Civilization VI: Performance Analysis (Techpowerup)

[StinkyPinky]

DX12 patch is due soon, that will be the version people will be playing in the future so it will be those benchmarks that really matter.

Civ 6 is great fun by the way.

 

[Unreal123]

DX12 patch is due soon, that will be the version people will be playing in the future so it will be those benchmarks that really matter.

Civ 6 is great fun by the way.

100% baseless and no one can go this much wrong in this forum. Only minority of % of PC users care about DX12. CIV 6 has broken the record of the highest user playing any game this year on PC. 90% of user are not even bother that the game runs on DX11 or DX12 ,however, they only care is that game runs smooth, it is fun and worth of spending time.

If people were bother about DX12 then Ashes of the Singularity would not be only with 99k users on PC.
http://steamspy.com/app/228880

 

[StinkyPinky]

THe point being 95% of civ players don't care about getting 40 or 80 fps since it's a turn based top down strategy game. The only people that care are enthusiast users, and most of them will have GPU's that support DX12.

 

[Bacon1]

Well if that's the case, there are only two possible explanation that could explain things:

1) First is that Firaxis didn't optimize the IC multithreading render as much as they have in the past.

2) Their IC multithreading renderer isn't robust enough to keep up with the added detail in Civilization VI.

I'm betting it's more the latter. Looking at gameplay footage, Civilization VI looks like it has a very significant boost in objects and detail compared to Civ V. Therefore it's possible that the IC renderer is getting maxed out by the amount of draw calls required..

One of the advantages of DC rendering is that it can handle higher amounts of draw calls than IC, though not nearly as much as Vulkan/DX12.



I looked this up and you're right. However, the disadvantage of using this method is that the API calls and buffer updates aren't parallelizable which limits performance when it comes to high amounts of draw calls.



They could have optimized it, by limiting the amount of detail. But then it wouldn't have been a true successor to Civ V. DX12 is going to solve the problem anyway..

Have you watched the benchmark video? Can you honestly say that the video had great graphics worthy of bringing $600 cards to their knees?

I highlighted the only 3 effects I could see that did anything, they were two smoke and one wave.

 

[SolMiester]

I am correct and hence why I posted it on purpose to remind PC gamers to upgrade while it's still free. I just installed a new system last week and upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit to Windows 10 Pro for free (including the Anniversary Upgrade). I plan on building 1-2 more systems this year and putting Windows 10 on them while the offer still stands. The only requirement is Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 (from 8) and certain versions are excluded:

Windows 10 free upgrade for customers who use assistive technologies
http://www.howtogeek.com/265409/you...-for-free-from-microsofts-accessibility-site/

As a network engineer and MS partner I cant possible condone flippant use of MS licensing..

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s blog post leaves many questions unanswered and a company spokesperson couldn’t elaborate on details, for now. Until then, you have to wonder: What constitutes a “user” of an assistive technology? Will Microsoft make this determination, or is there a way for a user to self-certify that they are in fact disabled? Conversely, will there be methods in place to ensure that the loophole isn’t used by able users to take advantage of the waiver? And how long will disabled users have before this offer expires? Microsoft has promised us answers, but we don’t have them right now.

 

[tajoh111]

DX12 patch is due soon, that will be the version people will be playing in the future so it will be those benchmarks that really matter.

Civ 6 is great fun by the way.

It might take a while for a directx 12 path to come and even longer for a well optimized version.

The reason being is there is no console version of this game to build off of. Basically most directx 12 titles had a console version to base their code on.

This is a pure PC title, which means all the focus was on directx 11.

The directx 12 version of this game will probably take months to release if the directx 11 version has bugs.

 

[Sweepr]

http://gamegpu.com/rts-/-стратегии/sid-meier-s-civilization-vi-test-gpu

 

[Jaydip]

So wasn't this a GE title?

 

[fuccboi]

The game looks like that it should run smooth as butter even on the Intel HD graphics, but then who would buy new hardware? This franchise is way too popular for letting it just slip. There's no games without hardware and vice versa.

 

[railven]

So wasn't this a GE title?

AMD has it listed on their Gaming Evolved page, but they also have DOOM listed there - so not sure.

Gaming Evolved titles have been rather odd lately. I remember when I had my AMD cards, these titles show AMD in the best light day 1. Now, it's a wait for patch/driver fix that isn't very rewarding if they come too far out of release since most websites won't revisit games like they did day 1.

Not a Civ Player, but GF explained to me during the benchmark there are lots of little animations and calculations that we aren't seeing. The benchmark seemed to focus more on an area of the map that to me had less action, and it would then scroll to an area of the map that was densely populated. I'm just going to assume CPU Bottleneck. I didn't monitor GPU load, but I didn't see anything that would crush her GPU.

