Minecraft - Minium spec ?

[Obraxis]

Pretty certain anything within the last 5 years will run Mineecraft fine.

[outwar6010]

Does anyone know why minecraft isn't on steam?

[kalniel]

Does anyone know why minecraft isn't on steam?

Because then they couldn't do the things they want to:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/0...raft-on-steam/

[fragdor]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

Good to hear that it looks like I may get something suitable for around £100.

Got a couple of months until I need to do anything so will keep my eyes open for something suitable.

Next thing I would need to figure out is : is it worth it to spend £100 for this or would it be better to have a larger budget to allow other games to be run ? Dont want this to be just a minecraft machine !

[DanceswithUnix]

Depends on just how much money you can add to the budget.

There are regular questions about entry level gaming setups in the "Review my build" section: http://forums.hexus.net/review-my-build/

Have a look though there, but remember that just a copy of OEM Windows is about £70 before you buy any hardware.

[fragdor]

Thanks for the pointer mate - will have a look.

I have legit windows as I used to do a lot with laptops and PC builds etc but have been out of the game for a couple of years and have lost touch with current hardware etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

Are you happy with bolting a PC together yourself then?

Do you have a monitor/TV and keyboard you can use?

£56 Quad core Athlon II http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...he-100w-retail
£45 motherboard http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...x16)-vga-dvi-d
£34 4GB of Ram http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-(...-9-9-9-24-150v
£35 500GB Hard drive http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb...8mb-cache-13ms

That would give you a lot of CPU grunt now, ability to upgrade to the latest FM2+ AMD processors if you ever want to. Still needs a case and PSU, uses your existing graphics card. Probably looking at £200 all in. I think that is about as low as you can get with new components without going too slow and/or un-expandable for the future.

[Joka232]

if you want smooth then i think you will need atleast 2 GB of RAM, a dual core CPU a low end graphics card anything above the 400 series of nvidia for example. and you should be good to go you can run it on intergrated but it lags sometimes

[DanceswithUnix]

Worth me making another comment on this, as I tried Minecraft on my E350 based netbook the other day. It was pretty bad, but that is a whole league better than it was a year or so ago when it was utterly unplayable. I guess there have been improvements in the last year.

[Frankenfurter]

The laptop I'm on right now is Core 2 Duo T7100 @ 1.8GHz, integrated graphics and has 2GB Ram (yeah it's old, leave me alone xD) and it runs Minecraft if that helps.

Not well mind, I more or less have to use the lowest view distance and just occasionally step up to the middle one for a minute if I'm lost. xD But my point is, you don't need an awful lot to run it by today's standards.

Also if you're worried about having a 'just for minecraft' machine, could always just install it on a higher spec shared PC instead. Saves buying new PCs for everyone all the time and helps with how damn addictive Minecraft is. Haha. But I guess the value in that will differ from household to household.

[Pob255]

Big issue is if you start playing around with mod packs, the basic requirements will then jump up a bit, still not massive but a system that can run vanilla on low draw distance will start to struggle with something like tekkit, Feed the beast or moonquest.
texture packs and shaders can also push up to demands

But all told I'd look at 2.5ghz dual core, 4gb ram and a GT640 or HD6670 as a solid base line.

[fragdor]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply to this and thanks for the responses.

Not much has happened in the meantime but I do now have a PC I can use.

it has a Pentium Dual-Core E2220 2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM and a Geforce 7100.

Gets a decent 30fps by jiggering the settings.

Is this decent and playable ?

Also to upgrade I would need a low profile PCI Express GFX card.

Can anyone recommend something if required and advise what performance increase I could hope for ?

Thanks !

[Wordsmither]

Minecraft is surprisingly resource hungry.

Even the devs are aware of this and have plans for performance improvements in the future

The GPU is barely used, if this build is genuinely solely for minecraft, overlook it.

A nice APU would do fine.