System specs help thread

This thread is designed to help users that are unsure about their system specs of would like a bit of help when choosing an upgrade that is suitable for GameGuru, you can post here for help with choosing your card and someone that has knowledge in this area will be able to help.

This thread is always being updated so if you need information that isn't here ask and we will add it.

For the sake of this guide, prices are not included as they change too often as well as varying from region to region.

GPU - Graphics Processing Unit
GPUs come in many forms and are responsible for generating the images you see on the screen when playing a game, they have a lot of work to do processing lighting, loading textures and calculating shader effects. For this reason it is important to make sure your system has an up to date GPU.

You have two main options when thinking about what GPU you wish to use... nVidia or AMD. These are the card manufacturers and both are very similar to one another with very slight differences in pricing and technologies supported. As a personal preference I choose nVidia cards as in the many years I have been building machines they have always been the most reliable.

How do the team measure how good a card is?
The development team need a way to measure how good a users GPU is, for debugging purposes. For this reason you may hear them mention a PassMark score. Each GPU has a PassMark score that can be found from this list http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php. PassMark scores are not 100% accurate and are collected from an average of many machines running that GPU but are a very good estimate of how good a card will be. Use this when comparing your choice of cards if you are upgrading.

IMPORTANT: It is important that you make sure your GPU matches exactly the one in the list when you read the score, GPUs often have similar names so check you have the right one.

GameGuru currently recommends a PassMark score of 4500 or above, if you have a card that is lower than that on the above website then it is time for an upgrade you are falling behind! I would recommend this for other games as well, you will appreciate the difference.

PassMark scores normally do not change over time, so as your card gets older the score should remain the same, new cards will just get a higher score. However sometimes the algorithms that calculate the scores on the website are updated to take into account overclocking, so sometimes you will see your score change by a few hundred, this is nothing to worry about the newer score is normally more accurate.

nVidia Cards
There are many card ranges produced by nVidia, this can get very confusing and you can accidentally buy a card that is outdated.

Below are a list of suggested card series, with roughly the best at the top.

Suggested card series:
GeForce GTX TITAN X
GeForce GTX TITAN Z
GeForce GTX TITAN
GeForce GTX 1000 series
GeForce GTX 900 series
GeForce GTX 800 series (this series is mobile only)
GeForce GTX 700 series
GeForce GTX 600 series (old now but ok as min upgrade)

Each series normally goes up in increments of 10 so in the 700 series you have the following cards. 780, 770, 760, 750, 740, 730, 720, 710. The general rule of thumb is that the higher the number the better, until you get to the TITAN cards which are the best cards you can get and really are over kill for any current games.

Avoid cards with any other series names as they are outdated. Especially watch out for the old nVidia cards which do not have GTX in the name, for example a nVidia GT 640 or a nVidia 640 is a much older card than a nVidia GTX 650.

Series Variations
After a series number you may also see one of the following letter combinations.
"M" for example "GeForce GTX 780M", these cards are normally only used in laptops and are smaller more compact versions of the non "M" cards, I would never suggest getting one of these on desktop machines as they lose a lot of performance to fit into laptops.
"Ti" for example "GeForce GTX 660Ti", put short the Ti an updated version of that card which often consumes less power while providing better performance.

AMD Cards
AMD have been a bit more sensible with their product names over the years and as such finding a nice new card to buy is much easier.

Below are a list of suggested card series, with roughly the best at the top.

Suggested card series:
AMD Radeon R9
AMD Radeon R7
AMD Radeon R5
AMD Radeon HD 8000
AMD Radeon HD 7000
AMD Radeon HD 6000 (old now but ok as min upgrade)

Additional Cards - APU
There are also integrated GPUs or APUs as they may be referred to. These are integrated into your CPU either Intel or AMD, they are generally not designed for gaming and certainly not designed for games development if you have one then it is time for an upgrade, to one of the options detailed above.

You will find that using an integrated GPU will adversely affect your time with GameGuru and you are below the min specs.

GPU Memory
GPU Memory is a tricky topic with different speeds and memory types that can improve your gaming experience, however for this beginners guide we will stick to the amount of memory.

GPU memory is primarily used to store the textures and game assets while the game is running, so the more you have the larger your textures can be, meaning a more detailed game world.

GameGuru requires at least 1GB or GPU memory this is normally standard with all modern GPU. However some GPUs will have far more memory such as 2GB or 6GB GPUs, if you can get more memory in your price range go for it you will notice the benefit and your card will be able to handle higher resolution games much easier.

