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Low frame rates on a good system


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I have what I think is a fairly powerful computer, yet using 1024x768, AA and AS off, textures and models set to 'balanced', I average 10-20fps whenever there are significant units, buildings or trees on the ground.

Here's my specs:

  • AMD Phendom X4 9500 Quad-core @ 2.2ghz
  • 2GB DDR2 PC 2-5300@ 333mhz
  • ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB @ 850mhz
  • ASUS M2A-VM motherboard, 300w PSU

I haven't been keeping up with the latest stats on CPUs, and this one was given to me, so I'm not sure how great it is, but I'm pretty sure my GPU should be able to give more than 15 fps average, when I can get 30-50 fps average playing Godfather 2.

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I wasn't aware of this either? CMSF doesn't allow for / use dual & quad core systems? How is that possible? Surprising that BFC wouldn't have found a way / solution for dual / quad users....Such systems are the entire future,,,, Hell, my system is 3 years old and it is a quad-core.

Is this an issue that can be addressed? Will it be? In terms of CMSF...

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From what i've read on here BF doesn't think the extra effort it would require to code for multiple cores would produce significant enough improvements for those with multiple cores without making the game unplayable for those of us with single cores.

As such I don't think we'll see multi-core support until at least the next major engine update.

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In my experience, it's buildings that are a real frame rate eater. Battles with large numbers of buildings run slower. But, there are plenty of scenarios with more open terrain where the issue does not arise. And, on the postive side, playing with low double digit frame rates (I get 12 on building heavy scenarios) is not a problem, so long as you can avoid the "stutter" of the graphics when navigating around the map.

Frame rates are not the be-all and end-all of CMSF. It's not a FPS : )

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Multi-core/multi-threaded support in the game engine is not currently present. It is VERY COMPLEX to code and more than likely we will have to wait until the CMx3 engine is being coded before such tasks are undertaken, which is probably several years away from now. CM Normandy, CM Bulge and CMSF2 titles will continue to use the CMx2 engine. After those games and their modules have been released is probably the time frame that a new engine will be worked on.

I'm not sure what the balance would be when it comes to coding for multi-cores while not impacting single-core users. The engine needs to be capable of threading itself for single-core CPUs, while still taking as much advantage as possible of multi-core CPUs. There may be trade-offs in maintaining single-core support, whether that is the amount of time to code or a less efficient/robust multi-core implementation. However by the time the CMx3 engine is being coded, there may not be much need for single-core support (or it could take a backseat in terms of performance optimization). Since this all years away, these are just guesses on my part.

Regarding the original question. It's probably not a good comparison between what amounts to a FPS engine (GodFather2) and the 3D environment that CMSF has to draw. Admittedly the CMSF engine probably is not as optimized as some of these newer (DirectX) game engines are (which have multiple programmers work on just the engine alone). Another difference is that CMSF is an OpenGL game and that has not gotten the lion's share of developer support and optimization from the video chip manufacturers. DirectX is king right now and so most of the driver development is geared towards that API.

In any case, I too would have expected slightly better performance with a Radeon 5770, with the exception of dense urban, forested or hilly areas (a lot of elevation changes). Do you see this specific performance in a certain scenario or campaign ? Some maps do work over the GPUs and low frame rates are to be expected on even high-end hardware (since the CMSF engine really doesn't have optimizations that would take advantage of some of the newer hardware). What did you measure performance with, FRAPS ? As others pointed out the CPU may be a bit of the bottleneck here in terms of its single-core performance.

Do you overclock you Phenom X4 9550 ? There may not be a whole lot of overhead to do so, plus your 300W power supply may not be very stable in an overclocking environment (or your Asus M2A-VM may not be a good overclocker either).

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From what i've read on here BF doesn't think the extra effort it would require to code for multiple cores would produce significant enough improvements for those with multiple cores without making the game unplayable for those of us with single cores.

As such I don't think we'll see multi-core support until at least the next major engine update.

It's more that it requires a lot of programming time which is sadly limited for such a small company as BFC.

With that in mind it doesn't make sense to dedicate this precious programming to multi-core processing because much of this extra power is then spent on juggling the data across several cores. This will give you only a limited performance boost.

I've got a couple of games with a multi-core switch. And I can confirm that in every case the differences in performance are minimal or entirely unnoticeable. (on a E6600 2 x 2.4Ghz)

It's one of the reason why I always recommend a good dual core with individual oomph over a quad with lesser CPUs.

