Taking steps: please remind me why AMD and this game don't mix well

Didn't realize you could adjust the distance at which dynamic reflections were shown. If that's the case, then I really don't need them much beyond normal orbit-cam distances. Just enough to show up during a driving review of a single car.

 

I can't find 4700K, can it be something else like 4770K or 6700K ?

Yeah, that is how I use them, default on high details was something like 200 meters, but running at 60 meters is a lot easier and for mirrors, reflections on hood etc. 60 meters works usually fine, but on more open areas I use 80 meters.
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I'm using OBS Studio to record, also nvsync, that is not dropping much of FPS, maybe 5 or so.

 

Basic sanity check: you can use an nVidia graphics card with an AMD processor, right?

 

Yeah, many people do that, they don't 'know' being different brand.

 

Funny, in my house most the computers have an amd cpu and nvidia graphics card. A couple have an intel cpu and amd/ati graphics card.

 

Hehe, kinda avoiding of pairing amd/amd or intel/nvidia.

Oh and I hope nobody misunderstood 'they' which I wrote, I of course mean CPU and GPU with that, not people!

 

Its been a while since I have looked at my computer's specs, it is a 4790K. My apologies about that.

 

I made this clip kinda for you, there are bit of hiccups, but those are from having BeamNG run on same drive as I recorded video on, OS in same drive too, that creates hiccups on videos, but if I would of record video to other drive, there would be no hiccups or at least not so much.

So worth to have one extra SSD for video recording, even 128GB drive would be enough I guess, so it does not cost too much.

Also my video recording settings are probably not the best, but when viewed at full screen you should see some numbers there. when CPU is 44-45C then usually single core is being quite near maximum, that is my experience. Of course Afterburner or task manager rarely shows that, hence I don't keep CPU load at OSD as it is pretty much useless, I have self made software that is very good of showing such.


I did use settings I posted earlier, also vsync was on, so it is pretty much constant 60fps. That is heaviest part of Italy, so kinda worst case scenario.

It might take a minute for video to finish processing.

 

At which resolution are you playing?, and does the DoF has a big impact on FPS?, What about grass density?, I just turn it off just in case...
On the spawn point you showed before I just get 50fps. The rest of the map I can keep 60.
My computer is a Ryzen 5 1600 16gb ram and a GTX 1080.

 

DOF has very small effect, but has effect on CPU, but I think Light rays had very little visual effect while having bit more effect on CPU. As your CPU is 1600 and not 1600X that has somewhat weaker single core performance which is what mostly holds your FPS back, most graphics settings have effect on that single core CPU load and adjusting settings so that CPU gets easier job can make FPS increase a lot as GPU gets more utilized.

Your resolution does of course cause much heavier load on GPU also, so use MSI Afterburner or something to see your GPU load while playing game.

I play at 1080p, 60Hz.

Set these and see if you like it better, remember to restart the game after changing settings, just to be sure new settings are used:
Mesh Quality: Normal
Texture Quality: High
Lighting Quality: Normal
Shader Quality: Normal
Post Processing Quality: Normal
Display Shadows: Partial
Anisotropic filtering: X16

 

Alright, so: the fight over money rages on and I'm not so sure myself that a 1060 6GB wouldn't work to help reduce that. @fufsgfen has said it may start to chug when recording certain parts of Italy, but when he posted a video of himself recording, he spent at least part of it in a town.

I will probably not be recording there. Near there, maybe, but not there. So I actually got a map of Italy and (badly) highlighted in red all the areas where I could be immediately interested in recording:



(Not all of them at once, of course. Just a selection of them based on which roads are the truest test of a vehicle's driving characteristics.)

With one car (which will eventually be a K-series), dynamic reflections set on 60m, and other settings adjusted as necessary (have to look up what vsync and ssao are, as I've been mostly a console peasant since about 2002; I assume mesh and texture quality settings are for the environment and not the car themselves?), how hard is a 1060-6 going to chug on those kinds of roads? If it'll still be reasonably drivable/watchable, then I could dispense with the 1070 entirely and save a hundred bucks.

The motherboard is a possible problem area as they apparently are built to work with different processors, which is why I asked about processor/graphics card compatibility issues. Techguided is recommending four different "cheap" Ryzen-compatible motherboards which are the Asus TUF B450, Asus B450M-A CSM, MSI B350 PC Mate, and Asus Prime A320M-K. All seem to look OK just from my cursory glances on Amazon, but are they going to be incompatible with nVidia graphics cards or cause performance issues?

