How well does octo core CPUS fare in this game?

Blackwaters · July 2013

I read that the games coding is mostly singlethreaded, which gives bad performance on weaker quadcores and dualcores.

I currently have a lan box or mediacentre if you prefer that term. It sports an E8400 clocked at 3.8 ghz, Radeon HD 5850 PCS+, 4 gb ddr3 ram at 1333 mhz, and the game runs horribly. I get 20-30 fps most of the time. It doesn't matter what I put my resolution at, be it 640x480 or 1920x1080. The FPS remains the same which makes me think my CPU is the problem. I'm yet to do a R_stats yet.

I have no problems whatsoever on my i5 2500k clocked at 4,6 ghz, 8 gb ddr3 1666 MHz and a HD 7870 royal king which runs the game at over 70 fps at most times at reasonable settings.

I get that the spark engine is new and not optimized yet. It does have beautiful lightning though.
So is this game becoming multithreaded in the near future? I'd like to know as I need the FX 8320 or FX 8350 for SVP video playback (software that allows you to watch videofiles at 60 fps or whatever Hz your monitor runs instead of the usual 24) It's heavily CPU dependent which is why my consideration lies with these as they have top performance scores for this software. Also the Price for this and a motherboard would be much less than going with Intel and a motherboard.

So TL;DR
How well does an AMD FX 8320 run this game being an eight core processor on a mostly singlethreaded game? Would I see improvement over my current E8400?

I do not expect it to run as smooth as on my gaming pc with the i5.

Ironsoul · July 2013

the 8320 would handle the game just fine. Better than a 2500K overclocked? probably not, better than a 2500 non overclocked? Possible, if you're considering upgrading to it just for ns2, there's no point.

The E8400 is not up to the challenge of NS2. Also, I recommend turning your settings down if you want more responsive gameplay(even on your more powerful rig), this game has something funky going on with the rendering pipeline that seems to add input lag, hopefully opengl and dx11 will fix this.

I don't really want to know why you would want to run a video file of 24fps at 60fps, but it seems silly and I have no idea why even your e8400 couldn't do that, no matter.

joederp · July 2013

I have an fx-8320 that I have "overclocked" to 4.1ghz and it handles this game fine, especially since the recent patch that improved the game engines cpu efficiency. Before that patch, the game was still playable but would choke up to 30fps at times. Now, I almost never get below 50 fps and probably 90% of my gameplay time is 60-90 which is just fine with me.
I put "overclocked" in quotes because at that speed its basically just an fx-8350 as far as I'm concerned, I don't think theres any material difference between the two chips.

The FX chips do generate a lot of heat when all 8 cores are active though, so beware you may need to invest in a water cooler if you want it to stay cool during prime95 stress tests. But during NS2 gameplay heat is not an issue at all, I think I see significant CPU activity on only 3 or 4 cores.

Overall PC Stats:
Asus M5A97 LE R2.0
AMD FX-8320
Radeon HD 6850 1gb
8gb gskill "sniper" @ 1600 mhz

Koruyo · July 2013

Even tho the game wont really profit from more than 4 threads, there is quite some time between the generations, so in theory even at stock mhz the amd processor should be quite a bit more effective and yield better fps than your E8400. Guess you need to wait until somebody posts who has the cpu or at least a similar one from the same generation - to get some numbers.

aeroripper · July 2013

I built a new computer for my folks, its a:

FX-8350 (8 core) @ stock voltage (4.0ghz) - water cooled
8GB ram (2133mhz)
128gb SSD
Nvidia 650Ti video (2gb)

I maxed all the graphics in 1680x1080 and get about 35-40 fps during the heaviest firefights. Hit over 100 fps in certain quiet parts of maps. Runs fantastic IMO. Probably run a bit faster on an i7 or something, but 8 core will probably be more future proof if you're building a new system. I'm happy with it. I don't think NS2 will use more than (2?) cores currently, but the extra horsepower helps generally. After living with this old x2 5600+ dual core @ 2.8ghz, it was a night and day difference.