DX12 should help AMD a lot on this title. It should have been a day 1 feature for them.

 

[brandonmatic]

I agree with everyone that it's bizarre that it's so demanding given how it looks. The performance on AMD is poor and even Nvidia isn't doing great. It will be interesting to see what happens with DX12 and/or further optimization.

 

[Shivansps]

I came here to look for benchmarks, instead i find the same people making up excuses for AMD.

As for DX12 im happy that Firaxis decided to do/polish the DX12 implementation after the game was launched, instead of robbing the game of features to implement it.

 

[Spjut]

Civilization VI is just another example of PC gamers' bullshit about consoles holding PC back. This is a PC exclusive and if they didn't care about supporting HD 5000/6000 series, they could have just used Vulkan and skipped DX11 completely.

 

[AtenRa]

I have a feeling this will be another DOOM + Vulkan big bomb.

 

[bystander36]

I have a feeling this will be another DOOM + Vulkan big bomb.

As a Civ player, I can tell you that no one hardly cares about anything in this thread. This game is more akin to Chess or Go, than Doom. People may like graphics, but it's very low on importance.

 

[Azix]

100% baseless and no one can go this much wrong in this forum. Only minority of % of PC users care about DX12. CIV 6 has broken the record of the highest user playing any game this year on PC. 90% of user are not even bother that the game runs on DX11 or DX12 ,however, they only care is that game runs smooth, it is fun and worth of spending time.

If people were bother about DX12 then Ashes of the Singularity would not be only with 99k users on PC.
http://steamspy.com/app/228880

I assume the dx12 patch will remove the CPU bottleneck. By default it will be the one people play then. Sure they don't care, but they will launch the game in dx12 because it runs better. Since civ games get played for a good while, many will still be playing after dx12.

Your point about ashes misses. It was a low budget game with so-so advertising. Even with few players they considered it a success because the budget was tiny. Think a couple artists only etc. The question is which mode people will launch the game in, and its going to be whichever runs best..

It might take a while for a directx 12 path to come and even longer for a well optimized version.

The reason being is there is no console version of this game to build off of. Basically most directx 12 titles had a console version to base their code on.

This is a pure PC title, which means all the focus was on directx 11.

The directx 12 version of this game will probably take months to release if the directx 11 version has bugs.

they had mantle support before. They talked about dx12 support months ago.

Civilization VI is just another example of PC gamers' bullshit about consoles holding PC back. This is a PC exclusive and if they didn't care about supporting HD 5000/6000 series, they could have just used Vulkan and skipped DX11 completely.

probably less specific GPUs and more the OS.

 

[Spjut]

probably less specific GPUs and more the OS.

Vulkan works on Win7 as well, and Vista isn't supported anyway

 

[Azix]

people are finding dx12 references on steamdb etc. Just not ready yet I guess, but the lack of any communication from the devs, afaik, is lame.

branches/2kqa_c/buildid: 1396952
branches/2kqa_c/description:
branches/2kqa_c/pwdrequired: 1
branches/2kqa_c/timeupdated: 1476729625 (October 17, 2016 – 18:40:25 UTC) (+249621)

launch/4/config/betakey: 2kqa_c
launch/4/config/osarch: 64
launch/4/config/oslist: windows
launch/4/description: Sid Meier's Civilization VI (DirectX 12)
launch/4/executable: Base/Binaries/Win64Steam/CivilizationVI_DX12.exe

Vulkan works on Win7 as well, and Vista isn't supported anyway

yeah but seems they chose to do dx12 so that flexibility is gone. The OS people are running is a bigger issue than whether the GPU supports dx12. If it doesn't its likely ancient and won't be CPU bottlenecked.

 

[AtenRa]

As a Civ player, I can tell you that no one hardly cares about anything in this thread. This game is more akin to Chess or Go, than Doom. People may like graphics, but it's very low on importance.

I was talking about performance with DX-12, much like DOOM on Vulkan vs OpenGL

 

[Unreal123]

I was talking about performance with DX-12, much like DOOM on Vulkan vs OpenGL

So you mean to say that AMD users has to wait for another 2-3 months to get a decent performance?

 

[PhonakV30]

It took Nvidia for a while to get decent performance for AtoS and Doom.now if CiV's DX12 comes , Nv users should wait for Nvidia.

 

[Unreal123]

It took Nvidia for a while to get decent performance for AtoS and Doom.now if CiV's DX12 comes , Nv users should wait for Nvidia.

Wrong. No one played ATOS and only people who bought ATOS is simply because of benchmarking. There are only 99K owners , in which most of them did not even play the game.

 

[PhonakV30]

Then why did Nvidia bother to release Driver for both game? whether you like or not , It will happen.

