ARMA III Alpha Benchmarks CPU

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Gikaseixas

Platinum Member
Jul 1, 2004
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Because amd fans have been arguing endlessly that the i3 is a terrible gaming chip

You saw this in this thread??? Let's keep it out of the discussion for once mate. Let's analyze the charts and comment on things such as core numbers, mhz, etc.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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Funny how today's most popular i7,2600K, is in the same boat as 8350 :). No mention of that of course ;).
In any case, good showing fro FX8/6 series,even old Bulldozer one. Spells awesome news for Kaveri though,as it will be piledriver on steroids,improved in every conceivable way. Q3 and Q4 of this year is going to be very exciting for gamers on a budget ;).

Yea, change the subject and start talking about a chip that is not even out yet. It may even be a great chip, but that in not really relevant to these results.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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You saw this in this thread??? Let's keep it out of the discussion for once mate. Let's analyze the charts and comment on things such as core numbers, mhz, etc.

Yes one poster in this thread said anything less than a quad core was being left in the dust.
 

Jacky60

Golden Member
Jan 3, 2010
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So you can MAX out ARMA2?

I bet not...and to compared ARMA's MEGA-sandbox to either Crysis 3 or BF3 is a bad idea...like comapring kittens to jackhammers...

I am pretty f**king far from maxing out Arma 2, I would never claim to be able to, don't get me wrong my comments are deliberately nuanced. I totally love Arma 2 and have played multiplayer on average about 4 hours a day for three years so don't ever think I'm not a fan. I am not comparing games or gameplay I am comparing Game Engines. Yes the Arma 2/Arma3 sand box is big, bold brilliant and I think really beaufitul but that doesn't mean the game engine isn't showing it's age regarding CPU utilisation-all the core logic runs on one core. You won't find a bigger fan of the game than me but I'm objective enough to understand that with better CPU utilisation I would be getting better FPS. I hate corridor based Crysis3/BF3 style games as much as you. If you wanna play hardball come to the Ohai Arma 2 Warfare server and see if I can't kick ass. Although I probs won't be there for a week or two due to arma3 training. I prefer 40-60 players per side plus loads of AI as well but it does slow down even fast dedicated servers.
 

inf64

Diamond Member
Mar 11, 2011
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I first stated that 2600K is right there with 8350 and you fail to mention the most popular i7 today is ~7% and 13% faster than i3. That's double standard in my book. i3 is definitely not the gamers choice,no matter how "good enough" it can be. "Good enough" is 5800K too,but still it's not a smart choice for a gamer on a budget.
 

Lonbjerg

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2009
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I am pretty f**king far from maxing out Arma 2, I would never claim to be able to, don't get me wrong my comments are deliberately nuanced. I totally love Arma 2 and have played multiplayer on average about 4 hours a day for three years so don't ever think I'm not a fan. I am not comparing games or gameplay I am comparing Game Engines. Yes the Arma 2/Arma3 sand box is big, bold brilliant and I think really beaufitul but that doesn't mean the game engine isn't showing it's age regarding CPU utilisation-all the core logic runs on one core. You won't find a bigger fan of the game than me but I'm objective enough to understand that with better CPU utilisation I would be getting better FPS. I hate corridor based Crysis3/BF3 style games as much as you. If you wanna play hardball come to the Ohai Arma 2 Warfare server and see if I can't kick ass. Although I probs won't be there for a week or two due to arma3 training. I prefer 40-60 players per side plus loads of AI as well but it does slow down even fast dedicated servers.

You know there is a limitation to multithreading right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law

Code can only do such much to parallelize, when we don't have infinite performance available ^^
 

grimpr

Golden Member
Aug 21, 2007
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Ι think the latest game benchmarks prove that the FX-6300 is a great chip for its price, it obliterates the dualcore Core i3s and is unlocked above else, a great budget gamers choise.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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I first stated that 2600K is right there with 8350 and you fail to mention the most popular i7 today is ~7% and 13% faster than i3. That's double standard in my book. i3 is definitely not the gamers choice,no matter how "good enough" it can be. "Good enough" is 5800K too,but still it's not a smart choice for a gamer on a budget.

