Minecraft - Minium spec ?

[fragdor]

Looking to get a desktop so my son can play Minecraft on a PC - apparently Xbox 360, PS3 and Tablet are not enough...

I know Mojang have minimum specs but what is the realistic minimum ?

What would I need to make this playable rather than just run ?

Anything makes / brands to avoid or any that perform better than the rival equivelant ?

Any help appreciated !!

[Bagnaj97]

I think you'd struggle these days to buy a new PC that *doesn't* play minecraft reasonably well, although some will be better than others. Do you have a budget in mind, would you consider building your own PC and would a laptop be ok?

[b0redom]

I have a 5 year old Macbook pro which runs it it fine. Would agree with Bagnaj97.

[fragdor]

Thanks for the replies.

Definitely would not plan to buy new.

Thoughts were to buy or put together a system for under £100 but need to know what will be suitable for a good experience.

Have a Geforce 9500GT 1GB which I have was given ages ago that I can use if it would be good enough.

[DanceswithUnix]

Slightly depends on whether he has been spoilt by running on a decent desktop. Most kids are happy playing on a laptop, but it is hard to go back once you have used a decent desktop machine

My daughter's PC is a pretty good guide and is as follows:
AMD A10-5800K
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3
500GB WD Black 2.5in hard drive (decent warranty but cheaper than the 3.5in drives at the time).

The integrated graphics in the APU give her a good frame rate at a decent viewing distance on a 1680x1050 display (a TV that having moved house wasn't being used any more). It is certainly better than the 512MB 8800GT video card that my son is using in his PC. I swear she gets a better/further viewing distance than I do with my GTX460 graphics card and 8 core CPU so I think AMD graphics drivers do a better job than NVidia on this game.

What budget are hoping for? Are you building yourself or want pre-built?

That APU is two generations out of date now, and ram has gone up in price, so if I was building now I would go for:

FM2+ motherboard http://www.ebuyer.com/567538-ga-f2a8...ga-f2a88xm-d3h
4GB of ram (faster the better, 2 sticks of 2GB) http://www.ebuyer.com/274405-corsair...x4gx3m2b1600c9
AMD A10-7850 APU http://www.ebuyer.com/613105-amd-a10...-ad785kxbjabox

Cheaper APU would save you £40 http://www.ebuyer.com/613494-amd-a10...-ad679kwohlbox

If you want to go Intel, then I would say an i3 CPU and an AMD R7 240 graphics card.

[outwar6010]

a small apu build would perform nicely with a ssd as a boot

[DanceswithUnix]

£100, OK in that price range I think you are going to have to look on ebay for a core 2 duo desktop that has a graphics slot and put your 9500GT into it.

It won't break any performance records, but it should still be better than most kids get with a cheap family laptop.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Does the OP have a copy of Windows though?? Minecraft can be installed under Linux but I am not sure how well it would perform TBH.

Edit!!

I wonder how well this build would do TBH:

http://www.ebuyer.com/500916-refurbi...pc-7873-1066-1

[DanceswithUnix]

Does the OP have a copy of Windows though?? Minecraft can be installed under Linux but I am not sure how well it would perform TBH.

Edit!!

I wonder how well this build would do TBH:

http://www.ebuyer.com/500916-refurbi...pc-7873-1066-1

For the money I think it would do fine. As you say, the advantage of Ebay is you should get a windows license (hopefully better than XP).

Have run Minecraft on Fedora Linux in the past. Java isn't a problem, and using that 9500gt would allow using the Nvidia drivers which are just the same as the Windows ones for performance.

[virtuo]

Why is the 360 (or even the tablet) version not enough?

[HalloweenJack]

ocuk have 2 x 4GB of PC2400 DDR3 (which runs on my parents APU 5800K @ CL10 2133) for £60

[DanceswithUnix]

Why is the 360 (or even the tablet) version not enough?

Minecraft is written in Java. It is a clumsy, badly written resource hog that even on my main PC with 8 cores, 8GB of ram and an SSD lags so badly that it often doesn't bother rendering a chunk of ground until you try and stand on it (not when walking around, but I think it makes horse riding almost impossible).

To get around that, they paid a company to re-write the game in C++. Like it should have been in the first place. That allows it to at least work on low end hardware, but has a bunch of disadvantages partly down to the limited storage expected to be available and partly because as a port of an evolving game it always lags in features. Basically it is a similar but different game.

If you can find a primary school age child around year 4 to 6 I'm sure they can give you all the details

[Bagnaj97]

That £100 limit will make things interesting. If you've got a copy of Windows (or are happy installing a Linux distro) ebuyer have this for £113 - http://www.ebuyer.com/519713-zoostor...pc-7873-1076-1 They have a cheaper one for £107 but it's got half the RAM and Minecraft is RAM hungry.

[Pob255]

Resolution is also a key factor, I've seen some of the students at work playing minecraft on the school pc's (i3 2100 & 4gb ram) It plays fine windowed (800x600) but not full screen (1280x1024) at normal view distance.
Texture packs can also cause a performance hit, why I don't go over a 128x128 texture pack and tend to go for 32x32 or 64x64

[Marenghi]

That £100 limit will make things interesting. If you've got a copy of Windows (or are happy installing a Linux distro) ebuyer have this for £113 - http://www.ebuyer.com/519713-zoostor...pc-7873-1076-1 They have a cheaper one for £107 but it's got half the RAM and Minecraft is RAM hungry.

vanilla minecraft wasn't RAM hungry the last time i booted it up. if it's modded and you use texture packs then yes it will be but vanilla shouldn't be, unless things have changed a lot from the past 2 versions. i was under the impression you can easily play it with 128mb as its allocated memory.

[DanceswithUnix]

vanilla minecraft wasn't RAM hungry the last time i booted it up. if it's modded and you use texture packs then yes it will be but vanilla shouldn't be, unless things have changed a lot from the past 2 versions. i was under the impression you can easily play it with 128mb as its allocated memory.

You should be able to turn down the amount of memory used. Default allows the JVM to eat 1GB of ram, on top of what it needs just to run. The OS needs some space as well. So a 2GB machine is possible but not ideal.

Edit to add: I guess in context of this thread, 2GB probably is the minimum spec. The game is more playable with an increased viewing distance, but that not only requires more ram but also stresses the video card more as well.