Supreme Commander Uses *all* 4 Cores

[Regs]

I felt less lag in Medieval total war with more than 2 armies on the same field going dual core. Though I don't think the developer ever confirmed it being "threaded".

It's one of those games that's either 1-2 FPS or at the 30FPS cap. So their could be many possibilities why the dual core helps.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Sphexi

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Sphexi
Umm...I've played it pretty extensively, on a E6300 with no OC'ing, 7950GT, and run it on max settings 1280x1024, it runs great. To be honest, I prefer oldschool TA though, in SC the gameplay itself seems to kind of drag on, and I can't figure out how to get the screen to scroll slower

we are not talking at LOW resolutions

Since when is 1280x1024 considered low? It's the max my little 17" LCD will handle, no cash to upgrade to some giant Dell something or other. Plus, I'd think that higher resolutions would be more dependant on the video card, not the processor.

since about 2 years ago

that's *why* your E6300 runs it so smoothly ... try the same thing with 16x10

*resolutions* are dependent mostly on your CPU

*details* are your GPU's department

That is absolutely not true, resolution is limited by the fillrate of the card.

In this case it's the complex AI calculations that drive performance through the floor.

 

[apoppin]

awesome ... we already discussed this

please ... link to your evidence re: video card as the only limitation for resolutions
... generally ... and especially for this case

at *any* rate you STILL need 4 cores

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: apoppin
awesome ... we already discussed this

please ... link to your evidence re: video card as the only limitation for resolutions
... generally ... and especially for this case

at *any* rate you STILL need 4 cores

The fact that you turn down the resolution to create a CPU bottleneck might be a big clue...

CPU scaling levels off in almost games at high resolutions, because the video card is the bottleneck.

Supreme commander is an exception, not a rule.

Just clarifying.

 

[apoppin]

supreme commander is the first game to effectively use four cores

quite the exception ... so far

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: apoppin
supreme commander is the first game to effectively use four cores

I am aware of that, and the rediculous amount of bandwidth available to the newest cards also lessens the impact of the fillrate bottleneck.

We will be crossing the 100GB/sec mark very soon.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: Regs
I felt less lag in Medieval total war with more than 2 armies on the same field going dual core. Though I don't think the developer ever confirmed it being "threaded".

Medieval:TW not bogging your system down is because it did not have complex AI routines that needed to be run for every single soldier. There are actually very few "units" on the field since every group of soldiers equates to one "unit" in a normal RTS game because each group moves together. Every group of soldiers needs only one pathfinding routine, one movement routine, one attack routine, etc, and equates to one 'unit', where as every single unit in play in a regular RTS requires all of those routines to be processed.

Hundreds of soldiers in play in M:TW equates to only up to 16 "units" per player (or however many separate groups of soldiers you could control, I can't remember but I think it maxed at 16). So play some SupCom with a max 'units per player' of 16 and watch how incredibly well it plays, how smooth it is, etc. You'd be comparing apples to apples at that point.

Hopefully this helps you understand why it's not an accurate comparison in numbers of units in play until you understand what a "unit" really is in M:TW, and also that it has nothing to do with threading: It's simply that there are very few "units" in play in M:TW so there's never going to be a massive draw from the AI routines that would ever require them to be on a separate thread.

 

[MarcVenice]

"The format hasn?t changed there. But you?re right, we try very hard to make sure it runs well on what the average gamer has"

that sais it all ...

 

[Regs]

I felt less lag in Medieval total war with more than 2 armies on the same field going dual core. Though I don't think the developer ever confirmed it being "threaded".

 

[sjandrewbsme]

This game is indeed a CPU whore...

I have a relatively decent machine (E6600 @ 3.37GHz, 680i, 2GB DDR2, 8800GTS 640MB) and my system lags when HOSTING a 3v3 co-op (me, 2 friends and 3 AI). During a large battle, it starts playing like a slidewhow. This machine is only about a month old and it plays like a 3 year old machine....

I'm playing 16x12 with everything cranked (this played like butter single player) - I will probably lower settings when hosting as it really gets sloooow.

This has probably been said before but I've read that QC is really diminishing returns. It offloads stuff like the audio stream to the additional cores. But - there is supposed to be an improvement QC over DC - albeit relatively small (esp. when compared to DC over SC).

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: Regs
I felt less lag in Medieval total war with more than 2 armies on the same field going dual core. Though I don't think the developer ever confirmed it being "threaded".