I never said the i3 was the best gaming cpu. All I am taking issue with is the statement that you made that it takes an i5/i7 or FX to play this game and that all others are "left in the dust".

In this particular game, the numbers do not bear out that statement.
 

Jacky60

Golden Member
Jan 3, 2010
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You know there is a limitation to multithreading right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law

Code can only do such much to parallelize, when we don't have infinite performance available ^^

Yes, I also know that the Real Virtuality engine could be doing a better job and I fully understand that a small studio like BIS can't really afford the time and money to rewrite the game engines core logic from the ground up. It's simply because the engine was built before muticore cpu's existed and going back now would be very expensive. That doesn't stop me finding it frustrating and wishing Bill Gates would give BIS $10 million to sort this out-the CPU utilisation is pretty much the same as Arma 2 (same engine) and if they did do this I would be getting about 50% more frames. I don't expect any game to work my CPU cores 100% but one at 70%, one at 40% and a couple at 20-30% isn't the best use of finite resources. If you look at my posting history you'll see I have consistently championed the Arma games on AT since 2009. There's a lovely long flame infested thread on the Arma 3 steam forum you might enjoy-I'm Terraformers there btw. I know it's Alpha but screaming 'fire' when you see smoke is better than waiting until you're sure you're in an inferno.
 
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AtenRa

Lifer
Feb 2, 2009
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People, chill out. Its alpha, we will see real results in full release...

crysis%203%20proz.png


0nIkCAb.jpg


;)
 

Piroko

Senior member
Jan 10, 2013
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You know there is a limitation to multithreading right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law

Code can only do such much to parallelize, when we don't have infinite performance available ^^
Amdahl's law does not apply to multiple tasks. It's a law trying to show you the gains you may expect from parallelizing a single task, but as soon as you run multiple tasks at the same time you can easily break those borders. A game engine consists of multiple tasks (player input, preloading, physics, AI, sound, scripts, management, feeding the GPU) and can therefore scale beyond Amdahl's law even with lower parallelisation in individual tasks.

All said though, the Arma 3 videos fail to impress me sofar and I can't see where those CPU cycles go. That engine is using a lot of cycles to display a few hills , a jeep and some trees at 30 fps, which is quite bad even for an alpha preview imho.
 

Jacky60

Golden Member
Jan 3, 2010
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Amdahl's law does not apply to multiple tasks. It's a law trying to show you the gains you may expect from parallelizing a single task, but as soon as you run multiple tasks at the same time you can easily break those borders. A game engine consists of multiple tasks (player input, preloading, physics, AI, sound, scripts, management, feeding the GPU) and can therefore scale beyond Amdahl's law even with lower parallelisation in individual tasks.

All said though, the Arma 3 videos fail to impress me sofar and I can't see where those CPU cycles go. That engine is using a lot of cycles to display a few hills , a jeep and some trees at 30 fps, which is quite bad even for an alpha preview imho.

While I don't doubt you and I are correct it does look amazing after some minor tweaking and today's beta update. Videos aren't like being there but you'll notice the people stoked about it who love how it looks have at least dual 7970 plus rigs. I based my initial impression on some pretty turgid servers and it was crap, it now looks really good and does perform similar fps to A2. The videos don't show what it's like walking along a country lane at dawn without NV and watching a firefight break out (in Editor) it's the most real gaming experience I've had.
 

AtenRa

Lifer
Feb 2, 2009
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I said I was specifically referring to the data for Arma 3 and that it did not show a need for a quad core. Crysis 3 does, I will grant you that, but that is irrelevant to this particular comment.

I quoted the slides to show the performance difference between Alpha and Retail.
 

SPBHM

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2012
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Funny how today's most popular i7,2600K, is in the same boat as 8350 :). No mention of that of course ;).
In any case, good showing fro FX8/6 series,even old Bulldozer one. Spells awesome news for Kaveri though,as it will be piledriver on steroids,improved in every conceivable way. Q3 and Q4 of this year is going to be very exciting for gamers on a budget ;).

