Before you say anything, yes I know this should probably be in the Tech section(and a mod can move it if they want to), but this section gets a lot more traffic in terms of users. So here goes.
Hey guys, I see threads occasionally on here asking after laptops and desktops capable of running FTB at good frames. So I figure I'd put together a guide to follow for any who are looking for a machine capable of running FTB great. I'm not going to recommend individual OEM desktops/laptops, since the market is constantly fluctuating. In addition, I'm not here to give recommendations based on budget. With that said, here goes.
First of all, CPU. There's a lot of different machines with different CPUs, so which ones are good for FTB? We're gonna start with desktop chips. Now, almost everybody with some technical knowledge of Minecraft knows that Minecraft hungers for single threaded performance. It's ravenous for it. Luckily, machines with CPUs that have good single threaded performance are not hard to find nowadays. Any Pentium G series chip and up is good. Even relatively modern Celerons are okay(Celeron G1820 and up). However, I'd recommend going with something with an i3 or i5 if possible. While it's true that Minecraft is single threaded hungry, I've found that the extra threads on the i3 and i5 prove to help a lot with FPS stabilization(in other words, not constantly bouncing between 40 and 200 FPS. That's an extreme case, but you get my point.) Any Xeon E3, E5, E7, x5---, e5---, x7---, or e7--- series is good. Core 2 series CPUs are ~okay, but the higher the clock of the CPU in this case, the better(so a core 2 quad q9650>q6600). AVOID PENTIUM 4s, PENTIUM D SERIES, AND ATOMS. Semi-modern AMD chips are okay too(Phenom ii x6 1090t and up, Athlon x4 760k and up, any a8/a10 series CPU up from 7xxx, and FX-43xx/63xx/83xx/9xxx). Avoid FX 41xx/61xx/81xx chips. These have significantly lower single threaded performance then their brothers with the 3. AVOID SEMPRONS, E SERIES, AND GEODE SERIES CHIPS.
On the laptop side, it's a little more tricky. Firstly, avoid everything with Pentiums, Celerons, and Atoms. Not only are the CPUs trash for Minecraft, the laptops themselves are often of low quality. i3s are ~okay. You generally want to stick with laptops that have i5s and i7s. The higher the clock speed the better here! And if you can obtain a laptop with a Skylake processor(i3/i5/i7 6xxx), that'd be awesome. I'll explain why in the next section.
Next up, GPU. This is an area where a lot of FUD has been spread around. Yes, Minecraft is not very GPU heavy at all, but too many people make the mistake that GPU does not matter at all. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Most integrated GPUs nowadays can and will bottleneck your FPS by a lot. Luckily, it does not take much to alleviate the bottleneck. The iGPUs on all desktop i3s/i5s/i7 of the broadwell family(5xxx) or skylake family(6xxx) are sufficiently powerful to not cause too much of a bottleneck. The iGPUs for any AMD A series APU 6xxx and up is also powerful enough not to bottleneck much. REMEMBER TO USE DUAL CHANNEL RAM FOR IGPUS. IF IT DOESN'T HAVE IT, FIX IT. For discrete GPUs, almost any will do. Please refer to this chart. Anything on the level of the Intel HD 530 is powerful enough to not cause a sizeable bottleneck.
Laptops....laptops are tricky. As a rule of thumb, you want to try and avoid laptops with only integrated graphics(unless they are Skylake CPUs, which is 6xxx). If you can get anything with a GT 840m/940m or up that would be great. Also, although very rare, any laptops you find with AMD A10/FX series CPUs in them are also pretty good.
Lastly, if you plan on doing shaders, you need a much more powerful GPU. Something on the level of a HD 7950/r9 280 or gtx 960 will do the job ~okay, but you probably want something such as an r9 290/390 or gtx 970. Shaders are tough to run. For laptops, anything lower then a 970m is a no go, with a 980m being optimal. And remember, Minecraft can't utilize SLI or Crossfire! So don't bother looking at laptops or desktops that use SLI/Crossfire, unless you plan on playing games that can use it.
RAM. Get 8 gigabytes. That's about it. If you are using an integrated GPU, you want the fastest RAM you can get, and preferably do dual channel. iGPUs need lots of memory bandwidth since they don't have a dedicated pool of high speed VRAM like their discrete counterparts do. Latency here really doesn't matter.
Hard drive isn't too important for Minecraft. However, having a faster drive can speed up mod loading and can make world generation happen faster. Since world sizes tend not to be very big(a few GB at most usually), I'd suggest a 240gb SSD to put your OS, Minecraft, and any other programs you use a lot on.
