I was cpu limited...4770k

[CaptainRAVE]

I didn’t realise how cpu limited I was with my old i7 4770k, even paired with a 1080ti. It helped slightly when I upgraded from 8gb to 16gb, but it wasn’t smooth at all, especially by the time I had about 15, 0.5 or so billion credit complexes and I certainly couldn’t go in system with them. Holy vision was a complete no go!

I now have a 9700k and the difference is night and day. I can put the graphics on high/ultra, msaa x4 (no more fxaa!) and I can go into holy vision and actually fly by my complexes (that are now sharper and jaggy free). The map is also really smooth, even zoomed out.

Saving is still pretty slow, even on an m2 ssd.

So all ready for 2.6 and beyond.

[Imperial Good]

Saving is still pretty slow, even on an m2 ssd.

M.2 has nothing to do with drive performance. One can get SATA M.2 SSDs was well as PCIe M.2 SSDs. In theory even USB ones exist, but no one really uses that part of M.2 for SSDs. The fast sort are PCIe M.2, hence why people say they have a PCIe or NVMe SSD rather than a "m2 ssd". SATA/HCI M.2 SSDs perform the same as a discrete 3.5 SATA SSD.

This points towards saving not being I/O bound but rather single thread performance bound.

I didn’t realise how cpu limited I was with my old i7 4770k

Tell me about it. I played with a I7 920 until moving now to a Ryzen 9 3900X and performance is infinitely better. Even the old GTX 760 I use produces >60 FPS a lot of the time now instead of sub 30.

[CaptainRAVE]

Yup, I meant a NVMe PCIe SSD. I think my game is just so big now - the ‘expanded’ Sector bug probably didn’t help.

[tomchk]

Hopefully they will optimize the game enough so people that can't upgrade can play it smoothly with that complexity. Hopefully...

[Fulgrymm]

I wonder what Threadripper would do for the game.

[adeine]

I wonder what Threadripper would do for the game.

Probably significantly worse than most as the game doesn't use a lot of threads.

[Cdaragorn]

Hopefully they will optimize the game enough so people that can't upgrade can play it smoothly with that complexity. Hopefully...

I wouldn't hold my breath for this. You can only optimize so far and they've done a lot in regards to the AI complexity already which is the primary reason this game is CPU bound. I"m sure there will still be some improvements in the future. I just wouldn't expect them to be huge.

[Imperial Good]

I wonder what Threadripper would do for the game.

Assuming you are referring to the up coming third generation Threadripper, they will provide similar performance to any third generation Ryzen processor. Depending on maximum boost frequency it will either lean towards the 3600 or the 3950X as far as performance goes. It will certainly not perform any better than a 3950X when running X4.

Probably significantly worse than most as the game doesn't use a lot of threads.

Threadripper are HEDT processors and as such they have the single thread performance similar to their consumer SKU counterparts. Sure a third generation Threadripper will perform slightly worse than a I9 9900K but it will perform in the same range as Ryzen third generation processors which are plenty powerful enough.

The only issue with them for applications like this is price to performance where they clearly are not worth it for gaming alone. Their cost can only be justified if you have an application that needs the huge core count they offer.

[adeine]

Threadripper are HEDT processors and as such they have the single thread performance similar to their consumer SKU counterparts. Sure a third generation Threadripper will perform slightly worse than a I9 9900K but it will perform in the same range as Ryzen third generation processors which are plenty powerful enough.

The only issue with them for applications like this is price to performance where they clearly are not worth it for gaming alone. Their cost can only be justified if you have an application that needs the huge core count they offer.

Third gen Threadripper isn't out yet though, so they will lag behind any mainstream third gen Ryzen or Intel CPU. Not a huge difference, but certainly worse where X4 is concerned.

[Imperial Good]

so they will lag behind any mainstream third gen Ryzen or Intel CPU. Not a huge difference, but certainly worse where X4 is concerned.

They are offset by a few months. Likely due to 7nm supply shortages atm as they also pushed back the 3950X to the same release date. Sure if you were to buy a second generation ThreadRipper right now it will perform worse than a third generation Ryzen, but the third generation ThreadRippers coming in a few months will easily keep pace.

There is no penalty for having a lot of cores when running properly written software. The only reason server processors have such low clock speeds is because they are intended to be power efficient rather than high performance.

Some badly written games can have negative scaling with core count. The only example I know is the Total War series where it must be trying to use all threads but with high thread count the synchronization overhead must outweigh the gains from simultaneous execution to the point performance turns to mud. Most games that do not scale well should limit the maximum thread count and leave the rest of the CPU idle.

[Panos]

I wonder what Threadripper would do for the game.

The game currently on 2.6b4 uses 8 cores and 2 threads on the 3900X all around 60-80% usage.
And the overall performance moving from 8600K @ 5Ghz to 3900X is pretty good when the game matures and you run multiple stations and ships. Especially for me when running internet radio or twich streams and other programs at the same time.

When the AGESA 1004 based bios is out near the end of the month, which greatly would improve the 3900X boost holding abilities, I will run some benchmarks with SMT off/on and as 6 core 12 thread CPU only. (can do it through Ryzen Master).

Tell me about it. I played with a I7 920 until moving now to a Ryzen 9 3900X and performance is infinitely better. Even the old GTX 760 I use produces >60 FPS a lot of the time now instead of sub 30.

