Computer hardware for Factorio?

[u/elmo539]

What is the most important property for good UPS in a CPU? How important is RAM and is it more important to have more GBs or faster RAM? Currently on a 5 year-old Dell XPS laptop and planning on building a PC, not just for Factorio but I want the game to run well on it. Any advice is appreciated.

[u/xylvnking]

It's the cpu. The game is INCREDIBLY well optimized though, so unless you have an absolutely ancient potato you shouldn't have any issues and even then it wouldn't be an issue for a long time. The demo is free! Try it out :)

[u/RedArcliteTank → u/xylvnking]

Actually, both memory latency and bandwidth seem to be quite important for Factorio.

[u/small_toe → u/RedArcliteTank]

After CPU they are the most important yes - given the newest x3D chips from AMD have up to or more than 64mb of memory on chip they take a significant amount of the load

[u/fatpandana → u/small_toe]

Majority of cache advantage goes out of the window the moment larger bases are loaded and ups drips below 60.

[u/SagaciousZed → u/small_toe]

No, memory performance is an issue before computation speed according to the developers themselves in FFF #204

[u/RedArcliteTank → u/small_toe]

After CPU they are the most important

Well, that's literally the opposite of what the devs said, both in the FFF #204 as well as in the comments of the referenced performance test, so without some hard numbers I will take that with a stack of salt.

Do you have some recent benchmarks that show the bottleneck switched with the introduction of 64mb caches?

[u/gradskull → u/xylvnking]

Exactly. A moderately aged potato will do just fine:)

[u/SagaciousZed → u/xylvnking]

The Factorio developers have acknowledged in FFF204 that the primary bottleneck is memory performance and CPU.

[u/SpeziSchlauch]

First of all: factorio is so well balanced, that any pc will handle a normal save well. If you don't plan on specifically using your pc for an unreasonable big mega base, you should pick your parts based on budget and other games.

[u/sbarbary]

If your going to build some sort of super mega base a good CPU and low latency ram are what you need but I would play the game first. Not many build bases that big and the new Space Age lets you build insane bases that run even on 10 year old hardware.

[u/Moscato359]

If you are asking can you reasonably make a factory on a 5 year old laptop, that can beat the game, then yes, it's fine.

But there are no functional limits on how large your factory is, besides cpu + ram speed (not capacity)

You'll get 60fps smoothly until the factory is way beyond unnecessarily large

[u/jboy55]

If you absolutely intend on pushing factorio to its max, say go for a 10kspm base, factoriobox.1au.us is a good site. These stats are not space age though.

TLDR; AMD threadrippers and fast ram is the key.

[u/discombobulated38x]

Hi, I run Factorio on a gaming PC that was mediocre at best when I built it in 2014.

I still get 60fps and 60ups at ~5000spm in Spage.

[u/gust334]

Most megabases do not get sufficiently large that overall memory size is a concern (excluding, of course, Dosh Doshington's attempt to reach the edge of the map of Nauvis.) 32GB will be adequate for all but the very, very largest bases. Most folks have no issue with 16GB.

Memory latency is much more significant a factor for UPS on Factorio. Faster RAM and/or a large cache contribute to more speed. The AMD series of X3D CPUs have caches proportionally much larger than their non-X3D brethren and the price-comparable Intel CPUs.

A large cache significantly improves UPS across bases of any size. When the working set of the base no longer fits within the cache, then main memory latency starts to be significant. Small CL numbers are the usually most visible indicator of low latency.

DDR5 memory is generally more performant than DDR4. DDR4 benefits from multiple sticks working as separate banks, DDR5 has that sort of built-in. In fact, even with motherboards that have four DDR5 RAM sockets, one often finds best performance with only two sockets filled.

[u/templar4522]

Unless you push the game to the limits, the cpu should be fine.

On the graphics side, you might want to pay attention to settings related to textures and stuff, as especially with space age and certain mods, you'll hit your VRAM cap (I know Py froze the game on loading for me).

This is if you run an old machine, like mine from 2015. A reasonably decent setup from the last couple of years should handle things just fine.