Hey guys, I see threads occasionally on here asking after laptops and desktops capable of running FTB at good frames. So I figure I'd put together a guide to follow for any who are looking for a machine capable of running FTB great. I'm not going to recommend individual OEM desktops/laptops, since the market is constantly fluctuating. In addition, I'm not here to give recommendations based on budget. With that said, here goes.
First of all, CPU. There's a lot of different machines with different CPUs, so which ones are good for FTB? We're gonna start with desktop chips. Now, almost everybody with some technical knowledge of Minecraft knows that Minecraft hungers for single threaded performance. It's ravenous for it. Luckily, machines with CPUs that have good single threaded performance are not hard to find nowadays. Any Pentium G series chip and up is good. Even relatively modern Celerons are okay(Celeron G1820 and up). However, I'd recommend going with something with an i3 or i5 if possible. While it's true that Minecraft is single threaded hungry, I've found that the extra threads on the i3 and i5 prove to help a lot with FPS stabilization(in other words, not constantly bouncing between 40 and 200 FPS. That's an extreme case, but you get my point.) Any Xeon E3, E5, E7, x5---, e5---, x7---, or e7--- series is good. Core 2 series CPUs are ~okay, but the higher the clock of the CPU in this case, the better(so a core 2 quad q9650>q6600). AVOID PENTIUM 4s, PENTIUM D SERIES, AND ATOMS. Semi-modern AMD chips are okay too(Phenom ii x6 1090t and up, Athlon x4 760k and up, any a8/a10 series CPU up from 7xxx, and FX-43xx/63xx/83xx/9xxx). Avoid FX 41xx/61xx/81xx chips. These have significantly lower single threaded performance then their brothers with the 3. AVOID SEMPRONS, E SERIES, AND GEODE SERIES CHIPS.
On the laptop side, it's a little more tricky. Firstly, avoid everything with Pentiums, Celerons, and Atoms. Not only are the CPUs trash for Minecraft, the laptops themselves are often of low quality. i3s are ~okay. You generally want to stick with laptops that have i5s and i7s. The higher the clock speed the better here! And if you can obtain a laptop with a Skylake processor(i3/i5/i7 6xxx), that'd be awesome. I'll explain why in the next section.
Next up, GPU. This is an area where a lot of FUD has been spread around. Yes, Minecraft is not very GPU heavy at all, but too many people make the mistake that GPU does not matter at all. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Most integrated GPUs nowadays can and will bottleneck your FPS by a lot. Luckily, it does not take much to alleviate the bottleneck. The iGPUs on all desktop i3s/i5s/i7 of the broadwell family(5xxx) or skylake family(6xxx) are sufficiently powerful to not cause too much of a bottleneck. The iGPUs for any AMD A series APU 6xxx and up is also powerful enough not to bottleneck much. REMEMBER TO USE DUAL CHANNEL RAM FOR IGPUS. IF IT DOESN'T HAVE IT, FIX IT. For discrete GPUs, almost any will do. Please refer to this chart. Anything on the level of the Intel HD 530 is powerful enough to not cause a sizeable bottleneck.
Laptops....laptops are tricky. As a rule of thumb, you want to try and avoid laptops with only integrated graphics(unless they are Skylake CPUs, which is 6xxx). If you can get anything with a GT 840m/940m or up that would be great. Also, although very rare, any laptops you find with AMD A10/FX series CPUs in them are also pretty good.
Lastly, if you plan on doing shaders, you need a much more powerful GPU. Something on the level of a HD 7950/r9 280 or gtx 960 will do the job ~okay, but you probably want something such as an r9 290/390 or gtx 970. Shaders are tough to run. For laptops, anything lower then a 970m is a no go, with a 980m being optimal. And remember, Minecraft can't utilize SLI or Crossfire! So don't bother looking at laptops or desktops that use SLI/Crossfire, unless you plan on playing games that can use it.
RAM. Get 8 gigabytes. That's about it. If you are using an integrated GPU, you want the fastest RAM you can get, and preferably do dual channel. iGPUs need lots of memory bandwidth since they don't have a dedicated pool of high speed VRAM like their discrete counterparts do. Latency here really doesn't matter.
Hard drive isn't too important for Minecraft. However, having a faster drive can speed up mod loading and can make world generation happen faster. Since world sizes tend not to be very big(a few GB at most usually), I'd suggest a 240gb SSD to put your OS, Minecraft, and any other programs you use a lot on.
Last edited:
