Absolute best single core performance?

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ZGR

Platinum Member
Oct 26, 2012
2,052
656
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I actually used to have a 7970 and it was ok for 1080p but I still had problems with very high single core CPU use. I don't think there are any AMD cards that are a match for a 1080ti at the moment either, sadly.

If I get fast RAM, will I need to turn the core OC down?

Thanks

Yeah, you will need to invest $1200 for Vega FE and run some tests for us! :D

Check out this old thread

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...ies-overclocks-inside-now-with-delid.2493250/


https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...rclocks-inside-now-with-delid.2493250/page-16

Hope that helps.

I'm presuming this 5.2 GHz chip you got was tested with DDR4 2400. As long as you are below 1.4v (cpu core) or around there you are perfectly safe.

Some of those posters bought DDR4 4200 and only got to ~3600 with their OC. I would aim for 3200-3400 personally. No idea, your chip could be far more "golden" than theirs though!
 
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krumme

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2009
5,952
1,585
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Latency priority first !

What a mess for those games. Intel and Nvidia dream come through. RTS nightmare because of some stupid api and stoneage technology. If this was made properly those types of games would benefit like crazy. Huge mega battles. A new experience.

Sometimes i fell we are stuck on dune 2 for that monopoly crap practice. This is the stuff that keeps the desktop down. Shortminded thinking. How to ruin your own market.
 
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Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
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Adam Saint what storage are you using? If you are not already using an SSD, I recommend upgrading to one.

With an SSD, reads will happen far faster, which should eliminate those dips you see when it is loading data in the background on startup.
 

MajinCry

Platinum Member
Jul 28, 2015
2,495
571
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Adam Saint what storage are you using? If you are not already using an SSD, I recommend upgrading to one.

With an SSD, reads will happen far faster, which should eliminate those dips you see when it is loading data in the background on startup.

If he's getting loads of RAM, it would be waaaay faster to use a RAMDisk. My 3000Mhz DDR4 16GB RAMDisk eats my Samsung 960 Evo for breakfast.
 

XavierMace

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2013
4,307
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Latency priority first !

What a mess for those games. Intel and Nvidia dream come through. RTS nightmare because of some stupid api and stoneage technology. If this was made properly those types of games would benefit like crazy. Huge mega battles. A new experience.

Sometimes i fell we are stuck on dune 2 for that monopoly crap practice. This is the stuff that keeps the desktop down. Shortminded thinking. How to ruin your own market.

The consumers are as much to blame as the developers. In many ways SupCom was better in beta than the production version ever was. But it was so demanding it ran like poo on all but the best computers so they had to dial back the graphics and dumb it down a bit. Every time a new strategy game comes out, half the people are complaining that it doesn't take advantage of new systems and the other half are complaining the game doesn't run well on their toaster. Strategy games seem to have the worse time with this, my assumption is because I think their player base is older. I consistently see people complaining how the game runs on their Core 2 Duo and arguing that the previous/first game in the series ran fine so all the future ones should too.

Developers like money as much as the rest of us. So they generally try to design their product to be usable by as many people as possible. Until we kill off the toaster crowd, that means we're left with inferior games.
 

krumme

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2009
5,952
1,585
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The consumers are as much to blame as the developers. In many ways SupCom was better in beta than the production version ever was. But it was so demanding it ran like poo on all but the best computers so they had to dial back the graphics and dumb it down a bit. Every time a new strategy game comes out, half the people are complaining that it doesn't take advantage of new systems and the other half are complaining the game doesn't run well on their toaster. Strategy games seem to have the worse time with this, my assumption is because I think their player base is older. I consistently see people complaining how the game runs on their Core 2 Duo and arguing that the previous/first game in the series ran fine so all the future ones should too.

Developers like money as much as the rest of us. So they generally try to design their product to be usable by as many people as possible. Until we kill off the toaster crowd, that means we're left with inferior games.
I guess you are right but rts is in so dire need to get rid of that drawcall problem its hindering new games. Heck it could even be the reason mostly old people is playing it because its like it was 25 years ago? Dont know
...
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,436
1,654
136
The consumers are as much to blame as the developers. In many ways SupCom was better in beta than the production version ever was. But it was so demanding it ran like poo on all but the best computers so they had to dial back the graphics and dumb it down a bit. Every time a new strategy game comes out, half the people are complaining that it doesn't take advantage of new systems and the other half are complaining the game doesn't run well on their toaster. Strategy games seem to have the worse time with this, my assumption is because I think their player base is older. I consistently see people complaining how the game runs on their Core 2 Duo and arguing that the previous/first game in the series ran fine so all the future ones should too.