For fitment considerations, we are thinking of a Corsair 200R case but, this is open to change.

 

I do have gtx1080 though, which is about twice as fast as 1060, however use you describe 1060 should do fine, imo. What I did show on video was most difficult area of Italy.

All motherboards work with Nvidia cards just fine. I would get Asus motherboard, Prime should be better than TUF as TUF is lowest of their range I believe. ROG labeled ones tend to be better, but price goes up.

With Asrock you might end up with saving a little, but sometimes they are not quite so ok.

Oh yes, AM4 is socket for Ryzen and you need indeed that. Then comes chipsets, B450 and X470 are better ones, but I'm not sure about AMD chipsets in general, if A is something to avoid, especially if you go for 1600X you probably need to overclock it a bit to increase single core performance, which might need B350 or higher end chipset, not sure, that is how it works with intel boards, lower end models as well as lower cost models rarely work with overclocking needs, power delivery tends to be bad at low cost models.
If you can afford 2700X by saving something from choosing 1060 instead of 1070, I would go for that, but it is a price jump for sure.

Two most important parts of motherboard are if it allows overclocking and what kind of VRM it has, you need to find review of specific motherboard which tells VRM temps and phases as some are ridiculously bad, barely working, especially at lower price point. Gigabyte has been really bad for last years, avoid. Asus has best support AFAIK, but comes with bit of extra cost.

Then you have different sizes of motherboards, ATX and mATX, I recently did go for mATX as it had all the features I did need as well as VRM that will hold up well, however it does not have all the extension possibilities of bigger boards, but it is kinda rare to have mATX board with beefy VRM.

Longetivity is one point, more expensive motherboard that is bit over engineered can serve longer, with AM4 you might have upgrade path to next generation Ryzen that will release in some months, but there is nothing certain on this yet. With X2700 though you can have better future proofing than with X1600 as software moves towards using more cores, while 1600X should do fine what you need, especially with mild overclock and while it has multicore performance of 8th gen best intel chips, X2700 is better in single core and multicore performance.

However it does add costs, but then you need to balance longer life to that, in long term it might become cheaper.

You can compare this video to previous one, Pikes Peak is 8km by 8km in size, that is four times bigger than Italy, but it is relatively light to run.

 

Modern Graphics cards are compatible with anything that has PCIe, and every consumer board made in the last 15 years has PCIe, so I wouldn't worry about compatibility for graphics cards

 

Alright so, here's what I have so far:

GPU: Any GTX 1060 6GB

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6GHz

HSF: Cryorig M9a 48.4 CFM CPU cooler, but this is a possible money save if the case fan is good enough, don't know yet.

Mobo: Any AM4, supposedly B450 is a much better chipset than A320, but you're recommending the A320 because it's a Prime? Moving up to a higher-end model is a possibility if it comes with Windows 10 for less money than it would cost to buy Windows 10 separately.

RAM: Team Vulcan DDR4-3000 2x8GB

SSD: HP EX900 M.2-2280 (250GB)

HDD: Going with a single internal drive to save money, which means my games will be sharing the aforementioned 250GB SSD with the OS and someone else's work files and programs. I have an external 1TB HDD which is several years old and connects via USB; trying to record to that sounds janky but I'm not sure, do you think it would work?

PSU: SuperNOVA G2 550 W 80+ Gold Certified (we couldn't find a much cheaper 450)

Case: Actually a Rosewill Stryker M ATX midtower, but this is open to change

Monitor: Dell SE2417HG 23.6in 1920X1080 60Hz ("USB is not supported")

So, what here is overkill, and what's just plain not going to work?

 

That setup looks fine. Everything is completely compatible. I can't really say if your CPU and GPU are unbalanced, but they should be pretty close. For mobo, don't go for A320, it doesn't support overclocking, and doesn't really have the PCIe lanes to add anything other than a single card, if you ever want a soundcard/PCIe SSD/etc in future. I would recommend a B350/450 mobo, with at least 8 VRMs (it will probably be advertised as 8+x power phases).

 

B350 that is Prime would be something to recommend, between A320 Prime and B450, I'm not sure it is worth to go for Prime, but also to avoid problems avoiding cheapest B450 might be good.

That PSU goes Supernova and takes all components with it, that is issue with cheap PSU, they break things, but then again if you have good insurance, that is not going to be an issue Ok, I did pay 200 euros or so from 460W PSU, so I might not be allowed to say anything, but PSU and MB are parts which I would not go cheap.