"old bulldozer" is newer than the Sandy Bridges shown on the comparison, which doesn't even include a single ivy bridge, and keep in mind Haswell is close to be released, it's funny how a couple of new games can clear from your mind all the not so great results in other games...

Ι think the latest game benchmarks prove that the FX-6300 is a great chip for its price, it obliterates the dualcore Core i3s and is unlocked above else, a great budget gamers choise.

you are posting on the wrong thread I think, this game shows the i3 from 2 years ago and $117 pretty close to the newer and more expensive CPUs,
sure the 6300 is a decent option for $140, since the cheapest i5 is being sold for $179 I think,

http://gamegpu.ru/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/Crysis%203%20MP%20Alpha/test/crysis%203%20proz.png

http://i.imgur.com/0nIkCAb.jpg

;)

as we can see on the Crysis 3 CPU benchmarks thread,
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2302954&page=4

results with this game can show a lot of variation, and considering all the different tests, it's clear the i5 is delivering more consistent results overall.
so it's pretty easy nowadays to conclude the I5 is by far the best gaming CPU for the money... since in other games the FX can't keep up with the i5s
 

2is

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2012
4,281
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Amdahl's law does not apply to multiple tasks. It's a law trying to show you the gains you may expect from parallelizing a single task, but as soon as you run multiple tasks at the same time you can easily break those borders. A game engine consists of multiple tasks (player input, preloading, physics, AI, sound, scripts, management, feeding the GPU) and can therefore scale beyond Amdahl's law even with lower parallelisation in individual tasks.

All said though, the Arma 3 videos fail to impress me sofar and I can't see where those CPU cycles go. That engine is using a lot of cycles to display a few hills , a jeep and some trees at 30 fps, which is quite bad even for an alpha preview imho.

Except not all those tasks need a significant amount of processing power. Player input for example takes close to zero resources and the tasks that do require a lot of power can only be split up so much, not to mention, sometimes you can't start task B until task A finishes and if task A is limited to a single core on a CPU with a bunch of weaker cores, performance suffers. This often plays itself out when a game appears to be CPU limited but the user sees only 40% utilization on their 8 core CPU and starts complaining that the game is a shitty port and poorly optimized.
 

vampirr

Member
Mar 7, 2013
132
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csbin... Nice, they should have tested FX 6300 not the FX 6200... Also FX 8320 should be and not the FX 8120. But hey, its great...
 

Piroko

Senior member
Jan 10, 2013
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Except not all those tasks need a significant amount of processing power. Player input for example takes close to zero resources and the tasks that do require a lot of power can only be split up so much, not to mention, sometimes you can't start task B until task A finishes and if task A is limited to a single core on a CPU with a bunch of weaker cores, performance suffers. This often plays itself out when a game appears to be CPU limited but the user sees only 40% utilization on their 8 core CPU and starts complaining that the game is a shitty port and poorly optimized.
Writing intelligent work distributions isn't trivial, I know, and I couldn't do it either. But with the power your average core has you can be pretty sure that every thread you see will actually handle more than a dozen tasks. Work isn't split more because it gets limited acknowledgement from press and consumers.

There is a lot of potential threading left which isn't done mostly due to money constraints and not enough market pressure to write clean code. Which isn't necessarily bad, mind you, if that money can be used to make the game better elsewhere. But if singlethreaded performance increases slow down we will probably see a strong market consolidation on the game engine side.

(also, while player input won't log many cycles, it can still keep a core moderately busy with tons of interrupts, effectively occupying more resources than what is obvious)
 
Aug 11, 2008
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Another fail for the Core i3. I think its cased closed for it.

Not really any new information. Its the same game you used to bash it already. I agree it is not well suited for this game, but why do you hate the i3 so many much?

Besides, wasn't this thread supposed to be about another game? Seems some posters have to bring up cry sis 3 in every thread.
 
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