Developers like money as much as the rest of us. So they generally try to design their product to be usable by as many people as possible. Until we kill off the toaster crowd, that means we're left with inferior games.

The other problem is we lost all the great system killer studio's. Companies known for pushing the limit and making a stand that their game was going to be the reason you upgraded your computer. Companies like id Software that saw themselves more than just a Game Company, but an Engine company. Would redo their engine for each game and used it as a technical demonstration on top of generally being fun games. Epic who wanted to be the new id. Or Crytek who just cared about looks but to stay solvent had to create more and more accessible engines.

Those three are the top three I can think of. But they all have their issues nowadays. id is now just another part of Bethesda and walks a fine line between using advanced tech but not actually putting pressure on hardware. Epic saw Licensing engines and mercenary jobs as more important and UE 3.0 and later was designed specifically for consoles and handhelds. Crytek the real last of the hardware stress test guys had to get their engines in more hands, had to develop something more usable and so we have Crytek 3 that runs great on consoles. No one else is a big or has balls enough to do what they did for fear of being another Trespasser. There is a reason the meme when talking about Supercomputers and such, is to ask if it can run Crysis. Because it was the last to really take that shot.
 

XavierMace

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2013
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Stardock tries (sometimes) to push the CPU boundary with their strategy games, albeit with mixed results.
 

Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
3,274
202
106
The consumers are as much to blame as the developers. In many ways SupCom was better in beta than the production version ever was. But it was so demanding it ran like poo on all but the best computers so they had to dial back the graphics and dumb it down a bit. Every time a new strategy game comes out, half the people are complaining that it doesn't take advantage of new systems and the other half are complaining the game doesn't run well on their toaster. Strategy games seem to have the worse time with this, my assumption is because I think their player base is older. I consistently see people complaining how the game runs on their Core 2 Duo and arguing that the previous/first game in the series ran fine so all the future ones should too.

Developers like money as much as the rest of us. So they generally try to design their product to be usable by as many people as possible. Until we kill off the toaster crowd, that means we're left with inferior games.

SupCom doesn't run well on CPUs released years after the game's release. That indicates it was a little too ambitious when it was made.

At least some of the problem was optimization - I know there were two popular third party AI modifications which made performance much better in SupCom FA. The AI scripts ended up not releasing resources after they were finished, which degraded performance eventually. Third party modders were able to fix it, or at least greatly improve the behaviour.

There was also the SupCom Core tool (forget the exact name) which rebalanced the game's threads every few minutes or so. The game only had 2 or 3 threads, and one of them did most of the work. What ended up happening is that all of the threads would execute on one core instead of spreading themselves out over multiple cores. When this core rebalancer tool spread them out over multiple cores, performance improved. This is another case where optimization could have helped.

Remember that when SupCom came out, dual core CPUs were still the most common. Quad cores were relatively rare. I don't think the programmers had that much experience with multi threaded game programming yet.

If those same developers were to remake the game using modern multi threading techniques and stuff like DX12, I guarantee it would fly, even on older CPUs.
 

XavierMace

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2013
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SupCom doesn't run well on CPUs released years after the game's release. That indicates it was a little too ambitious when it was made.

...

If those same developers were to remake the game using modern multi threading techniques and stuff like DX12, I guarantee it would fly, even on older CPUs.

You kinda missed the point there. Nobody ever said SupCom's optimization was great, I even specifically said it ran like poo on all but the fastest computer. As you mentioned Sorian's AI mod helped greatly which resulted in GPG hiring him. But the point was they pushed the system requirements envelope and still manage to be pretty high up on the list of best strategy games, IE taking 4th place in RPS's Top 50 Strategy games. Was it overly ambitious? Probably, but that proves the point even more. People are willing to deal with performance issues (to an extent) if you make a solid game. Forged Alliance has outsold most more recent RTS's, save for Starcraft 2. But that's Blizzard and they could sell a polished turd to 5 million people without breaking a sweat. Company of Heroes also had a lot of performance issues, although more on the GPU side than the CPU side. It's high up on the lists too. You don't have to make your game run on a toaster to have decent sales numbers.
 

Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
3,274
202
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You kinda missed the point there. Nobody ever said SupCom's optimization was great, I even specifically said it ran like poo on all but the fastest computer. As you mentioned Sorian's AI mod helped greatly which resulted in GPG hiring him. But the point was they pushed the system requirements envelope and still manage to be pretty high up on the list of best strategy games, IE taking 4th place in RPS's Top 50 Strategy games. Was it overly ambitious? Probably, but that proves the point even more. People are willing to deal with performance issues (to an extent) if you make a solid game. Forged Alliance has outsold most more recent RTS's, save for Starcraft 2. But that's Blizzard and they could sell a polished turd to 5 million people without breaking a sweat. Company of Heroes also had a lot of performance issues, although more on the GPU side than the CPU side. It's high up on the lists too. You don't have to make your game run on a toaster to have decent sales numbers.

What I'm saying is that consumers are not wrong to want a game that performs well on their hardware and GPG were not wrong to dumb it down a little (if they actually did) to get it to perform better.

In this case, we know it was partially a result of them being ambitious and partly a result of them not optimizing the game properly. You can't blame consumers for wanting a product that works properly.

It sold well despite its issues, but that wasn't enough to keep GPG out of financial difficulty. I think they got acquired by a Korean company or something.

SupCom was not even the first massive scale RTS - Total Annihilation was (even made by the same devs). Sure, it wasn't quite the same scale, but it was similar, you could have hundreds of units on the map. And it ran decently (if I remember correctly). Other massive scale games since SupCom, such as SupCom 2, Planetary Annihilation and AOTS are not reported to have the same performance issues as SupCom does.
 

simas

Senior member
Oct 16, 2005
412
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"I ever play are the STALKER series"
... so many memories. and if you happen to understand Russian, they are even more fun - the stories around the campfire, the radio talk shows, everything is done right referencing the same culture, pop-culture, TV shows, and attitudes of late 80s early 90s as we experienced them back in SU. I frequently ignored the game altogether and simply listened to "soundtrack", thank you for bringing back memories.
 

XavierMace

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2013
4,307
450
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SupCom was not even the first massive scale RTS - Total Annihilation was (even made by the same devs). Sure, it wasn't quite the same scale, but it was similar, you could have hundreds of units on the map. And it ran decently (if I remember correctly). Other massive scale games since SupCom, such as SupCom 2, Planetary Annihilation and AOTS are not reported to have the same performance issues as SupCom does.

Most SupCom fans cringe when you mention SupCom2. AOTS was not without performance issues, I don't recall if Planetary had issues or not. Forged Alliance also outsold all three of those more recent examples of similar games.
 
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Ancalagon44

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2010
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Most SupCom fans cringe when you mention SupCom2. AOTS was not without performance issues, I don't recall if Planetary had issues or not. Forged Alliance also outsold all three of those more recent examples of similar games.

I know, I followed the community. Incidentally I don't agree about SupCom 2 being that bad but that is a discussion for a different day.

The point still stands - consumers are not wrong to demand performance from their games.
 

XavierMace

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2013
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They aren't wrong to demand performance, but they are wrong to demand games run flawlessly on 10 year old hardware.
 

Grimner

Member
Nov 12, 1999
176
1
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S.T.A.L.K.E.R - never played Clear Sky before now. I am up to the church on the swamp sweep. Graphics on DX 10.1 everything (also in advanced settings) on max at 1680 x 1050. No stutters so far. The sun effects are pretty - too pretty for the Zone :)

It seems to be using only one core which frequently goes to 100%. Now, given that my system is a FX 8350 @ 4.5 Ghz paired with a RX 480 you might want to hold off on that new CPU. Your system kicks mine into a crooked hat long before we start talking about the superiority of Intel when it comes to single threaded performance. Cinebench R15 CPU (Single Core): 106.

What it does do is hitting the hard drive quite often during play. I did install it on an Apple variant M.2 SSD which sits somewhere between a modern M.2 NVMe and a SATA based SSD in performance.
In your situation, I would also be looking at what is happening in the rest of the system. Any programs/processes running in the background?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,609
10,803
136
My current kit is CL10@2133mhz (XMP). Unfortunately everything faster than that seems to be physically too big (tall heatspreaders) to fit under my Phanteks cooler :(

Do you think that by ditching the cooler and maybe getting an AIO to allow taller RAM to be installed, I'd improve performance/reduce dips?

Corsair makes a series of RAM called Vengeance LPX that is about 32mm high. I own some and it fits under my D15S with a 140mm fan (albeit narrowly). If money is no object:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820236160

That would fit under your current cooler, I think. Do the research, compare it to the RAM you have now, and make your decision.