Blackwaters · July 2013

Ironsoul wrote: »

The E8400 is not up to the challenge of NS2. Also, I recommend turning your settings down if you want more responsive gameplay(even on your more powerful rig), this game has something funky going on with the rendering pipeline that seems to add input lag, hopefully opengl and dx11 will fix this.

I don't really want to know why you would want to run a video file of 24fps at 60fps, but it seems silly and I have no idea why even your e8400 couldn't do that, no matter.

Well, once you've seen a video file run that smooth you won't go back to 24 fps. It's looks like when you go to an electronic store and look at the tvs. You'll notice how the 100 Hz tvs pictures are smooth and the 50hz aren't. That's the difference you'll see running SVP. My E8400 can do this, but not for bluray in 1080p. DVDS it does fine. Oh well, no matter.

I have no problem on my i5 2500k, everything is smooth as butter, but I hope that they make it run even better as well. It baffles me that they set the minimum requirements so low, as it's actually unplayable on a core 2 duo for me no matter what settings I run it at. Actually, a core 2 duo 3.0 ghz is put under recommended requirements.

joederp wrote: »

I have an fx-8320 that I have "overclocked" to 4.1ghz and it handles this game fine, especially since the recent patch that improved the game engines cpu efficiency. Before that patch, the game was still playable but would choke up to 30fps at times. Now, I almost never get below 50 fps and probably 90% of my gameplay time is 60-90 which is just fine with me.
I put "overclocked" in quotes because at that speed its basically just an fx-8350 as far as I'm concerned, I don't think theres any material difference between the two chips.

The FX chips do generate a lot of heat when all 8 cores are active though, so beware you may need to invest in a water cooler if you want it to stay cool during prime95 stress tests. But during NS2 gameplay heat is not an issue at all, I think I see significant CPU activity on only 3 or 4 cores.

Overall PC Stats:
Asus M5A97 LE R2.0
AMD FX-8320
Radeon HD 6850 1gb
8gb gskill "sniper" @ 1600 mhz

This makes me hope it'll work for NS 2 as well. I doubt I'll get a watercooler, but I might get a noctua for it, if it really needs it. It'll be micro ATX so the case won't have much space for anything. Thank you for giving me some numbers to work with, it isn't a 2500k, but hell this isn't my main computer so it'll do just fine.

Blackwaters · July 2013

Oh, and if anyone can give an recommendation on the FX 6300 as a six core that'd be appreciated as well. I am considering that one as well due to price and the extra cores won't matter that much for a while.

Ironsoul · July 2013

Just checked out SVP quickly, it's gpu accelerated, your GPU (5850) should handle it super easily. Update: oh, it also makes heavy use of CPU. I shall try this out, I wonder if it'll make me feel ill.

matso · July 2013

The client runs on about 2.2 cores or so ... ie, going from one core to two will make a very large difference, 2->4 will make a small difference, but going from 4->8 won't make any difference whatsoever.

0ni · July 2013

matso wrote: »

The client runs on about 2.2 cores or so ... ie, going from one core to two will make a very large difference, 2->4 will make a small difference, but going from 4->8 won't make any difference whatsoever.

I see a disagree button, which would be inaccurate because this is a true statement. It also obviously doesn't qualify as spam or abuse... We really need a dislike button for posts that just suck.

Nothing against you personally matso, it's just that in this modern age where dual cores are mostly just for phones...

Hope y'all find a way to use the horse power of modern computers is what I'm getting at.

Balmark · July 2013

I think the thinking is .. you can run like 3 VMs with a couple of KVM switches + a monitor for each VM .. 1 machine could run 3 NS2's ! :P

It's all about the family economics (incentive to create clans with your siblings)

btw, quote of the decade

dual cores are mostly just for phones

matso · July 2013

Well, the problem is that unless you REQUIRE a 4-core CPU, you have to make the game run well on dual cores ... so using more cores than aboutish 2 is unfortunately not really worth the investment in complexity and programming time.

