My PC has the following,

* Windows 10  
* 6th Gen Intel Core i3, 6100U mobile processor
* Intel HD Graphics 520
* 4GB memory

Judging by benchmarks I see around, you could have graphical issues or texture problems. SE needs dedicated video memory, but some users have SE running on Intel HD 4000-5000.
edit:
Thanks Ostarisk.

Mosfet wrote:

Source of the post but some users have SE running on Intel HD 4400-5000.

My SE is running on Intel 4000, and It works seamlessly, with a few lag spikes sometimes.

Ostarisk wrote:

My SE is running on Intel 4000, and It works seamlessly, with a few lag spikes sometimes.

The Intel HD 520 graphic card should be slightly more powerful than Intel HD 4000, so I guess it should work just fine.
If you have weird artifacts you can try to ask Ostarisk, maybe he knows the solution. 

Hi my computer is low budget, so i don't have very high specs. I just wanted to know, what was the lowest graphics settings possible?

SwordL wrote:

Source of the post Hi my computer is low budget, so i don't have very high specs. I just wanted to know, what was the lowest graphics settings possible?

Change the following settings in the Graphics menu:

• Anisotropy level: off
• MSAA antialiasing: off
• FXAA antialiasing: off
• Dithering: off
• Aurora quality: low
• Black hole quality: low
• Ship warp quality: off
• Diffraction spikes: off
• Lens flares: off
• Landscape LOD: -2
• Loading speed: (higher numbers will load faster, but will lower framerate while loading terrain)
• Eclipse shadows: off
• Ring shadows on sky: off
• Planet shine: off
• Night side lights: off

Those are the least demanding graphics settings possible in SE. If those aren't good enough, you can try disabling some objects or layers from rendering (like galaxies, nebulae, aurora, comet tails, clouds, water, etc.)

If that still doesn't work, then there's not much you can do. SE is a fairly demanding 3D program, and generally requires dedicated graphics hardware to run well.

it works better now, thanks

Why ask if you can see for yourself, It's free so just Run it and find Out.

Pepethecat, please refrain from making posts that are terse and unhelpful.  You can see how others have contributed thoughtful and constructive advice.

Watsisname wrote:

Source of the post Pepethecat, please refrain from making posts that are terse and unhelpful.  You can see how others have contributed thoughtful and constructive advice.

I agree with you, but i think the post that Pepethecat made was meant as a joke 

Speaking of old computers, I have one and I was looking to upgrade what I have but I saw my motherboard does not work with any video card above PCI-e 2.0

Right now I have a Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2 GB DDR2-667 memory, 640 MB Geforce 8800 GTS 112 SP graphics card.  I set my computer to allocate 2 GB for video memory (640 MB from the video card and the rest from RAM.)  I am using XP Home x32 which does not use much RAM so I allocated most of my RAM for SE.  I run SE in a 1024x768 window so that should hopefully minimize its video memory usage

2 GB RAM is the most this motherboard will allow, however there is a bios hack that will allow it to take up to 4 GB RAM (but only 3.3 GB will be usable, even if I install a 64 bit OS.)

The two upgrades I am considering are:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... -_-Product

EVGA GeForce GT 730 DirectX 12 04G-P3-2739-KR 4GB 128-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 Video Card

4GB 128-Bit DDR3

Core Clock 700 MHz

2 x DVI-I 1 x mini HDMI

PCI Express 2.0

I want the dual DVI ports since I run two monitors.

The other upgrade is

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... -_-Product



Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT25664AA667

DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
Cas Latency 5
Voltage 1.8V

Should I do one or both upgrades, considering I will be limited by the motherboard to 3.3 GB RAM even if I go from 2 GB to 4 GB?  Also should I do the upgrade from the 640 MB graphics card to the 4 GB graphics card even though the 4 GB graphics card is slower?  See this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu ... ,4388.html

On this hierarchy chart, it's 3 levels below my current graphics card, and my current card isn't the standard one, it's the SSC version with 112 shader processors, instead of 96, and performs more like an 8800 GTX (5 levels above the 4 GB card.)  Problem is this motherboard is a PCI-e 4x board so the graphics slot might be the bottleneck anyway and the motherboard doesn't support anything higher than PCI-e 2.0  I am considering the two upgrades though because they are relatively inexpensive and I already bought a 2 GB hard drive and a copy of Windows 10 32bit/64bit Home.  I'm not having any issues running the program in a 1024x768 window, however the program hangs upon closing and I have to kill the process in the task manager to close it (or tell Windows to close it in the pop up window.)  I also worry that future editions of SE will have higher requirements- is there any news about that or will the current requirements to run SE hold for foreseeable future versions?  I noticed that the video memory and RAM requirements have gotten higher with more recent versions.  The other thing is I noticed via EVGA Precision that SE uses over 95% of my graphics card, is that dangerous to the long term health of the card and will it shorten its life?  Would that be just as bad with the new card, should I get it?

