPU and money left over, get something a little higher end. You won't regret it.

But seriously, CPU>GPU. you can squeak by on a bargain board for your GPU. Small CPU? Dead in the water.

After several builds with different video cards to run this game for different people who pay me to build a system I can tell you what I have noticed about planetside 2 and performance.

The number 1 thing I found is memory bus bandwidth. For example some video cards have 128 megabit memory bus and provide the most aweful performance for this game. Find a video card with a 256 or greater memory bus and that will be your first check point for planetside performance. The other thing is cpu, AMD desktop cpu's are terrible in comparison to their intel counterparts. While the super high end AMD chips can get the job done.. Almost always a intel counterpart gives twice the performance.. Last but not least is ram. I recommend a minimum of 8 GB of ram for over all system speed and to round out the package.

To summarize what I have said in terms of hardware. The following is based on my real life test and from the sytems I have tested with planetside 2.

1. For Nvidia 760 GTX or better and for AMD a R9 280 or 280x or better.
2. Intel i5 or i7
3. 8 gb of ram.


I hope that helps you make the best decision.

I use an Intel i7 4770k O'Ced to 4.3Ghz (Fairly simple to overclock since it comes with a program to do so - No messing around the BIOS hopping you will not burn everything.)
2x Geforce 590 GTX (Although "old" both give a lot of power - you might wanna go with the 700 series though - which will depend on how much you wanna spend).
8GB RAM and a SSD Samsung 840 PRO = The result is a overall ~100 FPS while playing and it goes down to 40-50 when the hole continent population is on the same place.

Planetside 2 is CPU intensive, so grab a fast one (might wanna buy some extra cooling if you are planning on going overboard with the speed), and in my case at least the SSD helped a lot remove that occasional shuttering when there's a lot of stuff going around and you spin the camera fast - also changing maps takes 1 second or 2.

At any rate Planetside 2 is not the best optimized game on the marked so don't expect a miracle when it comes to new hardware. I play with shadows on Medium and Render at 75%.

Plan for overclocking - raw CPU power is the biggest boost you will give yourself. If I drop my CPU clock down to default (3.4) or worse something goes wrong and it clocks lower for power management (supposed to be off, but hey - it's Windows), my gameplay is directly dropped in framerates.

Get a Haswell based i5.

They overclock on air cooling out of the box to beyond 4Ghz easily.
I run an i7 but the hyperthreading just isn't needed so save money and get the i5.

The SSD will help with redployment and screen loading but won't really do anything at all for day to day framerate. That said I would still recommend one for any modern computer for other reasons.

GPU wise anything in the current and last generation will do the trick for 1080p resolutions. Stick with the lower end of the latest gen if you want 2560x1440 or higher.

I use an i5-3470 with stock speed of 3.2 GHz. 8GB DDR3 RAM at stock 1600 MHz and an AMD Radeon 2GB R9-270x running at stock speed of 975Mhz core and 1400MHz memory clock. I dont have an SSD, just an old-school 7200 rpm 500GB HDD. That said, I play with everything maxed out at 1920x1080 and apart from 2 accounts of huge 48+ biolab fights the framerate was great. I dont think you need a heavily overclocked CPU, and you definitely dont need an overclocked high end i7, thats just money out the window in my opinion.

Im running an i3 3ghz, 8 GB DDR3 1600 RAM, an old skool HD, and a Nvidi GTX 550 TI. This rig runs the game smooth in every situation accept very large battles. Even 48 v 48 are fine if there aren't an over abundance of vehicles and planes, and no one is using smoke markers. I do have to pick fights, but only the very large ones are unplayable. I run on medium with a shadows and flora on low. I can see infs fine.

For about 2 months of playing this game this rig was lagging bad. I eventually discovered another vent on my vid card in the back that was covered in dust. After cleaning this the game was smooth again. REMOVE DUST REGULARLY!

3.0 or greater, and does not mean 3.0+ after turbo boost.

All the intel fanboys on this site will tell you how great i5s and i7s are and they'll bust out their benchmark sites etc. What it comes down to is what you want to pay to play this game.

Sure intel runs great on this game but so does the system i just built which is an AMD 8350, asus mobo, gskill, samsung evo ssd and gtx 760 4gb. I get 60-70fps on medium settings and could run it even at ultra but i dont need to see every single little detail in the game i'd rather have good FPS.

Get this Intel Xeon E7 (http://ark.intel.com/products/75258/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-8890-v2-37_5M-Cache-2_80-GHz)
Dual Titan Z's in quad SLi
10 Plextor M6 Pro 512 GB's in RAID 10
Moar Dakka

Your best option is to convince Sony to hire competent developers.

One thing pretty much everyone above forgot to mention.....POWER SUPPLY!

If you get a decent CPU and/or a powerful GPU you NEED a competent PSU that'll power it all efficiently. If you try to run a system with too little power, it'll effect performance DRASTICALLY.

I run an AMD 8350 CPU, coupled with a Geforce 660ti, 32gigs of ram, and a 1k watt PSU on an Asus motherboard. And I run the game on max settings seamlessly. My one flaw, my HD. Not a SSD, so loading into the game and between continents and such takes a few extra seconds.

Are you building your own rig? Or do you want info on purchasing a pre-fab unit? If so, let me suggest Avatar gaming rigs on Newegg.com. They're cheaper than their competition and have great reviews ( I own one ). Just don't throw your money away on over priced companies like Alienware.

I'd get an i5 they tend to fare better overall, then a new or near new r9 280x deal or equivalent on ebay for 200-250~ $

http://m.bestbuy.com/m/e/product/de...6&pid=1219086172072&pcatId=pcmcat287600050002

The ASUS almost seems like it's everything you guys have listed for only $1030. Is this too good to be true or should I be looking at something higher? It lacks an SSD, and I'm not familiar with "over clocking" to 3.9ghz.

I've had to use the core patch on my current laptop to get decent FPS. It makes it so my other cores dont go dormant when not being fully utilized.

This^ DON'T GO AMD. Seriously, Don't.

Architecture is everything. The best deals for price versus power right now are Haswell i5 plus GTX 660 or GTX 760. Although I think Intel and Nvidia are months from launching new series on both with a decent power bump from the current generation, so it might be worth sticking out the summer with what you have.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...16991&cm_re=haswell_i5-_-19-116-991-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127745&cm_re=gtx_760-_-14-127-745-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3130693&cm_re=msi_1150-_-13-130-693-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3180&cm_re=corsair_8gb-_-20-233-180-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9048&cm_re=corsair_psu-_-17-139-048-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...018&cm_re=corsair_case-_-11-139-018-_-Product

Some quality products to look into.

i7

all the way.

Actually, i7's don't have that much over i5 for PS2.

Don't go AMD CPU though. Not if you're getting it for PS2.

i5 > 8 core AMD because it's not fully multi-cored as much as it maybe could be....

What do you think of the ASUS I linked from Best Buy?

If you buy a Titan Z for gaming you will be the laughing stock of the PC community.