AOE3 dual core performance

[Velk]

Now that the demo is out, I am interested in seeing whether the multi-threading support for AOE3 actually produces any significant performance differences on a dual core.

The first test I did was start the first demo campaign on easy, select the the railroad workers, walk them down the road to the indian outpost, build a trading post, then walk them down the road to the enemy trading post and have them throw dynamite at it until they got killed by enemy troops.

The fraps results of that were min 8, average 25.57, max 128, and a look at the detailed log showed that the framerate was, for the most part, very close to the average with little variance.

This was at 1920x1200 with a 7800gtx, an x2 4400, and all graphical settings maxxed. If anyone else has some results from some similar testing with single core I'd be interested to see them, as from this point I would suggest that either AOE3 runs exceptionally badly at that resolution, or dual core has negligible benefit.

 

[aka1nas]

Why don't you try running the same tasks in the demo while only using one core? Just start the game, alt+tab out and assign affinity in the task manager to use only one CPU, and then run your stuff.

 

[Velk]

That actually made a lot of sense, so trying that :

With dual core enabled

Frames: 6272 - Time: 213686ms - Avg: 29.351 - Min: 21 - Max: 46

With dual core disabled

Frames: 6332 - Time: 216038ms - Avg: 29.310 - Min: 21 - Max: 45

Conclusion seems pretty firm, AOE3 demo makes absolutely no use of dual core, so either the info on the multithreadness of AOE3 is incorrect, or it has not been included in the demo.

 

[EternalVortex]

Even if it's multithreaded it wouldn't necessarily benefit from dual cores.

 

[Topweasel]

Not sure that test is conclusive. If its multithreaded then setting the Affinity of the process to one CPU may or may not stop both (or multiple threads) from using both cores. A good way to see if this works would be to take a program like Photoshop and doing the same thing, Photo shop seems to be helped tremendously by dual procs so seeing a diffrence should be pretty easy to see.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: Topweasel
Not sure that test is conclusive. If its multithreaded then setting the Affinity of the process to one CPU may or may not stop both (or multiple threads) from using both cores. A good way to see if this works would be to take a program like Photoshop and doing the same thing, Photo shop seems to be helped tremendously by dual procs so seeing a diffrence should be pretty easy to see.

Edit: If I am not Lazy I might try when I get home this demo, then update my bios (if I can ) to dual core compatible and run it again when that happens. There will be to many variables because of a bios update but it should give us a good idea.

 

[Velk]

Setting CPU affinity works fine for limiting multi-threaded benchmarks like crystalmark to a single core.

Even if it's multithreaded it wouldn't necessarily benefit from dual cores

True, however I was investigating the claim that it was optimised for dual core, which appears to be false.

 

[RichUK]

yes it might be optimised to run on dual core (or have multithreaded optimisation), this does not mean that the game engine is sending two simultaneous threads, to be executed that are relevant to the game play, what i mean is, it might be off loading just the sound processing to one of the cores, and game threads to just one core.

I believe the Unreal 3 engine, is going to be the first truly multi threaded game engine.

Don?t forget it states that it is optimised not natively multi threaded, just like BF2 which does the same thing with sound processing on the other core.

Although i might be wrong, I haven?t read into AOE3.

 

[Bona Fide]

Looks like dual-core gaming is finally coming on strong

 

[Unkno]

i really really think that the demo would NOT include multi-threads for DC...although i could be wrong

 

[MBrown]

Originally posted by: Unkno
i really really think that the demo would NOT include multi-threads for DC...although i could be wrong

Same thing with F.E.A.R.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: MBrown

Originally posted by: Unkno
i really really think that the demo would NOT include multi-threads for DC...although i could be wrong

Same thing with F.E.A.R.

Is F.E.A.R. supposed to be multi threaded?