A few things I have noticed about modded mc from a hardware standpoint

[snaiperskaya]

Thought I'd contribute a bit, in general at least. I run a similar setup to a few people here (6350 @ 4.0 ghz, 16GB ram (3.5 allocated), 280x), and find the game... unplayable without Optifine. I get that same unusual nearly 40 FPS running a modded pack , which - for me at least, is pretty unacceptable. The second I throw in Optifine (especially the U edition which allows for Multicore support), I can get all the way up to those 200 / 300 numbers, though not nearly stable enough to warrant the jet engine noise so I just cap it at 70-80. Fastcraft can add a bit to that as well, mostly stabilizing the frames. As for other sources of lag, my Win7 installation is probably quite 'stale' by now but I've got no other issues with anything else. Also, I'm running MC and my OS off an SSD, not that it means anything.

Things like fastmath and fastrender (this moreso, for somewhat obvious reasons), actually decrease my FPS.

Mipmap levels seem to have an usually large impact on my FPS.

Dropping my view distance down can dramatically increase my FPS. I play on '8'.

I decided to try optifine and even that did not make much of a difference in my case, though I can't say it did nothing. On the whole, with a lot of toying with settings, the best I was able to come up with was ~10fps boost from optifine, which really isn't enough. At this point, I've disabled mipmaps and also have my render distance set to 8. I tried every combination of fast render/math on/off but they were all effectively the same.

Per suggestion from @Wagon153 I tried setting up a linux installation and running the pack from there, but that too provided similar results, which I was surprised about. I did get slight gains on linux if I dropped the FOV down to "normal" (I usually play with FOV around 95 and I hadn't given this much thought previously) of ~10fps, which I was not able to duplicate in Windows.

I'm at a loss, so I guess I'll live with it for now, but I have no clue why it runs so poorly for me overall. I guess I need to just be grateful that I do have something better than a potato to run things on, even if it barely outperforms them.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($64.95 @ NCIX US)

I wouldn't get a dual core for a client PC, just asking for problems... Yes MC only really uses one core but it can multi-core and all your OS processes still need to run. Skimping on a dual core seems a rather bad plan.

 

[DZCreeper]

I wouldn't get a dual core for a client PC, just asking for problems... Yes MC only really uses one core but it can multi-core and all your OS processes still need to run. Skimping on a dual core seems a rather bad plan.

I absolutely agree. I was speaking from a hypothetical standpoint in which the computer was solely for Minecraft and the budget was $500 or less. The average person should spend $600 out of the gate and get an i5 4440 instead. The only reason I am fine with 2 cores personally is that I own quite a few computers so I offload any multi-tasking to them.

 

[KingTriaxx]

This is what I built.

Case:Rosewill Galaxy-03 39.99
HDD:Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 44.99
Motherboard:ASRock 870 36.99
CPU:AMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core 3.5GHz 89.99
RAM:G.SKILL 16GB 94.99
OS: Windows 7 69.99
PSU:EVGA 100-W1-500-KR 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS 39.99

Harvested a somewhat old Geforce 6600 from my previous system, until I get a newer one. Admittedly, most of this stuff was bought on sale, but it ended up being just over $400 before the video card. Once the PSU gets here, I'll be able to tell how well it runs MC.

 

[Wagon153]

Thought I'd contribute a bit, in general at least. I run a similar setup to a few people here (6350 @ 4.0 ghz, 16GB ram (3.5 allocated), 280x), and find the game... unplayable without Optifine. I get that same unusual nearly 40 FPS running a modded pack , which - for me at least, is pretty unacceptable. The second I throw in Optifine (especially the U edition which allows for Multicore support), I can get all the way up to those 200 / 300 numbers, though not nearly stable enough to warrant the jet engine noise so I just cap it at 70-80. Fastcraft can add a bit to that as well, mostly stabilizing the frames. As for other sources of lag, my Win7 installation is probably quite 'stale' by now but I've got no other issues with anything else. Also, I'm running MC and my OS off an SSD, not that it means anything.

Things like fastmath and fastrender (this moreso, for somewhat obvious reasons), actually decrease my FPS.

Mipmap levels seem to have an usually large impact on my FPS.

Dropping my view distance down can dramatically increase my FPS. I play on '8'.

I believe I know why fast math drops your frames. Fast math is optimized to make better use of the cpu cache, which normally is a good thing(less latency means your processor can work faster.) But...this is one of piledriver's many weaknesses. The cache isn't as optimized as it should be, which results in a loss of IPC.

TL;DR: AMD dun goofed your processor's architecture.

 

[Excaerious]

I believe I know why fast math drops your frames. Fast math is optimized to make better use of the cpu cache, which normally is a good thing(less latency means your processor can work faster.) But...this is one of piledriver's many weaknesses. The cache isn't as optimized as it should be, which results in a loss of IPC.

TL;DR: AMD dun goofed your processor's architecture.

Yeah, I'm jumping ship once intel does a full unveil of their new line (skylake). I assume that'll cause a small price decrease, so I can buy a new mobo and get a hopefully cheap good i5 / i7. Like always retailers will probably begin sales and such. That's the hope anyway. I'll still be jumping ship in a few months regardless, as I'm doing a general upgrade of my PC, maybe even going for the newer 300 series of AMD GPU's if they are as good as they are showing (they won't be).

This is what I built.

Case:Rosewill Galaxy-03 39.99
HDD:Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 44.99
Motherboard:ASRock 870 36.99
CPU:AMD FX-6300 Vishera 6-Core 3.5GHz 89.99
RAM:G.SKILL 16GB 94.99
OS: Windows 7 69.99
PSU:EVGA 100-W1-500-KR 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS 39.99

Harvested a somewhat old Geforce 6600 from my previous system, until I get a newer one. Admittedly, most of this stuff was bought on sale, but it ended up being just over $400 before the video card. Once the PSU gets here, I'll be able to tell how well it runs MC.

Geforce 6600? Man. That's a blast from the past.

 

[KingTriaxx]

It is indeed. Still runs just fine. And yes, it runs Crysis.

 

[Wagon153]

Yeah, I'm jumping ship once intel does a full unveil of their new line (skylake). I assume that'll cause a small price decrease, so I can buy a new mobo and get a hopefully cheap good i5 / i7. Like always retailers will probably begin sales and such. That's the hope anyway. I'll still be jumping ship in a few months regardless, as I'm doing a general upgrade of my PC, maybe even going for the newer 300 series of AMD GPU's if they are as good as they are showing (they won't be).




Geforce 6600? Man. That's a blast from the past.

Why not wait for Zen from AMD? There's a lot of leaks saying it will be on par with Haswell/Broadwell. So imagine 8 physical Haswell cores for the price of an i7 with only 4 physical cores.

 

[Excaerious]

Why not wait for Zen from AMD? There's a lot of leaks saying it will be on par with Haswell/Broadwell. So imagine 8 physical Haswell cores for the price of an i7 with only 4 physical cores.

I wanted to and still want to, it'll all depend on money flow to be honest. Zen is still off in 2016 I believe. I was looking to upgrade around September, again, because of money. As we get closer and closer we'll see. My mobo has outlived the rest of the parts in the computer, and can't even handle something above 120 W in the CPU department. So if it's any terribly inefficient in regards to that - most AMD products being power hungry beasts, i'll need to at least change it out anyway.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Curiously, most AMD's are actually more energy efficient at idle, than Intels. On the other hand, they do draw a significant amount more under load.