System Requirements, Graphics

[SteveP]

This is not a bug. I'd like to find the correct forum for talking about system requirements especially graphics. I could not easily locate a thread or forum that discusses such issues; it tends to come up most in the PC bug reports but also in other forums where folks are asking about frame rates and display resolution and so forth where the high end resolution seem to require a dedicated graphics board (not on board Intel graphics which seem only adequate for the lowest resolutions?)

I think we should have a special forum to talk about graphics related problems or clarification of which forum should be most appropriate.

We are about to try out the ZOTAC GEFORCE GTX 650 Ti in a Gateway with Intel® Core i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz. RAM 10.0GB 64-bit OS x64 Windows 8.1

Here is what Google finds for TLD system requirements:

The Long Dark System Requirements Can my computer run The Long Dark which says in part Video Card: Intel 4xxx Series w/ 512MB VRAM or better

I think this may only be adequate for reduced graphics resolutions. I think the true system reqs need a dedicated graphics card to run in HD graphics with good frame rates (not choppy)

[SteveP]

Just ran the download system requirements test and it verifies that the Intel onboard graphics does not have enough VRAM. So documentation for system requirements might need a tweak. Intel 4xxx is not necessarily good enough as a general description despite the advertised capabilities of this Gateway computer. Very difficult considering you walk into the computer store with the specs and the advertised specs don't meet actual system specs. Grrr.

[KD7BCH]

Hey Steve its KD from the other thread,

Clear a few things up. They used to code TLD in the Unity 4, about 6-9 months ago they made the switch to Unity 5. At that time they were developing to support systems still running 32bit OS such as XP,Win 7 & Win 8.

Long story short. The site you are referencing is either for sure out of date or probably out of date as of when they switched to Unity 5.

Anyway glad to see you picked yourself up something with 2GB of onboard memory and one of the 600 series cards it should do the job nicely in DX11.

Please also note if you are looking to record onscreen there is a free handy program called Nvidia Geforce Exprience which helps update drivers for the GPU and performs recording in "Shadowplay". I find it superior to OBS which I used to use before. Have a look at this short video video showing how it works and some demo gameplay. https://youtu.be/zw3gey6Fbmo

I frequently use low quality setting at 60fps which records at 15MBPS. What does that mean? Well the video uploads to YouTube and looks really good, plays super smooth at 60fps if you use the Chrome browser and records the full screen because I set it to desktop mode and start and stop the recording manually. The Video card does this automatically without needing to use the CPU to make the recording.

You should be able to run the game in ultra but I showed you each setting so you can compare to your system. With the GTX 650 you should easily get 60fps as well and have no more crashing issues whatsoever.

Regards,

KD7BCH

[SteveP]

Thank you for the information KD7BCH.

Another update. We installed (or tried to install) the graphics accelerator. This one needs two power connections to be plugged into what appear to be the harddrive or floppy drive old style power connectors of which there are none in the Gateway computer. (bizarre!)

This is unfortunately the first time I opened the case and I was annoyed to find this out.

I can probably run in a lower resolution but that has yet to be established if it cures my particular problem of game crashing. The card would definitely improve my frame rate and resolution for recording. Recording is fairly important to me. I'm off now to see if there is a power splitter cable that might work. If not, I am kind of stuck.

future updates to follow.

I'm glad to see there seems to now be a dedicated forum for graphics; I foresee this as an ongoing need. Any tips on power cable splitters would be much appreciated. I will share what I discover.

Thanks again.

Steve

[KD7BCH]

Hi Steve,

Are you installing your GPU in a desktop or laptop? I thought you said desktop before but it is important so I ask for confirmation.

Did you buy your GPU new or used? If new according to this link it should contain the power connector you need...

SPEC SHEET

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814500277

EXAMPLE OF THE POWER CORD

http://www.walmart.com/ip/47378308?wmls ... 78&veh=sem

I had suggested the GTX 750 which has the same amount of memory, but better performance, lower cost, and does not require a supplemental power connector. May be worth considering. The 750 is a Maxwell design (newer, smaller architecture, lower power) the 650 is a beast in compassion. The power usage for the 750 Ti is only 60W so no connector needed whereas the 650 Ti is 110 and a 450watt PSU is recommended. You may already have the power supply and just need a connector.

Did you get a really good deal on the 650? Im showing the 750 Ti at only $104. I myself have a GTX 970 which is a 4GB, well 3.5GB if you read about all the drama about the last 512MB anyway certainly that kind of power is not need for the Long dark.

Regarding a lower resolution. You could try that however, intergrated graphics cards are notorious for memory issues because they share their memory with the system memory and sometimes the system gets greedy because that is how Windows operates, that is the nature of intergrated versus discreet, aside from the obvious performance hits. In any event I would only ever recommend anybody investing money in a computer to always go with at least a modern midrange GPU.

[SteveP]

Hi Steve,

Are you installing your GPU in a desktop or laptop? I thought you said desktop before but it is important so I ask for confirmation.

Did you buy your GPU new or used? If new according to this link it should contain the power connector you need...

It's good that you gave me this tip. I am using a one year old tower computer by Gateway however when I opened the case, I found it only has power rated to 300 watts on the power supply and no extra connectors. I found another power supply however it has a standard mother board connector which the Gateway does not use. I was going to head to NCIX to see if there is a connector adapter however the 750 would be ideal if it doesn't need extra power.

gtx 750 SPECs

I can return both the power supply and the 650 since both are new; None of the techs that we spoke to were aware of a graphics accelerator with low power requirements. This is [glow=red]definitely[/glow] the best option!

The only catch I can see is the 750 uses a single mini-HDMI connector so I'll need either a new HDMI cable or adapter, which is not expensive. According to the specifications, 300 watts power supply should be adequate!