 

[tviceman]

http://gamegpu.com/rts-/-стратегии/sid-meier-s-civilization-vi-test-gpu

DX12 is not going to fix AMD's performance of this game at 4k and 8X AA. This is simply an Nvidia favored game right now. I'm sure drivers and game optimizations can help AMD out, but DX12 performance at 1440p and 4k is going to be largely close to DX11 performance even a year from now unless Firaxis gets some deep AOTS type optimizations, in which case would benefit both camps.

 

[RussianSensation]

I have played most the Civ games, I did not buy Civ BE, so forgive my lack of knowledge on that one. And if Carfax83 is right, then Mantle is the only reason for it. This game doesn't have Mantle.

No worries as Civ BE wasn't that good. My point was more to the extent that Civ games did not always run way better on NV hardware and especially the modern versions showed excellent performance on AMD cards.

100% baseless and no one can go this much wrong in this forum. Only minority of % of PC users care about DX12.

BS. The CPU bottlenecks in Civ 6 are ridiculous as I will post below. Clearly the game is wiping the floor with modern CPUs and it could stand to benefit tremendously from DX12, much in the way Total War Warhammer did. Just because Kepler and Maxwell are Async-compute incapable in games doesn't mean DX12 doesn't have a strong future in Navi and Volta generations. We are at cross-roads of DX11 and DX12 and it's natural to see developers struggle with such a dramatic change. Based on Raja's interview with GamersNexus, it's clear that DX12, Vulkan, etc. open up the GPU to far lower levels than DX11 ever allowed. The developers aren't going to magically improve efficiency in games by 50-100% overnight.

CIV 6 has broken the record of the highest user playing any game this year on PC. 90% of user are not even bother that the game runs on DX11 or DX12 ,however, they only care is that game runs smooth, it is fun and worth of spending time.

They will care if DX12 allieviates the tremendous CPU bottleneck that GameGPU shows to exist in this title. Not even an i7 6700 is fast enough for 60 fps averages in this game. It's pretty obvious in the real world both the RX 480 and GTX1060 will be CPU bottlenecked for "90% of PC gamers" you speak of because last time I checked they do not have i7 2600K @ 4.8Ghz or i7 3770K or i7 6700K @ 4.5Ghz, etc.

As a network engineer and MS partner I cant possible condone flippant use of MS licensing..

Microsoft gave the software away for free for a year but now that the July 29th deadline has ended and it's still possible to upgrade, you are throwing the ethics card? They purposely left a loop-hole for those who didn't upgrade yet to still take advantage of the deal. It's a heck of a lot better than pirating Windows 10 for those who have legitimate W7/8/8.1 keys; and it's in MS's best interests to get everyone on-board anyway. It's funny how you would try to use any excuse to divert attention from DX12 and Windows 10 while all the future AAA PC games coming out in the next 10 years will be supporting this OS. What's the difference if MS allowed 12 months of free upgrades or 18 or 24 months. It's just an arbitrary time frame they chose. All the top tech sites are still reporting this as a legitimate way to upgrade to W10. If you don't like it, write a letter to MS.

I'm just going to assume CPU Bottleneck. I didn't monitor GPU load, but I didn't see anything that would crush her GPU. DX12 should help AMD a lot on this title. It should have been a day 1 feature for them.

You hit the nail on the head and what I was insinuating earlier in the thread. The benchmarks for TPU or GameGPU use top-of-the-line i7 systems. A stock i5-6600 gets 41 fps minimums and 56 fps average at 1080p on a GTX1080. This is basically a CPU-limited game for most people and those GPU benchmarks TPU or GameGPU posted with heavily overclocked i7 6700K and 5960X are not going to be representative of the real world performance for the average PC gamer buying this game under DX11.

I even noted this earlier in the thread:

3) It assumes that 75% of NV users have modern GPUs and most importantly are not CPU bottlenecked first.
....
I highly doubt that these "75% of NV-owned GPU PCs" gaming market who will play Civ 6 have a CPU as fast as even an i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz. That means, there is actually a large chance that with slower CPUs, all of AMD/NV GPUs in TPU reviews could be CPU bottlenecked under DX11. This is why we need more professional review sites to test CPUs in this title. In other words, the GPU performance per TPU could be vastly different from real world performance because TPU used an i7 6700K @ 4.5Ghz.

It's pretty clear that this game under DX11 is severely CPU bottlenecked when even i7 4770K/i7 6700/i7 5960X struggle to hit 50 fps minimums in intensive scenes with a GTX1080. DX12 would be a savior here. Forget AMD vs. NV for once and focus on the big picture. That's why we need DX12/Vulkan because even a GTX1080 is going to be bottlenecked by even the fastest CPUs out now.