Recommended Computer specs

[Wondercat57]

I am attempting to build a new computer but I have found some conflicting information regarding what hardware to buy to get the smoothest running experience in GZDoom. One forum suggested that the game is mostly CPU intensive and that the video card is not as important. I realize that processor speed is not the only thing one should consider, but my friend suggested a build that uses a Ryzen with a lower clock speed than what I'm currently using. The ryzen has six cores (3.2 GHz) while my computer now has an AMD quadcore (3.87 GHz). I also came across another forum that said GZDoom does not work exactly modern games so you can't use generic benchmarks for GZDoom.

Ultimately, I'm looking to have little to no slowdown while using the newly implemented shadowmaps, Ambient Occlusion set to medium/high, bloom effects, Open GL 3.0 accelerated renderer with textures scaled by 4x and of course dynamic lighting. I have a budget of no more than $1100. I have two questions.

1) Is the processor speed more important than the video card to run GZDoom smoothly, and if it is would the new Ryzen six core computer be better than the current quad core with a higher clock speed.

2) Will 8 GB of ram be sufficient or should I consider 16?

[Rachael]

1) Yes, but video card speed is important too, and will be especially moreso in the coming versions of GZDoom in the future, due to the eventual switch to Vulkan. If you can get away with sneaking a nVidia GTX 9xx or 10xx into your budget, you should be set no matter what CPU you get. Any CPU manufactured past 2012 with at least 2 cores and has a speed greater than or equal to 2.4 GHz will do GZDoom just fine.

2) 8GB of RAM is quite sufficient. If GZDoom becomes a full time hobby though, you should leave the option to upgrade this open, don't lock yourself in with a motherboard that maxes out at 8GB.

Keep in mind, these specs will only work well for the next 8 years or so. As hardware improves, the demands of both GZDoom itself and mods running on GZDoom will increase.

[Wondercat57]

Thanks a bunch.

[Graf Zahl]

Don't go too cheap. A Geforce 1060 should be the minimum if you want to be safe for the coming years, especially if you want to use the shadowmap feature. This will definitely show issues on anything weaker.

[Wondercat57]

It has been a little bit, but I finally got the money together and had a friend build me a computer close to what I expected would work. Unfortunately, I seem to be having a lot of trouble getting the game to run as smoothly as I would like. I have scoured this board trying to find someone with a similar issue and the closest thing I could find was about a stuttering problem. This makes the most sense, as I don't think it is a frame rate problem. Although, I don't really know how to check the frame rate of this game, so it could be related to that.

Basically, when I rotate the camera sometimes there will be a jitter on screen where it seems like the game is trying to load textures as I face them. I have tried on a variety of settings, and it seems like even if the Dynamic lights are off and there are no shadowmaps it is still happening, albeit less frequently--Maybe. It's kind of hard to tell with how random it is happening. In any case, here are the specs to my computer.

System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 10/30/2018, 21:39:09
Machine name: DESKTOP-7UBPLUL
Machine Id: {6DA38808-5B13-4386-BAC4-FA8D9F05B98D}
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 16299) (16299.rs3_release_svc.180808-1748)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: AB350M-DS3H
BIOS: F21
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Eight-Core Processor (16 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16336MB RAM
Page File: 4239MB used, 15039MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 144 DPI (150 percent)
System DPI Setting: 144 DPI (150 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: UnKnown
Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
DxDiag Version: 10.00.16299.0015 64bit Unicode

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

[Rachael]

This report does not tell us your GPU.

Nevertheless, try typing "toggle vid_vsync" in the console and see if it fixes your jitter issue.

[Wondercat57]

Unfortunately that didn't really seem to change anything. I'm assuming this is the part of the report that was missing. Hope this helps.


---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1C03&SUBSYS_32831462&REV_A1
Device Status: 0180200A [DN_DRIVER_LOADED|DN_STARTED|DN_DISABLEABLE|DN_NT_ENUMERATOR|DN_NT_DRIVER]
Device Problem Code: No Problem
Driver Problem Code: Unknown
Display Memory: 14219 MB
Dedicated Memory: 6052 MB
Shared Memory: 8167 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
HDR Support: Not Supported

[Rachael]

Did you make sure your drivers are up to date? The default drivers by default in Windows are usually insufficient for OpenGL, even if everything seems to work fine.

[Graf Zahl]

What texture scaling mode are you using? This is the #1 reason for non-smooth gameplay.

[Zan]

Don't go too cheap. A Geforce 1060 should be the minimum if you want to be safe for the coming years, especially if you want to use the shadowmap feature. This will definitely show issues on anything weaker.

Huh, really? Isn't that a bit overkill or do you mean for like a decade from now on?

[Graf Zahl]

If you buy lower than that you'll be into trouble sooner than you think. The Geforce 1060 can be considered the current reference graphics hardware. In a decade that card may be considered as stone age as a Geforce 8800 these days, i.e. far too weak to run current stuff.

Regarding GZDoom, if you want to run costly effects you need hardware that can keep up. As an example, a Geforce 550Ti is already too weak to run shadowmaps efficiently. Which was one of the reasons I upgraded, aside from needing a Vulkan-compatible card.

[Wondercat57]

I haven't had a chance to test all of these things yet, but I'm starting to think it might actually be my mouse. I say this for two reasons. The first is that I disabled literally everything that makes GZdoom what it is. I stripped it down to as bare bones as I could make it by doing the following: textures are disabled, all filters are disabled, decals are 0, ambient occlusion is off, no texture scaling options etc. Even with all of that I was still getting intermittent stuttering when turning, so to me my specs, in theory, should be able to handle what is essentially nothing.

Secondly, I have a wireless mouse and Windows 10 seems to have a rather large issue with lagging mice as I have seen so many posts about it. I discounted this at first, because I don't remember when the lag issues started but I know that I never had a problem with it in GZdoom before. I am getting the feeling that there are many issues that seem to be cropping up as Windows 10 gets feature updated, and with how often these feature updates happen, I always wonder what else of mine has been broken. This leads me to my last point. It might explain the seemingly randomness about when it happens. The cursor in the main OS doesn't lag all the time, but it happens often enough that I have tried many different things in the past to correct this. I usually stop after a certain time, because it seems to be working for a little while until it starts that crap again. In essence, I can't really tell I've ever fixed the thing.

I'm going to try straight keyboard and see if that makes a difference.

[Graf Zahl]

I use a wireless mouse as well, and for the most part it's fine - but very occasionally when there's transmission errors it can cause a little bit of stuttering for a second or so.
In general, if you want to see if problems are caused by the renderer, you can enter 'stat rendertimes' at the console.

Most of the values are of little interest, but if the 'All' one in the last line is relatively stable but there's still some lag, it's coming from elsewhere.

[Wondercat57]

I was having some trouble with my computer and the message got sent as a guest, so it can be disregarded. In any case, it turns out it was the fucking mouse. I went and bought some cheapo mouse from Walmart and everything is working peachy keen now.

In any case, thank you both for very quick and in depth responses.