Time to Upgrade?

[maniac5999]

My rig is in the sig below, I pretty much only use it to play WoW, SC2 and Civ5. I haven't had any problems with WoW (everything maxxed but shadows 1 level down) or SC2 (everything maxxed but textures at medium because I game at 1080p and bought the 512meg 4870) but Civ5 is killing me. Even on medium sized maps I'm waiting a good 30 seconds for the computer to finish it's turn late in the game. I had been planning on waiting for Bulldozer/SB before upgrading, but now I'm wondering if I should just buy a replacement processor to hold me over. (I assume Civ5 is CPU limited, but I'm not sure) Just so people know, My board (ASRock A780FullHD) supports pretty much every AM2+ compatible processor out there, but has the SB700 so no core unlocking for me. I plan to overclock initially, but eventually when I get the new rig I'm going to pull the 4870, undervolt, slap the thing into a slim-case and turn it into a HTPC.

So what do people think? Should I keep what I have (I'm cheap) or should I get a new CPU? If you think I should upgrade, what do you think I should get? Right now Newegg has the P II 940 for $96. Is it a good choice or should I get a C3 (or even E0) stepping chip?

Any input would be appriciated.

 

[Absolution75]

If you are just looking for a drop in CPU replacement then yeah, may as well go for a new CPU. Like you said a 940 is < $100 and you could get probably at least $40 for your old cpu. $60 is a tiny price for a probably very noticible improvement.

Go for it.

 

[maniac5999]

well, you can get a new 7850 BE from Newegg shipped for $43, so I'm probably looking at $30 max for my old processor.

 

[darckhart]

WHEN are you thinking of getting this "new rig" and HOW cheap do you want to be?

civ5 is a heavy cpu game. graphics, well sure if you crank up all the dx11 goodies at high res, but since you have a 4870 512MB I cant imagine you're doing that. so basically you're looking at a cpu upgrade.... which, looking at the age of it, means you shoudl be wanting an entire platform upgrade for all the new features they will bring.

Hence, if you're thinking of sandy bridge (you have a short-ish wait) AND you don't want to spend $100 right now, then just spend more time playing your other 2 games. =) you could try the athlons instead of the phenoms for even cheaper, but i think you're still looking at about 100$ for anything that will give you decent performance in civ5.

 

[maniac5999]

I was planning on dropping something like $500-800 for CPU/Mobo/GPU/RAM in approximately a year when Bulldozer, high end SB and the 7XXX series are out.

Oh, and epsilon, that's a pretty good article, but their test doesn't measure what I'm having issues with, (and what most people consider the big performance issue with civ5) namely the amount of time that it takes the game to process all the computer players turns after I hit the "End Turn" button.

 

[Skiprudder]

I think you're right in picking the 940 since you have an AM2+ board and you're only planning on keeping it for a year or so. It's under $100 right now and it's a Black Edition, so very easy overclocking. The only drawback is it's DDR2 only, but that's not a factor in your case. Civ V is a highly threaded game, so should help a good deal. It also helps in WoW now that 4.01 brought very nice multi-thread support. I saw quite a nice fps boost and was able to turn my graphics settings up.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-644-_-Product

 

[maniac5999]

I bit the bullet and bought the 940. $103 shipped. (D#!&#37; sales tax!) Do I remember correctly that the C2 stepping chips have some trouble hitting 4ghz on a 64bit OS?

Also, Epsilon, Assuming that the turn processing times are completely CPU limited both before and after the upgrade, I DO expect my turn loading times to just about halve the time it takes, and here's why: Civ5 is supposed to be natively quad-threadded, so holding everything else the same going from two cores to four would double performance. Now, I know scaling isn't perfect, but given that I'm going to be running at a higher clockspeed here (I'm aiming for 3.6-3.8) and given that Phenom 2 is 5-10% faster per clock, I do expect about a 55% decrease in wait times.

 

[fffblackmage]

I don't think most C2 Phenom II's are capable of hitting 4GHz easily. My unlocked C2 550BE only hits 3.6GHz with around 1.45V before I start getting instability.

I haven't played Civ5, but I doubt you'll see a 55&#37; decrease in loading times. Loading things from a HDD just isn't that uber fast.

 

[Vesku]

My Athlon II X3 unlocked to X4 seems to handle Civ 5 fine. I'd say get the Phenom II X3 740, 6MB L3 and a possible fourth core for $90. Even as stock X3 it should handle Civ 5 just as well or better than my cpu.

Edit: See you bought an X4 C2, I'd try for a stable ~3.4GHz.

 

[maniac5999]

I don't think most C2 Phenom II's are capable of hitting 4GHz easily. My unlocked C2 550BE only hits 3.6GHz with around 1.45V before I start getting instability.

I haven't played Civ5, but I doubt you'll see a 55% decrease in loading times. Loading things from a HDD just isn't that uber fast.