As far as I can see in other benchmark sites, GT 730 is superior, plus, 4GB vs 640MB, SE cries for VRAM.
As for the RAM, if you want to use windows 10, go for it. I wonder if that bios hack could create RAM address errors in the long run, though.
If it's for squeezing the juice out of an old machine... oh well.
Wait, 2GB HDD, really? I hope it's a mistake

lol I must've mistyped, I meant 2 TB HD.  The only issue with that is, the new drive is SATA 3 and my motherboard is SATA 2.  So a bit of a bottleneck.

So going from 2 GB RAM to 3.3 GB RAM isn't worth it?

I found widely varying prices on the RAM.  I want to only buy Crucial RAM because of the lifetime warranty (it went bad on me before and they shipped me new RAM right away.)  It's almost $60 for a 2x2 GB kit on Newegg but I found kits as low as $20 on Amazon!

https://www.amazon.com/CRUCIAL-CT2KIT25 ... CEH3AV66CC

But I am not sure if that is real or "fake."

I have an 8800 GTS 640 with a "lifetime" warranty from eVga but it won't go bad on me so they can replace it with a GT 730 so I guess I will just have to buy the eVga GT 730 outright (looks like eVga only gives out 3 year warranties now.)

I worry about the stability of the memory after flashing a hacked bios too, aside from that this motherboard is very finicky when it comes to memory.  The computer would randomly shut down after a few hours until I tweaked the memory settings and started running DDR2-667 memory as DDR2-533 memory.  This seems to be a feature of these Asrock 4coredual SATA2 motherboards.

About Windows 10 Home, I am thinking of running a dual boot Windows XP Home 32bit / Windows 10 Home 32bit system.  I have devices and software that needs Windows XP but I also have newer stuff that no longer supports XP

https://www.amazon.com/GeForce-Superclo ... tBy=recent

Found GTX 580 used on Amazon. Is that a better buy than the GT 730? It is many levels higher on the Hierarchy Chart I posted before but is only 1.5 GB VRAM.  Should I get that used for its faster speed or get the GT 730 new since it has more video memory?

HarbingerDawn wrote:

SwordL wrote:

Source of the post Hi my computer is low budget, so i don't have very high specs. I just wanted to know, what was the lowest graphics settings possible?

Change the following settings in the Graphics menu:

• Anisotropy level: off
• MSAA antialiasing: off
• FXAA antialiasing: off
• Dithering: off
• Aurora quality: low
• Black hole quality: low
• Ship warp quality: off
• Diffraction spikes: off
• Lens flares: off
• Landscape LOD: -2
• Loading speed: (higher numbers will load faster, but will lower framerate while loading terrain)
• Eclipse shadows: off
• Ring shadows on sky: off
• Planet shine: off
• Night side lights: off

Those are the least demanding graphics settings possible in SE. If those aren't good enough, you can try disabling some objects or layers from rendering (like galaxies, nebulae, aurora, comet tails, clouds, water, etc.)

If that still doesn't work, then there's not much you can do. SE is a fairly demanding 3D program, and generally requires dedicated graphics hardware to run well.

Harbinger, is there any way to return to default settings after experimenting with these (and other settings)?  I can't find a way to go back to default.  So I'm relying on my memory.
-also note MSAA is off by default
-there is no ship warp "off" setting so I set it to "low"
I tweaked the settings not because I was experiencing any lag in the program (I wasn't), but because the GPU usage was abominably high (around 95% for running in a 1024x768 window and with the program just sitting there doing nothing is way too much GPU usage and a huge amount of graphics memory being used for it being in just a 1024x768 window.)  Any idea why it's gobbling up so much GPU usage and such a high amount of GPU memory?  Starry Night Pro Plus 7.5, which is a 15 GB program uses far less GPU memory (128 MB) and the GPU usage is nowhere near this high.  And I use that program all the way to 1600x1200- my full monitor resolution.  The reason I am aghast at the 95% GPU usage especially is because I was told that high a GPU usage combined with high GPU temps can destroy the card.  So I am trying to get the GPU usage as low as possible.  Using your settings I've managed to get it to around 80% so far- but it still varies between 70% and 95%- with the default settings it was consistently over 95%.

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post Harbinger, is there any way to return to default settings after experimenting with these (and other settings)?  I can't find a way to go back to default.

There isn't any "default" button except in the controls settings, so you have to use your memory.