And we are still a few years from a minimum 4-core requirement being reasonable...

Locklear · July 2013

0ni wrote: »

matso wrote: »

The client runs on about 2.2 cores or so ... ie, going from one core to two will make a very large difference, 2->4 will make a small difference, but going from 4->8 won't make any difference whatsoever.

I see a disagree button, which would be inaccurate because this is a true statement. It also obviously doesn't qualify as spam or abuse... We really need a dislike button for posts that just suck.

Nothing against you personally matso, it's just that in this modern age where dual cores are mostly just for phones...

Hope y'all find a way to use the horse power of modern computers is what I'm getting at.

Many other developers besides UWE don't make use of more than 2 cores. When it comes to programming for gaming it's very complex and is hard to make it work given the way game logic works.

So.. in this modern day and age.. name another game besides Alan Wake that uses 4 cores to an actual benefit..

joederp · July 2013

Blackwaters wrote: »

Oh, and if anyone can give an recommendation on the FX 6300 as a six core that'd be appreciated as well. I am considering that one as well due to price and the extra cores won't matter that much for a while.

Theoretically, an fx 6300 should be a great option for ns2 - however I read several reports from people on this forum who had very underwhelming performance with that chip when compared to my fx 8320 experiences. So, its possible they just did not do something right, or had other issues, but so far I have not heard anyone post that their fx 6300 was running the game as smoothly as they would like.

Balmark · July 2013

Locklear wrote: »

When it comes to programming for gaming it's very complex and is hard to make it work given the way game logic works.

So.. in this modern day and age.. name another game besides Alan Wake that uses 4 cores to an actual benefit..

I'm sorry, but this is a desperate statement, just because everyone is doing a crap job at utilizing cores, doesn't mean it should be the acceptable norm ..

You should have said

'ok .. so it's so much easier not to use all cores available, name another game besides Alan Wake that was actually designed at the beginning to be able to use all available cores'

It's all about design... I work with a s/w tester who keeps saying 'There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it again' when he's complaining about management pushing things through for the sake of deadlines

... multi-core functionallity was shoe-horned into NS2 just before release?

Ironsoul · July 2013

FX 6300 is fine, in fact I would recommend it. But since you have a 2500k, I do not recommend an FX 6300 versus a 2500K, only for people who do not already have a computer.

NS2's use of Lua is limiting how it handles multiple cores, a game like metro 2033 is designed to take advantage of multiples of whatever it can get it's hands on, so an 8 core cpu metro 2033 just loves. But NS2 uses Lua for it's game logic and Lua has no real multi threading capabilities, it has coroutines, and while you can run multiple threads, but only multiple threads that do different things, you can't dynamically split a task up to take advantage of however many threads the game has. This is kind of annoying, but it's not really that big of a deal, especially since the game is becoming more and more optimised anyway. Be warned I have a very limited understanding of the difference between true multi threading and co routines.

matso · July 2013

Balmark wrote: »

'ok .. so it's so much easier not to use all cores available, name another game besides Alan Wake that was actually designed at the beginning to be able to use all available cores'

It's all about design... I work with a s/w tester who keeps saying 'There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it again' when he's complaining about management pushing things through for the sake of deadlines ... multi-core functionallity was shoe-horned into NS2 just before release?

Not quite - NS2 has had logic running parallel to rendering since day 1, which uses up to 2 cores (depending on the balance between rendering/logic work - usually it's a bit unbalanced, so you end up using < 2 cores in practice).

The extra threading added just before release had to do with shifting client-side prediction to a thread (and Lua VM) of its own, which changed the amount of work done in prediction from increasing with fps to being constant.

For the technically interested: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/122189/224-tech-changes-part-1

kk20 · August 2013

When I ran my BE550 I found it better to overclock 2 cores to 3.8 and shut down the other 2 rather than run 4 cores at 3.4 (i couldnt get all 4 running at 3.8)

How well does octo core CPUS fare in this game?

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