Of course you did: Every game that's using a decent amount of CPU resources will feel better on dualcore because your OS and system processes can be offloaded to the second core by the OS. That again has nothing to do with the game itself taking advantage of a dual-core system for additional benefit.

 

[Muhadib]

Originally posted by: sjandrewbsme
This game is indeed a CPU whore...
I have a relatively decent machine (E6600 @ 3.37GHz, 680i, 2GB DDR2, 8800GTS 640MB) and my system lags when HOSTING a 3v3 co-op (me, 2 friends and 3 AI). During a large battle, it starts playing like a slidewhow. This machine is only about a month old and it plays like a 3 year old machine....

It's true that one player starts a game session but there is no "hosting" with Supreme Commander multiplayer. It's all done via. peer to peer not client server.

Multiplayer performace is effected by your friends computers CPUs as well. So if you have a quad core OCed to 4.5GHz and they have a P4 2GHz, the game will run like it's on that 2.0.

 

[sjandrewbsme]

That makes sense.

But - doesn't the AI have to be hosted to some extent? How else would the other players see the AI doing the same thing and I do? There has to be centralization of the AI to some extent (I would assume so at least).

 

[yacoub]

just a guess: everyone's AI is calculated on their computer and the end result in movement direction and weapon firing is communicated to all other peers.

 

[sjandrewbsme]

My guess is it's peer to peer 1v1 and client-server with hosting AI. One of the reasons I guess this is that we've played 3v3 several times and hosting on my machine seems to play better for everyone (as opposed to a friend who has a little older X2 machine).

At minimum the end result would have to be centrally agreed upon or every client could be playing a different AI (unless I'm missing something).

 

[yacoub]

oh yes, if you're including AI in a game, the host of the game is the one running those AI. didn't realize you were talking about multiplayer with AI players involved.

 

[sjandrewbsme]

Yeah we're playing 3v3, 3 people versus 3 AI. LOTS of fun

 

[Muhadib]

The non moded AI is so easy I can beat it 1 vs 3

 

[Darrvid]

try not to cast the first stone, because they often bounce back and cause brain damage

LoL

i'd like to rip that off for a possible sig, Daarvid
[/quote]

sweet, it's just like immortality!

 

[sjandrewbsme]

Originally posted by: Muhadib
The non moded AI is so easy I can beat it 1 vs 3

http://jolle.se/imgs/cookie.jpg

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Darrvid

try not to cast the first stone, because they often bounce back and cause brain damage

LoL

i'd like to rip that off for a possible sig, Daarvid

sweet, it's just like immortality![/quote]

it is SO perfect for Video forum
:Q

how do i give "credit" for the quote?

 

[Muhadib]

Originally posted by: sjandrewbsme

Originally posted by: Muhadib
The non moded AI is so easy I can beat it 1 vs 3

http://jolle.se/imgs/cookie.jpg

I'll need milk... and a badge too.

This game is worth buying. Online play is much more fun than playing with 1 or 2 others or worse yet the laughable AI. As long as all the players have dual core, 6 and 8 player games run very well. Playing the same person or AI gets old after a while.

 

[sjandrewbsme]

My success against the AI is kind of spotty.

I can beat any level of AI all the time playing a certain way - but I don't find that fun. The way I would play would revolve around relatively early rushing and commander sniping. This, to me, really diminshes what I love about the game: long drawn out wars of attrition. When I get into level three, 1v1, it can get kinda tough (the AI will pretty much always outproduce you as they have infinite micromanagement capacity).

We played a 4v4 last night that lasted for about 1.25 hours and it was soooooo fun. We could have had it over in about 20 minutes by one person pumping out broadswords by the dozen, another scouting to find the commander, and the other two playing defense. To me, this isn't that fun.

That being said - the AI (esp on certain maps) has general pathing issues. It's much better than TA, but still - they will continue to send wave after wave of attack over pretty much the same path and rarely look for an alternative.

We will start playing against one another - just for now a couple of us are pretty new and it would be hard to make teams that are fair.

 

[Darrvid]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Darrvid

try not to cast the first stone, because they often bounce back and cause brain damage

LoL

i'd like to rip that off for a possible sig, Daarvid

sweet, it's just like immortality!

it is SO perfect for Video forum
:Q

how do i give "credit" for the quote?
[/quote]


-Darrvid?

 

[apoppin]

OK ... but now i want to change it a bit



i gotta thimk


--i guess you can't please everyone