Processor Importance for RTS Games

[Skotty]

I've heard from time to time that RTS games like Rise of Legends or Age of Empires are more processor intensive than most other popular game types. Given that I like RTS games, I am therefore interested in how true this is, and if processor upgrades can result in decent performance gains in such games.

I've tried to find benchmark data for different processors used with different RTS games without much luck. Most all benchmark tests for games focus on video, and most all benchmark tests for processors only have 1st person shooter tests. So to those of you out there who have some experience in this area, how important is processor performance in relation to RTS games?

Specifically, in my case, I have a Prescott Pentium 4 3.0GHz with a PCI-Express GeForce 7600 GT video card running on an Intel 915P chipset using 1GB of DDR RAM. Since the Core 2 Duos came out, I have seriously been considering upgrading to something like the E6400 or E6600. In addition to the cost of the processor, I would have to buy a new motherboard and replace my DDR RAM with DDR2. If and how soon I will upgrade depends partially on what kind of performance improvements I might see in the RTS games I play (staying with 1GB RAM). If the particular game matters, the main one I play right now is Rise of Legends, but there are many others I might play, such as C&C Generals or perhaps new games that come out. Thoughts?

 

[Shimmishim]

i think it depends on your budget.

I'm not sure how cpu intensive RoL.

I have AoE 3 and my X2 3800+ with a 7900GT can handle it perfectly fine at 1600x1200 resolution.

If youre on a budget, I'd say upgrade your video card.

if you have the money, then do a full upgrade but keep your video card since the c2d will significantly improve overall system performance... or you could always get a 8800GTX

 

[cubeless]

just got my kid an 8800gts. he had an x1800xt. cpu is 2.8ghz single core opteron, mem is 2GB.

he is now stating that he has a dilemma, in that pushing up the settings on the vid stuff seem to be having an adverse reaction on the games in that the cpu can't keep up with the physics...

i have a 4000 coming that i may toss in his system to see if it will go to 3.0 ghz... but it seems that i will need to start hunting for c2d parts... hoped i'd be spared for a couple more months...

 

[lopri]

RTS games and its CPU dependency (and GPU dependency on the opposite side) is extremely situational and that's why you rarely see RTS games in either CPU reviews or GPU reviews. Not only does performance depend on the graphical settings but also it depends on game settings and throughout the course of a game. For instance, in AOE3, the game is mostly GPU bound in 1v1 or at the beginning of the game where things are relatively quite(?). The game is beautiful and you will at least need 7900 series card. Then once things are heated up, which is inevitable especially in team games, the game becomes definitely bottlenecked by CPU or network. Even in 1v1, think about 200+ units duking it out - individual unit's path, firearms, arrows, vehicles, building explosions (pretty physics, yay), etc. - and all these should happen while maintaining coherency at the base. Workers, (military) buildings, upgrades, score calculation, and whatever happening on the whole map (whether visible or not) should sync with everything else. Definitely a situation where things are heavily dependent on CPU.

Personally for AOE3, I haven't seen the memory usage going above 1GB even @1920x1200. But CPU/GPU wise, I'd suggest you first check what the minimum FPS is under your typical battle settings. Run a replay of your recorded games and see how low the FPS goes. Overclock/underclock your CPU and see if it makes any difference. If overclock makes a decent difference in minimum FPS, it might be a sign that it could use a CPU upgrade. Otherwise, get a better GPU and crank up the visual settings and enjoy the game!

 

[nyker96]

I'm playing COH and it's running decently fast on my mere 2.4 sempy system. And this game supposedly has software physics and advanced AI that require cpu power, I take it it might do better on a dual/quad but so far it's no problem on my system.

 

[Skotty]

My old system was a P4 3.0 GHz, not overclocked, with 1 GB RAM and a Maxtor 80 GB hard drive. I ended up upgrading to a Core 2 Duo E6400, overclocked to 2.7 GHz, with 2 GB RAM and a WD Raptor 150 GB hard drive. I used the same GeForce 7600GT graphics card. I ran some benchmark tests using a somewhat large battle (not uncommon in a regular game) in Rise of Legends, measuring FPS with FRAPS. My old system averaged 7 FPS using my typical video setting (1024x768). The new system averaged 23 FPS. Some additional benchmarks can be found here http://www.distantvisions.net/benchmarks.html

Hard to say whether it was the CPU or RAM that made the biggest difference, and certainly the hard drive probably helped as well, but the cumulative changes definitely made a huge difference despite sticking with the same video card. This, of course, is a special case ... many other cases would likely see about the same performance.

 

[f4phantom2500]

Originally posted by: cubeless
just got my kid an 8800gts. he had an x1800xt. cpu is 2.8ghz single core opteron, mem is 2GB.

he is now stating that he has a dilemma, in that pushing up the settings on the vid stuff seem to be having an adverse reaction on the games in that the cpu can't keep up with the physics...

i have a 4000 coming that i may toss in his system to see if it will go to 3.0 ghz... but it seems that i will need to start hunting for c2d parts... hoped i'd be spared for a couple more months...

...I wish I were your kid.

 

[Accord99]

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/e6300_072606120741/12738.png

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: f4phantom2500

Originally posted by: cubeless
just got my kid an 8800gts. he had an x1800xt. cpu is 2.8ghz single core opteron, mem is 2GB.

he is now stating that he has a dilemma, in that pushing up the settings on the vid stuff seem to be having an adverse reaction on the games in that the cpu can't keep up with the physics...

i have a 4000 coming that i may toss in his system to see if it will go to 3.0 ghz... but it seems that i will need to start hunting for c2d parts... hoped i'd be spared for a couple more months...

...I wish I were your kid.

Your kid just wants a new CPU. While he is probably CPU-limited, the new video card isn't making his games slower, it's only going to cap how much of a performance improvement he'll get a given resolution.