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Ok thanks for the replys everyone, the performance on my new computer now is definately better than my old one (P4 2.8ghz, 2gb DDR1, ATI x850), but while other games got 2-4x the framerates from this upgrade, CMSF only got an extra 5-15fps.

So just out of curiosity, no matter how expensive, what system would be able to play CMSF on max settings, max resolution, on the largest most complex maps, with a minimum of 24 fps?

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Yes, I would like multi-threaded coding as well. In fact, my 3 running computers (2 others are not being used right now - age, OS, etc. Although, I may resurrect one as a home server, but that's another issue...) are all quad-cores, overclocked, etc, running on a cat6 home network with gigabit rated network hardware. Because of that, I think BF.C needs to work on DISTRIBUTED processing across multi-threaded machines. It's a travesty to think of all the wasted capability my personal setup leaves unused when I play CMSF. In fact, if somehow BF.C could get into the "cloud" and create a program similar to the "Folding at Home" software, we would all benefit. Imagine having ballistics and AI being run on thousands of otherwise idle machines and getting the results back to your own machine?

Okay, okay, a bunch of sarcasm there. Yes, it would be great if BF.C could create programming to utilize multi-core systems, especially since they are becoming more and more prevelant.

However, as others have posted, there are few if any gains made in real world gaming when using multi-threaded coding. A few hundred more mhz are worth more than another core. (Now, if you're playing a game, encoding some video, and surfing the web, then, sure, those extra cores really shine.)

To moeburn; 24fps minimum? I don't know. Schrullenhaft may know. For what it's worth, it seems that buildings and elevation changes take a lot of RAM. I've got one machine with 8 Gb, one with 4 Gb. (Use a 64 bit OS so you can use more than the 32 bit limit of approx. 3.5 Gb.) The RAM allows me to rarely be slowed down on ANY map. Based on what you posted, it seems to me that would be the cheapest and quickest way for you to boost your system (you stated that you have 2 Gb of RAM).

Enjoy,

Ken

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I wonder whether an extra 2gb of RAM or an extra gb of VRAM would give the best improvement.

Another thing that eats CPU cycles in CMSF seems to be the ballistics, I don't play in real time but do sometimes use it to test stuff, and my PC just cannot handle the A-10s cannon, the game just freezes, i hear the gun sound and then the game starts again with the target usually on fire : )

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By co-incidence I ordered an extra 2GB of RAM for my machine a couple of days ago. It's a dual core 2.66 MHz system running XP 32 bit. Will let you know if the additional 2 GB of RAM makes a noticable difference. To be honest, I'm hopeful. Doubt it will be anything amazing (no doubling of speed), but RAM is pretty cheap these days, and am hoping that 4 GB (well, we all know not all of it is usable under XP 32 bit) will give me a bit more ooomph...

Will let you know.

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bulldogchurchill,

Others here are FAR more knowledgeable than I on these matters, however, I understand that 32 bit means 2^32 maximum addresses for memory. Without doing binary math, I seem to remember that gives a theoretical 32 bit OS limit of 4.0 Gb of memory. Your video card memory IS part of that; so, for example, if you have a 1 Gb video card, that leaves a maximum of 3.0 Gb usable memory. Some more may be subtracted for cache use; I forget the details... So, in short, of that extra 2 Gb, you may not see too much of a boost. Now, if you upgrade to 64 bit OS, then the system can use more than you can ever stuff in the machine (with present day tech).

It will help, I just don't think it will be a tremendous amount of increase. Please let us know what happens.

Ken

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Well, additional memory installed and tested. My video card is a 9600GT NVIDIA model with 512MB of memory, so I was effectively installing an additional 1.5GB of system RAM. The PC has some noticable performance improvements. Mainstream games also chug along noticeably faster. But, for CMSF no real improvement. Load times seem to be marginally improved. No real increase in frame rate during the game : (

Looks like the next investment in the search for CMSF perfection will be a Pentium i5 : )

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  • 7 months later...

I am running CM:SF NATO on Windows 7 64-bit. I just installed some additonal RAM, bumping my total up to 10GB. I am not seeing any in game improvements. My video card is an ASUS EAH5770 with 1 GB RAM.

Will someone from BFC please comment on whether or not additonal RAM increases performance?

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CMSF is only going to realistically use about 2GB of RAM. There are methods to allow an application to see up to 3GB of RAM, but I don't think any of that is going to really make much, if any, difference.

