Probably. If you are running with integrated graphics you may be limited to smaller maps or lower settings. You may try a GPU monitoring program to see how heavily it is being utilized, though I'm not sure if any of those support intel integrated graphics.

This is where your problem is. The swap file needs to be able to expand to 48GB. The OS is going to be crippled if the swap (page) file is constrained to less than the amount of RAM you have, and ideally should be capable of at least 3*RAM. Remember that the swap file is for the entire computer, not just for GC3, and does more than back up virtual memory for all applications, and the OS, running on your PC.

Yep, it looks like the GPU was the bottleneck. After overclocking it by 200Mhz I gained 3-4FPS so now it's around 18FPS when fully zoomed out during the early stages of the game. Temperatures are reasonable too with the iGPU sitting around 53 degrees Celsius. During turns the responsiveness of the game drops dramatically to around 2FPS but that's to be expected given the heavy load on the system.

Thanks for all of your help

Here's a screenshot of my playing the game and having the monitoring tools open. I'm still learning how to play

Its tradition here in Australia that we are always looking for ways for things to be more expensive than necessary.... hell we even sell our own resources overseas cheaper than what we would dare sell to ourselves! http://www.michaelwest.com.au/its-a-gas-australian-gas-prices-are-a-bargain-in-japan/

And when you try to look for computer parts, most of the prices are way high, I'm like, you gotta be kiddin me? But the trick is, don't just accept it, just because the first 10 places all have the same high price, douse not mean a reasonable one is not to be found, you just have to keep looking... i often succeed in shaving off a couple of hundred off what seemed to be the standard high price.

Competition is not quite totally dead yet in Australia - although for a number of industries it is (banking, energy, insurance)

Here is a tip... plenty of systems look good at first, then you spot that little word 'integrated'.... ah, in future, that's when your supposed to say 'next' lol

Wow, that's interesting stuff!

Some time ago i saw lots of posts on Galciv2 not using available ram.... i think it was restricted to 4gb if memory serves?

What they were saying was you need a 64 bit OS and Galciv also needs to be 64 bit to use more ram - so it can be either the OS or the game causing ram restriction. However, that is why they made Galciv3 64 bit!

I expect either of those would be fine, but you might not be able to achieve your goal regardless.  After a certain point, you wont be GPU limited and your CPU and RAM will bear the brunt.  I'm on an old GTX 680 and the game runs pretty smooth, a 460 isn't much weaker than it is and far more modern a design with twice the memory(the models folder is 3.8GB, so I have to do a lot of swapping in and out of VRAM with only 2GB, which leads to hiccups), but with hundreds of planets and thousands of ships, there's going to be a performance cost at some point regardless of how big a monster your GPU is.

I'd spring for at least an RX 470 though, preferably a 480.  Dropping $100 for 5 year old performance is a bit of a waste when you can get more than twice the performance for twice as much.  It wont help much, possibly any, where GC3 is concerned, but it will certainly perform massively better should you buy any current more graphically intensive games.  The viable lifespan of a 460 will be pretty short for more demanding applications, maybe only good for a year or two in RTS, FPS, and RPG games.  My 680 has already reached the end of what I consider it's viable time frame.  I'm holding out to see AMD's next processor and GPU releases or I'd have replaced it already.  Instead, I'm simply waiting to play the latest Tomb Raider because I'd have a stutter fest with my current hardware.

These are people with 4-8GB of ram, not the guy with 16.  He's nowhere near running out of space.

Yes, there is a recommendation for a 3*RAM maximum size, but this recommendation is based on the typical computer buyer that gets a piece of crap from Dell that shipped with 4-8GB of ram in an era where your browser can burn through a gig by itself.  If you've got 16 today, you probably wont ever use a page file in your daily operations, if you've got 32?  It's just not a relevant issue for him.  Windows 10 isn't that dumb, it's designed to run on systems without a page file just fine, and it will use up the entire thing.

Haha I built it myself but I didn't get the graphics card at the time because the RX 480 had just been released and I was waiting to see if the prices would come down a bit as availability increased.

Intel IGPUs have been on the CPU itself for several years now, so pretty much all Intel boards have video outputs.

Two things:

(1) Even being in Australia and having to deal with the stupidly high costs for computer parts, I'd IMMEDIATELY go out and by virtually any used video card you can get your hands on.  Literally anything made within the past 3 years as a dedicated card will be a big boost to your performance over an Intel 530. Go down to the local computer shop, and buy the cheapest 1GB VRAM video card you find - ask them if they've swapped out any from people upgrading, and buy that card. You should have no problem with finding one under  $50 AUD  (heck, I see some available NEW from on-line retailers shipping to Australia for less than that).   That will immediately solve your problems.

(2) on modern OSes, including all flavors of Windows since Win2003, virtual memory works this way:

virtual memory = physical ram + swap file

All allocation is done into virtual memory, with no knowledge of where that memory page will actually reside. the OS itself then decides where to put the memory page based on two criteria:

1. Is the page actually allocated for use, and not just "reserved" for future allocation?
2. When was the last time the page was accessed?

In the case of memory pages actually accessed, the OS will put the most recently used ones in RAM, and, if there is no room left over, store the remainder on the swap file.  In the case of "reserved" pages - ones the application says to allocate, but not use for the immediate future - these are put on the swap file. Reserved pages are really just markers that say "Hi, I'm going to be using this sometime in the future. You can't have this space."   Reserved pages are increasingly rare; they were typical for huge memory hog apps like Photoshop in the 32-bit era, but in the 64-bit era, they're virtually useless, and thus, apps don't do it.

Should there be more RAM than the sum total of all allocated pages in use, the OS will use the remaining RAM as a file cache.  This file cache will be evicted immediately upon any memory pressure (i.e. memory being allocated in excess of the existing total).

The long and short of this is this:  for modern systems under ordinary desktop use, you should NEVER need a swap file. If the OS is having to swap, you're taking a enormous (i.e. 10,000x) performance hit.  Your RAM should *always* be sufficient to run all the apps you need; if it isn't, BUY MORE RAM.  You should have a swap file for two reasons: (a) if you want to do a crash dump, you have to have sufficient swap space to store the entire contents of RAM, or ( you still have certain apps that reserve but don't allocate a significant amount of RAM.  JavaVMs are a prime example of this right now.

In case (a), you need a swap = RAM.  In case (, you need swap sufficient enough to hold the reservation amount. Which probably is no more than a few GBs.

TL;DR:  you shouldn't need a swap file at all on a modern desktop system. At most, 1-2GB is sufficient, regardless of system RAM (because, who actually looks at crash dumps?)   If you detect swapping, BUY MORE RAM.  It's that simple.