Supreme commander Quad core ready ? CPU whore

[tuteja1986]

I was looking at Supreme commander performance guide at gamespot.com when i notice that supreme commander result with Quad core was amazing since i have seen no game take advantage of Quad core.

http://au.gamespot.com/features/6166198/p-6.html

 

[anandtechrocks]

Wow, that's really interesting. Nice read.

 

[Nightmare225]

It's still a poorly coded game for other systems...

 

[tuteja1986]

if it was poorly coded than you would see no performance difference between AMD FX60 to Quad core QX6700. They don't take advantage of more than one processing thread. Also if you know that sumpreme commander is one the hard core Enthuasictic RTS. Its not your average quick kill type rts like Dawn of War , Warcraft 3 , Company of heroes and others like that. It actually requires alot of tactical strategical thinking.

 

[ayabe]

The developers have stated that it's a dual threaded app, so those results don't really jive.

 

[swtethan]

I play supreme commander on high with 8 players and i dont see any slow down.

 

[CU]

Originally posted by: swtethan
I play supreme commander on high with 8 players and i dont see any slow down.

With your system I would hope not.

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: CU

Originally posted by: swtethan
I play supreme commander on high with 8 players and i dont see any slow down.

With your system I would hope not.

when it was stock @ 2.1, it was much slower with 8 players on the same map. I do have it stable now without any crashes (i had the system stock for stability to play the game before i had it rock solid)

cpu power does matter very much.

 

[cubeless]

cpu matters hugely in sc... went from 2gb/opty@2.8/x1800xt512 to a x2 @2.5 and the difference is huge... lagged hugely with big map and 8 players before, now plays very smooth until the ai loads up the opponents after about 30 minutes...

using smaller map and less players it cruises right along... it runs both cores @100%...

 

[CU]

Yeah I am playing SC now and my first upgrade is going to be a video card because that is what is really killing me. Then I would like to move to a mult. core cpu maybe a used X2.

 

[Woofmeister]

To get back on topic, you're only seeing a difference of five frames per second versus the X6800. That's interesting given that the X6800 is obviously running at a much faster speed, but I'm inclined to view it as an aberration. The article doesn't discuss the test methodology, but even if they were running the exact same demo for each CPU run, a variance of 5 FPS is well within the margin of error.

Let's see if anybody else can replicate this result with Supreme Commander or any other game.

 

[manowar821]

SupCom is a CPU hog, much like it's spiritual sibling TA (though on a much lower level)

The number of complicated unit scripts running is amazing, and if you're playing against 8 computer players instead of human, it's 4 times as bad.

High clock speeds and multi-core FTW!

 

[Pugnate]

I don't know how people can say it is poorly coded. Really just scale down the visuals. Play with what you have.

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: Woofmeister
To get back on topic, you're only seeing a difference of five frames per second versus the X6800. That's interesting given that the X6800 is obviously running at a much faster speed, but I'm inclined to view it as an aberration. The article doesn't discuss the test methodology, but even if they were running the exact same demo for each CPU run, a variance of 5 FPS is well within the margin of error.

Let's see if anybody else can replicate this result with Supreme Commander or any other game.

I would be curious to see that as well. I wouldn't trust Gamespot to conduct a methodical test, for all we know if could be Intel funded FUD to boost Quad sales.

As for you guys who say you are running 8 AI's and never get any lag, I call shens on that, even with highly clocked C2D's. Once you get over a couple hundred units per side you are going to be slowing down. That is what people are reporting on the boards.

As a general rule:

Don't play online in a 3v3 unless you have a dual core rig and 2gb of RAM, otherwise you are going to be slowing down the game bigtime.

The other night I was playing a 3v3 and about 15 mins the game basically stopped and we were all trying to figure out who it was, then some clueless idiot says that he was watching a movie while the units were building to 'pass the time', but he wasn't lagging because he's on cable..........:thumbsup:

Please don't do anything like this, I know most Anandtech readers aren't this stupid, but it's worth mentioning.

Like all online RTS's this game can only run as fast as the slowest rig in the game, people in general don't seem to understand this and are focused on ping's and so forth.

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: ayabe

Originally posted by: Woofmeister
To get back on topic, you're only seeing a difference of five frames per second versus the X6800. That's interesting given that the X6800 is obviously running at a much faster speed, but I'm inclined to view it as an aberration. The article doesn't discuss the test methodology, but even if they were running the exact same demo for each CPU run, a variance of 5 FPS is well within the margin of error.

Let's see if anybody else can replicate this result with Supreme Commander or any other game.

I would be curious to see that as well. I wouldn't trust Gamespot to conduct a methodical test, for all we know if could be Intel funded FUD to boost Quad sales.

As for you guys who say you are running 8 AI's and never get any lag, I call shens on that, even with highly clocked C2D's. Once you get over a couple hundred units per side you are going to be slowing down. That is what people are reporting on the boards.