Thank you very very much! This will save us a LOT of money and hassle and we should be able to get excellent performance!

I was also pleased to see that the 750 has extremely low noise levels around 32 dB whereas more powerful cards run around 60 dB or higher.

[KD7BCH]

Yeah one thing to know about Dell, Gateway, HP any of the Brand Name Label Computer makers. They advertise "upgradeable" systems but they ship a stock PSU which is always absolute bottom of the barrel and designed with just enough power to run the configuration they ship. I found this out years back before I started building my own systems when I wanted to upgrade my Dell that I'd paid $2400 for back in 1998, only to find out it shipped with a 300Watt PSU and upgrading the Video card would require investment in not just the GPU but a new PSU as well.

Lame right?

According to the specs I see comparing the 650 to 750 the both have 2x DVI out ports but the 750 only has 1 mini hdmi. Are you using HDMI cables for connection?

[SteveP]

yeah absolutely lame.

So we went down and traded in the power supply and the GTX 650 Ti and bought the GTX 750 Ti and got back $11. I'm running the new GPU now and the frame rate is unbelievable!! Problem seems to be solved!

There seems to be no reason to buy these off the shelf computers. Put one together from a good local technical guy with a 750 watt supply and tons of space for add ons. I have one of those running my Linux so maybe I'll get it up to scratch as well. It seems to have sort of flakey hard drive and display adapter so it needs trouble shooting. Using a ram disk to boot from which is absolutely brilliant!

Thanks again KD7. Even the technicians learned something!

[KD7BCH]

yeah absolutely lame.

So we went down and traded in the power supply and the GTX 650 Ti and bought the GTX 750 Ti and got back $11. I'm running the new GPU now and the frame rate is unbelievable!! Problem seems to be solved!

There seems to be no reason to buy these off the shelf computers. Put one together from a good local technical guy with a 750 watt supply and tons of space for add ons. I have one of those running my Linux so maybe I'll get it up to scratch as well. It seems to have sort of flakey hard drive and display adapter so it needs trouble shooting. Using a ram disk to boot from which is absolutely brilliant!

Thanks again KD7. Even the technicians learned something!

Glad to help. The last system I built was in 2015.

1KW PSU,

FX-8350,

32GB RAM,

4GB GTX 970

250 GB SSD

2TB External USB 3.0 Drive,

and I also install and load from a ram drive which is slightly superior to the SSD and far superior to the HDD.

Anyway yeah, I did all that for less than $1k last year and I doubt that I could get that config from any PC maker without all the shit they give you. Your i5 is comparable and faster in some circumstances than the FX, and the 2GB GTX 750 TI is a good standard level of VRAM for 1920x1080 and should serve you well for a few more years. Certainly will make TLD run beautifully.

Going forward you learned some valuable lessons. Box build brand name places over charge and under customize, they never provide proper PSU levels for the upgrade-ability they advertise, and integrated graphics remain inadequate for gaming in this era. Glad to hear it is working for you. The Long Dark is pretty awesome game, definitely challenging and engaging.

If and when you do make the jump to build your own I would recommend a great site for making component selections which intergrate both best prices, as well and check compatability. This site is PCPARTPICKER.com. Please also note the two places I'd source any PC components if they are not time sensitive is Amazon.com and Newegg.com. Newegg sometimes has the best price but Amazon usually does and they also have Prime shipping.

[SteveP]

Oh I had custom PCs in the past but this time I got lazy this time (ouch!) and wanted to play TLD right away. A valuable lesson, not only for myself, but for others thinking of upgrading their hardware. It's always frustrating; you build a system and then a couple years later, almost nothing of the old system can be reused on the new system. Memory chips, mother boards and processors change that quick. Also we had a bad period for several years with flaky components, capacitors and planned obsolescence.

[Cog]

Thanks guys, the game runs well in medium settings on Ubuntu 14.04.

The video card is Intel 4400, CPU: i7, 8GB memory.

[SteveP]

We've now run a few recording sessions using the new Geforce 750ti on ultra resolution and recording at maximum screen resolution. A session of about an hour and a quarter was 1.5 meg in size and took about 6 hours to upload! I'm not sure if this high resolution on a recording is overkill. One can barely notice a difference in screen quality however the frame rates are great and very very smooth motion. Not jerky like in the past. We can elaborate this on the other thread I started up specifically for video recording in the appropriate forum here.

[KD7BCH]

Are you using the shadowplay program or what program to record?

Bitrate, framerate and resolution will all determine how large a file size you get. I would recommend a bitrate of 15 MBPS for youtube video at 60fps. For me at 1920x1080p60@15MBPS this will be about 4GB/hour. If you have a good video editing machine with lots of cores you can re-render the video before upload reducing the bitrate and using a variable bitrate to make it as efficient as possible but that takes time, and burns electricity and even then you'll only save about half the size, so uploads may still be lengthy.

You might try recording at 30fps which should cut the file size about in half. With shadowplay you can run the bitrate all the way down to 10MBPS which will get you an even lower bit rate and smaller file size.

Note that you can start an upload of a video file and if you need to do something else with your connection you can close the browser window and re-open it and youtube will automatically detect that it was a file upload already in progress and resume where it left off.

I have a shitty upload speed myself so I frequently upload 4-5 files in separate browser tabs simultaneously overnight.

[SteveP]

I just run them overnight for now. My screen has resolution of 1360x380768 and recording with OBS. It's no big deal to handle large files; I don't bother with editing too much as that takes more time especially if you do cuts or compression of certain spots or add text etc etc. I'mkind of wondering if 1360x768 might not be higher than necessary given the way the game does its rendering. The objects do not have a lot of fine detail or fine textures.