On that I agree and moved from 8600K to the 3900X, not some museum CPU like you
Make sure you tweak your ram and Infinity Fabric, as they both help with this game.

[Imperial Good]

When the AGESA 1004 based bios is out near the end of the month, which greatly would improve the 3900X boost holding abilities, I will run some benchmarks with SMT off/on and as 6 core 12 thread CPU only. (can do it through Ryzen Master).

This would be useful to know if X4 is scaling properly. Ideally there should be little to no difference with performance as Zen2 keeps disused core clusters and even chiplets at very low power. With the 6 cores no SMT test one would hope that performance would regress due to low core/thread count.

not some museum CPU like you

Oi the old thing worked perfectly fine until my PSU murdered either it or the motherboard! lol. In retrospect I am not even sure if it was operating properly at the end as it seemed to struggle more and more with games it used to play well like StarCraft II. Could have been it disliked newer optimizations or OS bloat, I am not sure.

Make sure you tweak your ram and Infinity Fabric, as they both help with this game.

I plan to roughly tune memory timings (rough tighten, probably will not adjust voltage) once BIOS updates slow down. Currently one would need to retune it every time a new AGESA BIOS (technically UEFI) is released as BIOS updates reset BIOS settings to default, at least on the ASUS TUF x570 I am using.

[MarvinTheMartian]

In a similar position, running a 4770K @stock with 32GB RAM (don't think it's ever used more than 16GB in the last 5 years) and a pair of GTX1070 in SLi (not used in X4 I know).

I was pretending to myself that upgrading might make a bit of a difference but not much, though, now I can't really ignore it and will have to decide between an 9900k and 3900x (not looking to start a debate on that as I have my own criteria for choosing). This system has served me well for a long time and will be put to good use in other ways.

Interesting to hear that save game speed is still slow. Last weekend I moved my save games from a slow RAID1 pair of spinny disks that go into power-save mode (with disk compression on) to a pair of SATA SSD in RAID0 without compression and it's slightly faster (with or without save compression doesn't seem to matter) - Why?! Is the game waiting to save the game-state, I guess there's a lot going on in the universe, but still.

Only running a small game (1.5 player stations) at the moment so no real lag or anything and it's using 2 cores ~90% so multi-threading nicely considering. Need to find another reason to justify a new system than just X4 though.

[EmperorDragon]

Interesting...

I have an i7 4770K CPU as well, with a GTX 1050ti and 16gb of RAM. Graphics settings are set to high (not ultra) and I really struggle to find big enough battles or station complexes that causes performance issues. The game runs smooth as silk for the most part and FPS may dip into the 30s or 20s here and there but, usually averages around 50 in populated space. If I swap out the 1050 for a RTX 2070, then I can boost everything to max and have no framerate issues at all. This is on 2.50.

And I like to build self-sufficient empires of many factory complexes too, including many non-factory stations in-between. My last empire actually became a bit overcrowded, I just couldn't stop myself building more and more stations.

[adeine]

Why?! Is the game waiting to save the game-state, I guess there's a lot going on in the universe, but still.

If I had to guess, probably not the most efficient xml parser for the purpose, so given the ludicrous amount of data points it takes a while.

[Panos]

I plan to roughly tune memory timings (rough tighten, probably will not adjust voltage) once BIOS updates slow down. Currently one would need to retune it every time a new AGESA BIOS (technically UEFI) is released as BIOS updates reset BIOS settings to default, at least on the ASUS TUF x570 I am using.

Use this guide it works

https://youtu.be/KOqhyVNPhaM

[Panos]

Interesting to hear that save game speed is still slow. Last weekend I moved my save games from a slow RAID1 pair of spinny disks that go into power-save mode (with disk compression on) to a pair of SATA SSD in RAID0 without compression and it's slightly faster (with or without save compression doesn't seem to matter) - Why?! Is the game waiting to save the game-state, I guess there's a lot going on in the universe, but still.

Yeah that is something cannot get. I am using a pcie 4.0 NMVE driver (Corsair MP600) and saving is pretty slow process.

[CaptainRAVE]

Interesting to hear that save game speed is still slow. Last weekend I moved my save games from a slow RAID1 pair of spinny disks that go into power-save mode (with disk compression on) to a pair of SATA SSD in RAID0 without compression and it's slightly faster (with or without save compression doesn't seem to matter) - Why?! Is the game waiting to save the game-state, I guess there's a lot going on in the universe, but still.

Yeah that is something cannot get. I am using a pcie 4.0 NMVE driver (Corsair MP600) and saving is pretty slow process.

I haven’t checked whether mine is compressed or not, but I was surprised that it wasn’t much quicker at saving on a NMVE pcie drive vs my old setup. My empire is already huge, god help me when the dlc starts dropping. I haven’t even built a shipyard complex yet and I have billions to spend.

[Imperial Good]

Yeah that is something cannot get. I am using a pcie 4.0 NMVE driver (Corsair MP600) and saving is pretty slow process.

The current PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives are not really benefiting from PCIe 4.0. They only run at best slightly faster than 3.0 ones. With many 3.0 ones having faster sustained speeds.

The main reason saving is slow is data processing. The entire game state must be iterated, converted into XML and then that XML compressed. This process could be pipelined to be multi threaded but even still one of the stages would bottleneck.

[Assailer]

This is the problem with the game, this is why it's not popular and getting negative traction since X3. Performance.

I understand latest processors handle the game well, but is this EGO's best interest to appeal to that limited amount of customers?