As a general rule:

Don't play online in a 3v3 unless you have a dual core rig and 2gb of RAM, otherwise you are going to be slowing down the game bigtime.

The other night I was playing a 3v3 and about 15 mins the game basically stopped and we were all trying to figure out who it was, then some clueless idiot says that he was watching a movie while the units were building to 'pass the time', but he wasn't lagging because he's on cable..........:thumbsup:

Please don't do anything like this, I know most Anandtech readers aren't this stupid, but it's worth mentioning.

Like all online RTS's this game can only run as fast as the slowest rig in the game, people in general don't seem to understand this and are focused on ping's and so forth.

its true we dont lag, why dont you switch to a 3+ ghz intel instead of your 2.7ghz opteron

 

[cubeless]

Originally posted by: CU
Yeah I am playing SC now and my first upgrade is going to be a video card because that is what is really killing me. Then I would like to move to a mult. core cpu maybe a used X2.

u might be surprised... a $120 x2 3800 @2.5 may make a bigger difference in this game...

 

[T101]

I did a test with the "D:\Spel\Supreme Commander\Supreme Commander\bin\SupremeCommander.exe" /map PerfTest shortcut. Testing my E6600 overclocked and running at default speed. This is the performance difference I found (data from supreme commanders own performance test);

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ default 2.4 Ghz;
SupComMark (sim) : 8821
SupComMark (render) : 8039
SupComMark (composite) : 16860
(Note: SupComMark scores represent overall system performance. Higher is better.)
FPS ......................................: calls[ 16669] min[ 9.86] max[ 83.64] avg[ 50.909]

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.0 Ghz;
SupComMark (sim) : 9013
SupComMark (render) : 8086
SupComMark (composite) : 17099
(Note: SupComMark scores represent overall system performance. Higher is better.)
FPS ......................................: calls[ 16579] min[ 7.48] max[ 82.80] avg[ 50.636]

While there is a difference, it is not that large. Seems CPU speed has less to do with Supreme Commander performance than say graphics card or number of cores available.

 

[ultimatebob]

That game does run great on multi core processors. It played like crap on my old Pentium 4 system, but my Core 2 Duo workstation played it like buttah!

 

[Accord99]

Hardware.fr found something similar, though the benefits seem only to go as far as 3 cores:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/660-3/supreme-commander-benchmark.html

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: CU
Yeah I am playing SC now and my first upgrade is going to be a video card because that is what is really killing me. Then I would like to move to a mult. core cpu maybe a used X2.

I am playing supreme commander on X6800 @ 3.5Ghz , 2GB of DDR @ 1000Mhz , X1650pro and its i get no lag at all.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: Woofmeister
Let's see if anybody else can replicate this result with Supreme Commander or any other game.

Cue H-Enthusiast:

Looking back it is very clear that scaling the cores of our Intel Core 2 Duo in Supreme Commander provides positive results. Under Windows Vista we found that Supreme Commander was not playable with a single-core CPU. We ranSupCom at the lowest possible settings, 1024x768 NoAA/NoAF with all options turned off, and the average framerate was only 10 FPS. When we enabled a second core we received a large performance improvement which provided a better gameplay experience. With dual-core we found 1280x1024 NoAA/16X AF playable with ?medium? fidelity settings. The gameplay experience was even more improved by enabling the remaining two cores giving us a quad-core processor. We were able to run the game at 1600x1200 with NoAA/16X AF and maximum in-game settings. Intel?s quad-core by far allowed the best experience in Supreme Commander with all graphical effects possible enabled and at their highest detail levels.

Looks like it's time to buy a QuadCore.:Q

I think this thread is about to become very active.

Edit--Hey Mod, how about moving this thread over to "CPU/Processors" where it belongs?

 

[CU]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986

Originally posted by: CU
Yeah I am playing SC now and my first upgrade is going to be a video card because that is what is really killing me. Then I would like to move to a mult. core cpu maybe a used X2.

I am playing supreme commander on X6800 @ 3.5Ghz , 2GB of DDR @ 1000Mhz , X1650pro and its i get no lag at all.

What setting do you play at? I like everything on high. Also the benchmarks I saw on legionhardware show a video card would help me more than a cpu upgrade. My 6800nu is just to slow.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Those gamespot benchmarks seem suspect... The FX-60 barely scores better than the FX57. I have a hard time believing that the E6300 is THAT much better than an FX-60. Unless the game was purposely gimped for AMD systems. From what I have seen in multi-threaded performance is that the FX-60 is always faster than a stock E6300.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986
Also if you know that sumpreme commander is one the hard core Enthuasictic RTS. Its not your average quick kill type rts like Dawn of War , Warcraft 3 , Company of heroes and others like that. It actually requires alot of tactical strategical thinking.

company of heroes doesnt require a lot of "tactical strategical thinking"? news to me IMO CoH is much more "tactical" than SC

 

[xtknight]

E6300+7800GT runs just fine here with default settings (w/ 1680x1050). I'm happy.