With the current crop of Windows OSes, more RAM typically means that the system will have more RAm to use as a 'disk cache'. More RAM typically helps when running multiple applications or running true 64-bit applications that can actually access more than 2-3GB of RAM.

For CMSF the best investment (assuming you have enough RAM already) is a faster CPU and then possibly a faster video card.

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So many seem to be reporting this that there is probably something wrong with their computers, config, system, too many other programs running at start-up, allocation of whatever...

I have only a 2.9GHz. (Altho' I do have a 295 card.) Game runs fine (60MHz) at 2880x1800.

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The desktop system that I am running CM:SF on is tuned up and configured properly, and very well maintained with no extra background processes running. I have an Athlon X2 dual-core processor that runs at 2.6ghz.

The game runs fine with all settings on Best, and that was with 4 GB of RAM. As I mentioned, there is no difference with my added RAM (10 GB total), due to what Schrullenhaft said. CM:SF was not coded to take advantage of extra RAM, and is not a 64-bit program. I am currently playing a large scenario, and was curious if I would see a difference in performance with added RAM.

On my Toshiba Satellite laptop, I get acceptable performance with all settings on Best, and I have a Centrino duo at 1.0 ghz each, with an on board NVidia GeForce GO GS7900. I have Anisotropic filtering at 4x and AA at 2x, set in my video card software. This machine is also in great shape and tuned up. This system has 4GB RAM.

Hard drive speed can also be an issue as well with performance. With Windows operating systems, it really helps to reformat and do a clean operating system install about once a year, depending on how well you maintain your system. Also, if you have a lot of programs running on your computer, especially programs that start on boot up, it helps to open Task Manager, and kill all the processes that are not necessary before running CM.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit has a 16 GB RAM limit

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit has a 192 GB RAM limit

For 32-bit systems:

232 = 4,294,967,296 bytes

4,294,967,296 / (1,024 x 1,024) = 4,096 MB = 4GB

For 64-bit:

264 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616

18,446,744,073,709,551,616 / (1,024 x 1,024) = 16EB (exabytes)

However, there are operating system and CPU limits, so the max with Win 7 Ultimate is 192 GB.

A bit is either a 1 or a 0...either On or Off. Hence 232

The 4GB limit for 32-bit operating systems refers to total addressable memory space and not just the RAM installed. So your video card RAM is factored in. That is why even though you may have 4 GB of RAM installed you may only see 2.2 GB available.

Thanks for the feedback Schrullenhaft!

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My old laptop which has a T7500 2.2GHz processor ran CMSF fine on all maps on balanced settings. So I don't think his processor is a huge issue. I even recorded videos running fraps with an "OK" (10-20) framerate while playing CMSF

If you read my thread you will see I got a large jump in performance by using the ATI control center to control AA and turning those settings to ON in CMSF. Having those settings OFF for some strange reason really hurt my performance. I'm posting from my phone so I can't link the thread, but it's called "New computer, CMSF runs somewhat slow" and it's about three topics down.

Critizing CMSF for only using one core is silly. The vast majority of games are 32bit and single core. I think there is a serious load on GPUs when you use "best" 3D models due to the draw distance and amount of models involved over a large area. So try "balanced" 3D models but "best" textures.

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My understanding is that multicore is designed for multitasking. I am fortunate to have a dedicated game machine, so I didn't see the reason to spend more than singlecore. I put the savings into the 295 card, an SSD and other top of the line components.

Exactly. Compiling, servers, media work, etc are all useful for multi-core. With the increasing trend in gaming engines making more use of the GPU processor which can be tuned specifically for games, and thus do all the work (as opposed to CPUs required to be open ended) there is not a lot of point in making games for more than one core/processor.

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Well, my understanding is that the GPU can far exceed to performance of the CPU due to the architecture being specifically designed for gaming. The architecture of the CPU needs to remain open ended due to having to support a wider variety of applications.

Not only that, a lot of games don't really strain much CPU power anyway. Obviously games like CMSF (and other simulation type games) do to a certain degree. There is another game I play called Victoria 2 which calculates what the entire population of the world is doing every few seconds (promotions, migrations, needs, etc) which became unplayable on my old laptop, but would be a good candidate for multi-core.

In terms of multicore support, maybe for larger developers they will throw in support, but until games start being bottlenecked by the CPU I don't see much of a point except for marketing purposes. Having said that, maybe processor speeds will get lower/stay the same, but core numbers increase.

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