9 replies to this topic

[tochni]

What are the current minimum system requirements for VPX + B2S on a 2 monitor cab to play VPX smoothly without paying too much for hardware? THX

[Reaper802]

I'd also be interested in this information.

 

I was hoping to upgrade my Shuttle SH67H3 that is being retired out of home theater PC for this project.

[BorgDog]

It seriously depends on what resolution displays you want and how many of the high quality settings you want turn on when you run it.  From my mini-cab build thread:

 

     MSI mini-itx Motherboard

     Pentium G3220 3GHz processor

     Corsair modular 430w power supply

     4GB Crucial memory I had on hand

     Cruicial 120GB SSD

     Radeon R7250E video card to drive all three monitors.

 

and that runs VPX exclusively on 3 monitors.  playfield is a 1080p, backglass is 1280x1024, and dmd is 800x480.  Some of this you can't really get any more but comparably priced replacements now would be better performers.  It runs VPX very well once I dialed down the settings to more modest levels.  Does it look as nice as my other cab with 4k displays and a GTX 1070? oh hell no, not even close.  But it does work pretty well, and I would consider it the bare minimum for a 1080p playfield, or an AMD of similar levels.

[gtxjoe]

I have a GTX 660 and have no VPX issues

For a new 1080p build, I would build a PC around a GTX 1060 video card. Lower budget - a GTX 960 or 950

For 4k build, up that to at least the GTX 1070

[Scoops]

Don't you think that one of the modern AMD APUs (such as the A10-7890k) could run it properly? It is, from a gaming perspective, surprisingly effective (though not on a level with the GTX 950) and supports 3 monitors. Don't you think something like a 960 or 1060 would be huge overkill or am I seriously underestimating VPX requirements? I can run FP2 on a 10 year old iMac via a virtual machine pretty well... An APU would be good as it would reduce your requirements in terms of cooling, cost and power requirements. Just a thought!

[Reaper802]

I did some testing last night on my existing home theater PC. 

 

i3 @ 3.3 GHz, 8 gig of ram, GTX 550, SSD. 

 

I was running VPX 4K tables on my 61" DLP (1080p not 4K) via HDMI and animated backglasses with a DMD overlay on a second monitor via DVI.

 

It seemed to be running pretty smooth.  Taking a look at Task Manager showed the CPU anywhere from 80-95% utilized, so it's pushing the limits for sure.  I need to test with a third monitor for the DMD and see if that pushes it over the edge.

[Reaper802]

Some additional testing on that rig this evening and noticing some stutter and lag.  I should probably install FRAPS and record some real values.

[gtxjoe]

Did some VPX and VP9 testing while watching ANW tonight.

If you want to run VPX "smoothly", decide on your target. Is 120 fps or 60 fps acceptable or less?

 

Good luck with build

 

 

Looks like the A10-7890k gets a PassMark video score of 916.  http://www.videocard...ectCompute.html

Edited by gtxjoe, 30 August 2016 - 02:51 AM.

[wrd1972]

I am running a 10 year old Dell T3400 workstation ($120) with Core2 Quad 3.0GHZ ($60) and an Nvidia GTX760 ($130)....all used equipment from Ebay. All this with 3 monitor setup and zero issues with all VPX tables typically averaging 120 FPS. To this day, I have not been able to justify the expense to upgrade  to newer hardware. Just runs great and I have money left for other things. My 2 cents.

Edited by wrd1972, 30 August 2016 - 01:48 PM.

[hlr53]

I'm guessing a GT730 4 gig would work.

 

I have an old Gateway DX4860 (Acer mobo) i5-2320 @ 3ghz 8 gig DDR3 that has been laying in a closet for years. Integrated 200 series Intel graphics. I bought it in 2012 and the BIOS is late 2011. It was for logging in remotely to work. I now use a i5 laptop with external monitor.

 

There may be one 2012 firmware update available if I revert to Win 7. PSU is 300W. I can upgrade to 550W with a direct replacement from CPUtopia for $45 shipped. 

 

There is one PCIE x16 v2 slot and the card has to be 7" or less in length to fit. It has Windows 10 on it but I may have to run the Gateway recovery partition to revert to Win 7. Some people have been able to get the BIOS to post with various GPUs but Windows won't load unless they revert to Win 7. I can do an image of the hard drive first if this doesn't work. Nothing of importance on this PC. I'm afraid newer cards like the 1050ti mini won't work with the old BIOS. Acer support is non existent unless you pay for it. They could care less about older PCs.

 

For a total of $200 its worth a try. If not, she's probably going to Goodwill.

 

UPDATE 22 Feb 19

 

Installed the 550W PSU and it took about 20 min. This Gateway has a Sandy Bridge 2nd gen i5 introduced in 2011. I put in an EVGA GT730 4gig from my local Micro Center (hardware Geek heaven! I miss the CompUSA from the old days but this place blows it away). One of the few cards that will fit in the mid tower case. The card has 2 DVI and a mini-HDMI connector so I had to buy a VGA-mini HDMI adapter for the TV. After a TON of testing at 1920x1080 I had to turn off everything inside VPX and use the default Nvidia settings in the control panel to get above 60fps. VP9x was averaging 236fps.

 

Biggest problem with this card was the drivers were deprecated (end of life) years ago. The drivers that shipped on the enclosed CD and on the Nvidia download site do not work with Windows 10 and will never work with Win 10 AFAIK? So I did a Gateway Recovery factory reset from the hidden partition back to Windows 7 SP1. Microsoft did do 181 updates on Win 7. That is where this system is staying.

 

Just a word of warning if you find an old desktop you want to turn into a gaming desktop. It takes some research to see what all plays nice together.

 

--Harry

Edited by hlr53, 22 February 2019 - 09:16 PM.