"The Best BUDGET Upgrade For Star Citizen Is Inbound
If you’re having a tough time with performance issues, you’re not alone. This will be the best upgrade for your budget build."
Star Citizen, being in an unoptimized state, often suffers from poor performance on PCs. To improve the gaming experience, one budget-friendly upgrade that is often overlooked is switching from a mechanical hard drive to a solid-state drive (SSD). This change can alleviate many issues and provide smoother gameplay.
While some may suggest increasing the amount of RAM, it is important to note that Star Citizen does not fully utilize excessive amounts of RAM. Running the game with 16GB or even 32GB is sufficient. Additionally, investing in a high-end GPU may not yield significant improvements, as Star Citizen is highly dependent on the CPU.
The secret ingredient for better performance in Star Citizen lies in the CPU’s cache memory. Insufficient cache can lead to bottlenecking, causing the graphics card to wait for instructions from the CPU. Upgrading to a CPU with a larger cache, such as the Ryzen 9 5900X or the upcoming Ryzen 7 5700X3D, can greatly enhance performance.
AMD is releasing the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, a budget-friendly CPU with 16 threads and 96MB of L3 cache. Priced at $249, it offers a significant amount of cache for its cost. While its base clock speed is lower compared to other CPUs, the potential impact on performance remains to be seen. Rumors suggest that Star Citizen may adopt technologies like DLSS 2 and FSR 2 in future patches, which could further enhance performance for AMD and Nvidia users.
In conclusion, for Star Citizen players on a budget, upgrading to an SSD and investing in a CPU with a larger cache, such as the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, can greatly improve performance. These upgrades address the game’s optimization issues and ensure smoother gameplay without the need for expensive hardware upgrades.