CPU- Central Processing Unit
CPUs are where all the logic of your game will be processed, things such as AI pathfinding, LUA scripting and various other calls. For this reason you will require a decent CPU that can handle a reasonable number of calculations so your game doesn't lag.

IMPORTANT: When this post was last updated GameGuru does not fully utilize multiple CPU cores, so if you have a Dual Core CPU GameGuru will only fully use one core, this may affect your performance. The team are improving multi-core support, so you may not need to upgrade your CPU if you are unsure it is best to ask and someone will be able to help.

It can be very hard to determine how good your CPU is, so if you have questions about your CPU ask here. However in general GameGuru requires a minimum of a Dual Core CPU running at 2.0Ghz. Many laptops will have Dual Core CPUs but they may run at 1.66Ghz or 1.8GHz these are going to perform badly and you will need an upgrade these are more likely the bottle neck on your system not a GPU.

To use GameGuru to its full potential you should have a Quad Core CPU running at 2.2Ghz or above.

There is no noticeable difference between Intel and AMD when it comes to CPUs, so don't worry which one you have.

SSD vs HDD
Most computers will have a HDD, aka hard drive, these are traditional spinning disks that you will store all your data on as you are all aware I am sure.

However in recent years SSDs have become available and are now very affordable they have no moving parts and work more like a USB flash disk. SSDs have less storage space but are a lot faster.

GameGuru does not require an SSD at all and in fact runs perfectly fine on a HDD, however you will notice that loading a test game or opening the editor will be much faster when using an SSD.

SSDs are numerous in number now and it would take ages to explain the details between them all however when looking at buying one focus on the read and write speed primarily this is the main gain with using an SSD. You will want to buy an SSD with a read and write above 500MB/s these are the ones that make the change worth while. Again if unsure feel free to ask.

As I said before very useful info.
If I've 2 cards in my laptop, how I tell to GG which card I want to use firts?
So please, ¿can you realize something about it?

3com

thanks for this.

You could try this
Find the SETUP.INI file in the root folder (typically C:\Program Files\ Steam \ SteamApps \ common \Game Guru\)
Then change adapterordinal=0 to adapterordinal=1

This should select your other card

Great sticky!

It may be worth noting that most mobile GTX GPUs below 780M are going to be garbage and for Nvidia the Tier Level is much more important than the generation in many cases. A 860M is going to be worse than a 780M, for example.

Nice, informative thread! I have a couple questions regarding the passmark, though. When this was all FSPC Reloaded, Lee was shooting for a much lower passmark than 2500, in fact, I'm certain it was less than 1000. I don't recall where I read that, and if I had a few days to browse through all the threads here, or Lee's blog, I could probably find it and quote it and link to it, but I simply don't have the time to offer proof. When did this change?

Also, I noticed the passmark for my laptop card at this time is substantially lower than it was when I first bought the laptop (2318 vs. 3598). Does passmark continually increase their benchmarks to keep pace with technology, meaning a decent passmark score today may suck tomorrow? I'm just a little miffed because I bought the laptop based on price vs. passmark/adequate capability regarding Reloaded/Guru.

I don't think they depreciate over time. I see you have a 870M... Maybe you accidentally read the score of the Radeon 8970M which scores at 3598?

The score is an average of all systems profiled with that so it could change a little over time but I would not expect to see that much of a shift.

Anything is possible, but I really don't think so! I was very thorough researching this laptop before I bought it, and I checked that passmark on more than one occasion! When I put the numbers in my signature, I copied and pasted the numbers into a text file, organized them then copied and pasted them into my sig. But, like I said, anything is possible. Sadly, I can't go back and relive it! (Been a couple years now)

Don't know if this will set your mind at ease more or less so but have you ran the test yourself? As you say, anything is possible and the site data may have been skewed since then.

Thank you for the link.
I run that test, and in the end it give me a score of 4380.4.

Harry

Lee at one point was suggesting 1000 as an absolute min, I will not recommend a card with a score of 1000 to any user here as it is simply not going to be good enough, you will get sub 60 FPS on pretty much every level. Most new game releases require cards with 2500 or above so that is what I am suggesting for use with GameGuru as well, if users here want GameGuru to look and run like other games then modern technology will be needed, cards with a score of 1000 are many years old now.