SSD, do you need that fast? Practical difference between such and slower ones like Crucial MX500 is not that huge, but price is almost double per capacity, I might go for extra 250GB over that speed gain.

Also lowest priced 1060 can have noisy cooling and even worse, noisy squealing coil whine, check reviews before buying.

I don't think that I have attempted to record video on HDD, so don't know how that would go, but remember you can add SSD later if HDD does not work out, it would be perhaps cost effective way to go on with the build.

 

WIll try to find one, BRB

Apparently it has good reviews, so what else would you recommend?

Apparently this was found at a lower absolute cost than the MX500 and we may not need the extra capacity since, as I said, there is an external terabyte HDD for long-term storage.

The one we're looking at right now is an Asus.

 

I would really like to see stress test results of Supernova when it is taxed past 500W before buying, also very low load results, how clean power is, but if that model checks out, then go for it. At least Silent PC Review has some good tests of some PSUs.

Also here is reason why not Gigabyte.

For example they made new version of Ultra Gaming labeled board, which had VRM issue, updated version was only worse, they knew it was worse, they practically removed any safety features where board would shut off after VRM reached certain temp, so VRM happily will go to over 125C happily frying CPU and everything. That is 11 phase VRM, btw.

I made mistake of buying their Gaming K3, it did last something like 2 weeks and VRM fried, I did RMA that, which they manage to lost, it took quite bit of fight to sort out and as compensation they send 'better' board, which is said Ultra Gaming.

Also gtx1080 I bought, that had one fan connector inside fan unit barely connected, very sloppy build quality.

Z170 GB board I have is fine, VRM never gets really past 40C, they used to make ok quality boards, but since then they have turned to worst.

Worst part though is that they have made issues there knowing it will be an issue and even admitting it when pushed to corner, but don't even attempt to fix the issue.

It's like MSI was years ago, with fake solid state caps and all that.

Asrock used to have fail percentage of 50 on cheap MB's which I had to build hundreds of at job, but that too was years ago. Put that to same do not buy class with Acer. However their higher end might be ok what I have heard, same with MSI.

Asus is only one of mainstream brands that has not failed horribly, but it does cost more, when going cheap low end models, I would go for Asus if nothing else for their support which usually does not suck quite horrible.

Edit: Also I see I'm mixing up B350 and B450 already, too tired brain...

 

UPDATE: I found the Asus B350 Prime Plus mobo, but I don't know how much it costs or how many power phases it has, only that it has "Digi+ VRM". Also it has this stuff going on:

1*PCIeX16_2 slot shares bandwidth with PCIeX1_1 and PCIeX1_2.
2*The M.2 Socket shares bandwidth with the SATA6G_5/6 ports, therefore the SATA6G_5/6 ports cannot be used when a SATA/PCIE mode M.2 device is installed.
3*The M.2 Socket shares bandwidth with the SATA6G_5/6 ports, therefore the SATA6G_5/6 ports cannot be used when a SATA mode M.2 device is installed.

Which seems to be fairly common and I'm not sure if it's going to cause a problem.

Tom's Hardwarde is recommending a Channel Well Technology Bitfenix BF450G for 450 watts, though I'm not sure if that will be enough, and a CWT Corsair RM550x for 550 watts. Haven't looked deeper but they do seem reasonably affordable.

 

Yeah, there are limited number of lanes and those kind of limits tend to happen, worth check them trough though as some boards I think had bit odd choices.

Not really sure what is difference with B350 and B450, I know Intel chipsets, not so much of AMD.

Anyway always before buying, check documents of motherboard, see that CPU is supported and that MEMORY is supported, not all memory works perfectly with all motherboards, mostly it limits speeds memory runs, but sometimes when populating all memory slots some memory sticks just refuse to work.

For example with Intel, same CPU socket does not guarantee CPU support, chipset has to be correct one too, to make things more complicated.

So better check that with B350 and 2600X, it might be that B350 works with X1600 tops, but I have no idea.

Between 1600X and 2600X there is not much, 1600X should easily overclock to come over that difference, imo:
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-2600X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600X/3956vs3920

Not sure if that is way to save a bit, but then if you don't plan to overclock 2600X is better choice, that should give same or better framerate as my i7-6700, depending from situation, should not be worse fps really and with little overclock it should be always faster.