Optimized hardware for Minecraft?

[Trik'Stari]

(Not entirely sure this topic goes in this forum. If it belongs somewhere else feel free to move it please, and thank you)

I have seen this question asked somewhat, with never a very clear answer, and missing a few things that I am looking for. The question is,

What is the most effective hardware for getting the best speed and stability out of minecraft for the following purposes:

 

1. View Distance. I've become obsessed with doing large biome sized constructions and I cant seem to be able to get more than 12 chunk distance, which is not enough, I'd like to be able to max out the distance on optifine.

2. World edit. I've finally managed to figure out how to get world edit installed, which is all I really need for what I'm doing. The issue is that I have a tendency to push the total blocks changed in to the hundreds of thousands, which causes MC to freeze (obviously).

3. Loading speed. I've heard that SSD is the best way to speed up world loading speed. I just recently made the switch to an SSD with a fresh install to windows. Definitely going to be buying more SSD's as 128gig is just not enough.

4. Mods. I plan to eventually start my own MC server from home, probably small time for a gaming guild I am apart of, I was wondering what the max possible players in a bukkit "server" with world edit, and probably some other stuff I don't know about like what I think used to be called "Lockette", not to mention optifine and whatever else I'd need to run it, without building an actual server (super beefy desktop pc instead?).

 

For now my most important concern is running on this pc, which is as follows:

Mobo: Asus f2A85-V Pro

CPU Asus FM2 A10 5700 APU 3.4Ghz (4.0 turbo)

Mem: Adata 1600 8 gig (2x4)

SSD: Samsung evo 840 pro 128gig

HDD: WD Black 7200rpm, 3.5in. 1TB

GPU: EVGA GTX660 FTW 2 gig. (this may be swapped out for a radeon card so I can use dual graphics with my CPU/APU, if I can figure out which card is best with a 5700 a10)

PSU: Seasonic X-series 750watt 80+gold

Case: Corsair 540 air black, cpu cooler is a corsair h110 (yall probably don't need these, but just cuz)

 

Anyways, I'd like to be able to max things out when I reinstall MC (haven't gotten around to it yet) so that I can start working on spawn biome (my towns tend to take up an entire biome if not more, always in snowy terrain, tend to go with the dwarven feel with a crap ton of lava) builds for when I do make a server (hopefully I'll be able to copy/paste this.). As I said I tend to be heavy on world edit.

 

My amateur knowledge on this game tells me to either buy more, better ram, or more SSD's for more games (probably gonna do that anyway, HDD is dead to me now after my BF4 load times went from minutes to seconds).

 

(EDIT: I forgot to mention. The last time I did any work in MC on this pc, I was able to get the view distance to 12 chunks on fast graphics, but I don't believe it was actually rendering out that far. Also I did have bad chunk load lag but that was on an HDD. All in all I just need to be able to see farther, a lot farther. Hard to build a mountain range with world edit when you cant really see to the other side of the biome. I was generally using large biome types as regular just don't cut it. I would also LOVE to be able to play on the amplified biome setting, or whatever its called)

[ShadowCaptain]

 

CPU Asus FM2 A10 5700 APU 3.4Ghz (4.0 turbo)

 

 

This is probably the weakest link in your components, minecraft is very CPU intensive

 

also allocate as much ram to it as you can

[steffen_anywhere]

Generally, your hardware should be more than capable of running mine craft at anything. Usually there is a problem with people having 32-bit Java installed, therefore not getting proper performance. Regardless though, RAM speed will only really help you APU's GPU, which you're not using.

[Ivyk]

An Intel CPU would be better since Minecraft is a game that runs via Single Cores.

[Trik'Stari]

I had a 212 Evo on here, I didn't like it. Temps are much better with this h110 aio watercooler.

 

So bottom line, my view distance is being bottlenecked by my cpu?

[Guest]

i3 with integrated graphics and 8gb of RAM is the best bang-for-your-buck Minecraft machine

[xox]

I hear you, dude because I was stuck in the same situation. I haven't got it perfect yet, but here's what I have at the moment:

 

• Render Distance: Far (+48)
• Full Antialiasing and Antisotropic Filtering
• Pretty much everything maxed out
• 4GB of dedicated RAM to Minecraft - Helps a lot for longer distances
• Multicore Chunk rendering - Enable it if you don't mind the bugs
• Vsync (60 fps)
• Vanilla apart from optifine
• 128x BD Craft texture pack

If you are cranking higher than that, your computer may struggle because Minecraft is the least optimised thing in the world. You could, of course, turn fog on so that the fact that your computer is rendering very far away doesn't bother you as much.

 

My specs are in my profile

[steffen_anywhere]

Actually you guys are right, mine craft at high view distances and all that gets really CPU intensive. My old laptop (Core 2 Duo P8400) had problems running it on high distance settings while I was also hosting a small server on the same machine (for three players only, but still, I should have known better).

 

Now, I don't know how fast that APU is in terms of CPU performance, but it won't be close to the Fx 6300 I'm guessing, so a CPU upgrade may be you best (even though expensive) bet.

[xox]

I had a 212 Evo on here, I didn't like it. Temps are much better with this h110 aio watercooler.

 

So bottom line, my view distance is being bottlenecked by my cpu?

Yes, but not by CPU temps. If you want to get better performance, I'd get a CPU which has very strong single-core performance. Or suck it up.

[ShadowCaptain]

Should he throw a 212 evo on that and turn up the clock speed as well?

 

Honestly wont make any difference

[steffen_anywhere]

Yes, but not by CPU temps. If you want to get better performance, I'd get a CPU which has very strong single-core performance.

 

Yes since Minecraft's optimization for multicore is basically not present, an i3 will be better for it. Is there anything that is faster for single-core right now (realistic options, not an over clocked 4770K)?

[xox]

Yes since Minecraft's optimization for multicore is basically not present, an i3 will be better for it. Is there anything that is faster for single-core right now (realistic options, not an over clocked 4770K)?

If you turn on milticore chunk loading in Optifine, anything is 'OK'

 

If you really want beastly, the Intel Xeon E3-1280 is really good

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

And to run Minecraft at some decent settings, you really need a GT 640 or better to be honest.

[Trik'Stari]

I do plan to overclock my intel build, Its going to be something with sli, probably just twin cards. Also its going to be custom watercooled.

 

My current pc is my first pc build. I went pretty cheap with it on some things in case I bleeped something up. (Adata ram, ugly ass blue mobo, it doesn't even have pci3.0 ugghh)

[Trik'Stari]

I wonder if anyone out there has tried to use Linux to get MC to use hyperthreading. not sure if that's possible but according to some, all games will eventually make the switch from windows to Linux since windows is apparently trying to kill pc gaming, not sure if that's true or not, just a thought tho.

[steffen_anywhere]

I wonder if anyone out there has tried to use Linux to get MC to use hyperthreading. not sure if that's possible but according to some, all games will eventually make the switch from windows to Linux since windows is apparently trying to kill pc gaming, not sure if that's true or not, just a thought tho.

 

So apparently Optifine has a multicore option which I must admins I did not know of...

 

In you new build, the 4770K and 4670K look really good if Minecraft is a focus. Both of those processors will over clock on a Z87 Mobo.

 

As for the GPU requirement of Minecraft, yeah to run it at all max with optifine, some power is needed, but nothing he would not have anyways.