PassMark scores normally do not change over time, so as your card gets older the score should remain the same, new cards will just get a higher score. However sometimes the algorithms that calculate the scores on the website are updated to take into account overclocking, so sometimes you will see your score change by a few hundred, this is nothing to worry about the newer score is normally more accurate.

Thanks a lot synchromesh

3com

Thanks for that link, Errant Al, I hadn't run the test before. My laptop scores 2844.8, which is a bit higher than what they have. Puts my mind at ease somewhat. I am under the impression those numbers do vary over time, though, because they are compiled from user's test data. Perhaps one of these days I'll be bold enough to upgrade the card in this machine! I want more power!

For laptop owners (Jerry Tremble...):
Set Prefered Graphic Procesor in control panel to High Performance NVIDIA and run Passmark Performance 3D test yourself. There is problem with NVIDIA Optimus, which use Intel GPU in Passmark. This cause low scores in it.
For example Geforce GTX 860M scores only 1641 (under recomended), but when you follow those steps you will get around 3362 (above recomended).
Also run GameGuru with Prefered Graphic Procesor in control panel set to High Performance NVIDIA.

I did!


But thanks anyway!

Hi Guys

My laptop has always struggled with 3d I've never seen over 20fps with GG on an empty map and it usually runs between 3 to 14 fps otherwise. Passmark of 1178.

So it time for a new PC.
I just found this desktop (see link) I am after some recommendations if it ok.
Beside GG I use AutoCAD, and have just started using 3ds Max & Solidworks.
I am not that tech savvy on pc systems, I have been a Tradie all my life..
Any help or pointer to another systems would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

A online retailer in Australia
http://www.mwave.com.au/product/mwave-intel-overclocked-32-gaming-pc-ab60582?gclid=CI-GpOS5_8UCFZd5vQodMbsAnw

@perelect

That desktop is ok for the price, except the processor is a going to be slow, which will be a problem with GameGuru. I suggest looking for a desktop with either an Intel i5 or i7 at 2.6Ghz clock speed or above. As for AMD I would look for one of their FX range processors, keep in mind that AMD gets destroyed in benchmarks by the Intel processors, but that is the top of the range ones.

The RAM amount is ok at 8GB
The graphics card is more than adequate

@ The Next

Thankyou for your time to look at this for me,
It is much appreciated.

I will keep looking for something like you have described.

Cheers.

Could anyone explain why my six-year old win xp 3gb intel processor with nvidia geforce 610 card computer ran gameguru so smoothly but my recently purchased hp pavillion 500-c60, win 8.1 amd a6-5200apu, 2gb quadcore processor, 8gb ram and radeon hd 8400 runs gameguru at 12fps with nothing in the level but the player? and how to fix it? i'm sure its the video card but its integrated so i don't think i can beef up this machine so are there any tweaks to help the framerate? i'm enjoying learning gameguru (its the easiest and most fun of all the gamemakers i've tried for the price and barring a few things, perfectly adequate for a middle-aged hobbyist like myself). i think i covered all the spec info you'd need (?)
thanks.

that radeon hd 8400 only scores a 358 with passmark. thats why it runs low.

I overclocked my gtx 260 until I got a passmark score of 2760 on the 3d graphics portion of the test. I can get up to 70 to 80 fps on the Asylum map. Had to improvise a cooler on my card though. Keeps it below 50 C.

thanks for the reply, mk83. i might have guessed it was a low end graphics card integrated into an inexpensive home pc for the casual user.

Hi guys. My rig is Win7 64bit, 16GB DDR3 SSD drives. Phenom 2 x4 965, sabertooth 990fx mobo GTX 780 classified graphics card (this card has been known to outrun a Titan). I HAVE to play all games on vsync or it's toooooooo fast to be playable. So why does GG run at like 20 fps when placed on high settings and shaders and "undivided/halfed" textures? Is my old processor really that bad? It is definitely the bottleneck of the system. The FX chip performance specs don't look much better. I know Intel has better chips and I am not a fan of either breed. But what about all the peeps that run amd hardware. Do any of the builds even get tested on amd?
I was thinking of upgrading the processor anyway but the mobo only supports FX 8350 and under. None seem to be much better than what i have. They are different familys so clock speed does not apply. Based on performance alone especially in single threaded apps. I did see a report somewhere that the FX 6300 is faster in single thread? So maybe some of you game guru gurus could help us out ? I'm also hoping the core changes to GG will make all the difference.

edit: Forgot to say running @ 1920 x 1080 resolution:

R9 is not right with the game Guru

The R9 should work just fine with GameGuru

Yes, it should not do with me but unfortunately. I'd love to do something with the Game Guru

I suggest you create a bug report thread with as much detail as you can as to what the issue is. Other users are using the R9 just fine, so I doubt it is your graphics card.