Thanks for the heads up about the achievable overclock, it's been a while since I really looked into the limits of the C2 chips.
Note that I said 'wait times' instead of 'loading' I'm pretty sure that the delay isn't HDD related, as it has to do with how long it takes to process the AI players turns after I hit 'End Turn"

Vesku: Why the X3 740 for $89 instead of the X4 940 for $96. As I said in the OP I'm on an AM2 board that can't unlock the 4th core. Do you think that for gaming the fourth core isn't worth the $7? I didn't even consider that chip. I did however consider the X3 715BE (unlocked X3 at 2.8ghz) for $80, which seems a much better deal. Paying for a higher multiplier with an unlocked chip doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[SickBeast]

OP please report back with how high your CPU overclocks. I've been considering purchasing that exact processor.

 

[betasub]

my turn loading times

Is this what you mean by 'wait times'?

 

[Midwayman]

Is this what you mean by 'wait times'?

You hit next turn and the the AI takes its turn. I doubt its really loading that much, just running AI on all the enemy units. I'd imagine that is really cpu intensive, but don't have any fancy graphs or anything. I know on my e8500 that it takes awhile to process a turn in late game, and I'm playing on smallish maps. I image that on large maps it could be quite a problem.

 

[betasub]

^ Thanks for clarifying that!

 

[LoneNinja]

Since people are asking about Phenom II X4 940 overclocks I'll chime in. With Vista 64bit, 2x2Gb DDR2 800 ram, and a northbridge speed of 2.0Ghz(I think my mobo defaults it at 1.6Ghz).

3.4Ghz = 1.325Vcore
3.5Ghz = 1.375Vcore
3.6Ghz = 1.425Vcore
3.7Ghz = Not stable, 1.5Vcore comes close, but it eventually crashes during stability testing.

I also know it does 1.8Ghz with 1.0Vcore, I don't have any specifics for other clock speeds/voltages.

I'm also hitting 55C core temp at 3.6Ghz using a cooler master hyper 212+.

 

[Vesku]

Maniac, for your situation that 940 seems a perfectly fine choice. I'd personally still grab the 740 though, since it is AM3 it allows for more flexibility if the motherboard dies or if you spot a deal on a full featured AM3 board in addition DDR3 prices are dropping.

 

[maniac5999]

So I buy the thing yesterday and today the CPU goes on sale for $5 less. Also, they tried to deliver it today, but nobody was home so I'm probably going to have to wait until monday to get it. :'(

 

[betasub]

Can you still cancel, or refuse delivery?

 

[maniac5999]

Can you still cancel, or refuse delivery?

Over $5? I don't think it's worth it.

 

[Skiprudder]

As a Civ and WoW player I just wanted to say I too am interested to see how this plays out. Do keep us posted.

 

[deimos3428]

Even on medium sized maps I'm waiting a good 30 seconds for the computer to finish it's turn late in the game.

That's just Civ V, as far as I can tell. I'm running a PhII 955/4870/4GB and it still slows down noticeably if you've got a lot of players/cities/units left near the end. With "only" 4GB, I had to re-enable my swap file or the game would occasionally crash as it ran out of memory. Check if its swapping to disk frequently when it slows down, and if so get more RAM.

 

[betasub]

^ So how much memory is the Civ process taking? I guess it must be properly "64-bit enabled" if that process alone is using >2GB.

 

[maniac5999]

Well, The 940 arrived today the UPS guy actually didn't show up until 7:30 and I was getting worried, but it's here. And what I found was very interesting.

I figured out how to run a CPU benchmark for civ5, I basically saved my game every turn until i found a turn where it processed straight through without any pop-ups or diplomacy screens and here is what I got (in seconds):

Kuma: 12.22, 11.94, 12.09, 11.94, 12.38, 12.15 = Avg. 12.12 seconds
Phenom II 940: 11.22, 11.22, 11.18 = Avg. 11.21 seconds

Surprisingly there's very little difference, given that the HDD light barely flickers between turns, I really wonder where the bottleneck could be.

While testing this, I noticed that even though it took over a minute to load the saved level between runs, the HDD light was barely flickering there either, so I started timing things, and here's where it gets REALLY interesting:

Kuma: 1:18.01, 1:18.44, 1:20.82 Average: 1:19.09
Phenom II 940: 56.43, 51.00, 51.56 Average: 53.0

So interestingly we're looking at a 50&#37; reduction in level load times for a pair of extra cores. I have no idea how this could be, but it's very surprising, I'd expect this to be fully I/O limited.

Finally, I think I've gotten quite a dud of a 940, 3.4ghz, BSOD at 1.4v 3.5ghz has crashed on me at 1.45v, and 3.6ghz isn't stable at 1.525 (I'm scared to go any higher, I got a spike to 1.6, which definitely isn't healthy for the CPU)

 

[MustangSVT]

very interesting results.

thanks for the heads up!

apparently ppl with high end i7s are having issues with long cpu turn times. I guess its just how the game was made.

 

[Skiprudder]

Bah, sorry the 940 isn't going higher, but hope it's still ok for you!