I've already , always comes the same response to the virus scanners and Steam should make troubleshooting brings everything is nothing .

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213339
Look here , all have tried . nothing works , I try the program later time with my man when it comes then as it is located on the graphics card .

Nvidia on a system it worked.
have tried it from my husband on the PC.
You should make time for a Ubdate AMD.

@^^ TRUE D1S4ST3R ^^



There is nothing wrong with AMD cards, your issue is unrelated. We have many users using the software on AMD as well as your exact card, this thread is not for discussions about bugs. You are being helped by support members on your other thread please respond there so we can help you with your bug.

my Windows had more errors. That's why nothing worked. Un a few other problems with USB drivers and so on. Nevertheless, it works a bit better on Nvidia. But the issue is resolved. [MOD EDIT: Swearing is not tolerated warning] Windows anyway thanks for help

Just a point of interest:

Don't base any purchases on this, as GG is still in development and what works now may not work later.

My specs are embarrassingly low. Intel Quad @3.0 + AMD HD4800. 7200 HDD 6 gig of crappy ram.

GG currently works fine! 30-60 fps at default settings and fullscreen 1080p (Nervous about DirectX 11 implementations - I've only got support for 10).

-CRF

(I've got a MS Surface Pro 3 i7 with 8 gig ram and intel HD5000 integrated graphics, DX11 support. Any idea if I would see a performance boost or hit if I moved GG over to that system?)

my card is a geforce gt 630m, recents games are very fluid on my laptop, but Game Guru games are really crap, lags to death so please don't tell to people to upgrade their hardware, thats not a real good solution...

in my little laptop, skirym, crysis 3 etc are FLUID, a compiled game with GG 1.1, with only 4 buildings and 10 zombies, LAG TO DEATH.......... NO LAGS AT ALL in crysis 3 and other games, so yes i really believe your GG is really badly optimised.

Even if you changed the code to c++ STILL need REAL improvements, in therm of SPEED.... because if my little "geforce gt 630m" was so crap with your "expertise reviews".... WHY recents games don't lag????

@imothep85

If your game is lagging really bad I suggest you create a new thread and someone will help you debug why you are getting such bad performance.

As you have a 630M I guess you may be using a device with integrated graphics also, GameGuru is known to have issues where it will use the integrated graphics instead of your dedicated card, try changing the card GameGuru uses to see if that fixes your issues.

Like I said someone will be able to help you with this in detail if you make a thread detailing your full specs and examples of levels you are getting bad FPS in.

ive got an intel core 2 duo 3.6 12gb ram and a GeForce gt 620 1gb I suffer sometimes with like 4 fps when testing but ive managed to make a game sometimes its not the speed of a machine but how determined you are to make it do something

Belidos also wrote some great advice:

GameGuru specifies an Nvidia 400 series or higher, however, that doesn't take into account that with Nvidia cards higher does not always mean better. I'll try to explain:

With Nvidia cards what you have really is two number not one, the first digit is the series number (in the case of your card, 7) the higher the number, the newer the card, this doesn't really relate very much to how it performs, however, except for when a series gets added features (ie when they stopped making shader model 4 cards and released shader model 5) the important number is the next two digits (in your case 10), this tells you how powerful your card and roughly what it is designed to do. It's not a hard and fast rule, but this is roughly how those numbers work out:

00-20 indicates a graphics card using shared system memory. These graphics cards, along with any graphics card made by Intel, have the lowest performance. You can only expect to be able to play older games with these cards.

30-40 indicates a lower powered graphics card. These will be able to play more recent games, but generally on lower settings.

50-70 indicates a midrange or performance graphics card. These will be able to play the latest games, but will not always be able to play them at high settings.

80-90 indicates a high-end graphics card. These are designed to play the latest games at high settings.

Now, because of the way this works, if you put a 480 side by side with a 710, the 480 will be considerably better even though the 710 is a lot newer, in this case the 710 has a pass mark of 672, whereas the 480 has a PassMark of 4357, making the 480 6 times more powerful than the 710.

So as you see, the minimum requirement of an Nvidia 400 series card, is a little misleading in that you can't just choose a higher number card and expect it to be better. What you need really is any card above the 400 series that is x50-x90.