47 replies to this topic

[Phoenix Rising]

I want to keep the official thread limited to reports, but we also need to make some sense of these numbers. That's what this thread is for. Comments are more than welcome here... I'll start us off again.

During our internal beta testing that we did prior to the release, we quickly realized that performance of the graphics card had almost no bearing on galactic mode. On a normal system with relative hardware balance, you should be able to turn down all of the settings or crank them up with negligible effect on how the campaigns run. Just from crunching the on-screen triangle counts in my head, there is way more of a burden in tactical than galactic, except tactical performs better.

So either the CPU or RAM seem to be at fault for the slowness of galactic mode, but more likely the CPU (if there weren't enough memory, you'd expect it to be jerky rather than constantly slow). Furthermore, I don't think it's completely unloading galactic mode, i.e. temporarily saving it to the hard drive, when you enter tactical, so that data should still be in memory during combat, but I'm not certain (can someone verify that memory usage always goes up when you go into a battle?). I know it should auto-save before every battle, which would hurt the tactical load time proportionate to the size and scope of the galaxy though.

I've tried completely turning off all AI players for a campaign and it makes no difference on performance, so the frame rate issue does not appear to be with the AI. The only reliable way to improve performance is by cutting planets or starting forces, which leads me to suspect something like the Free Store being at fault. Does anyone want to experiment with using different numbers and/or cutting code on the Galactic Free Store?

I have a few individual comments on the benchmarking as well:

Tropical Bob, I find it odd that you get an extra minute of load time on CW over the game itself. Our menu load times are comparable, memory is effectively identical (your Vista requires more, but can access more than my XP), and, as I said, it's not the GPU. Could it be Vista or the processor? I guess we'll need more data.

hetter, I'm not totally surprised that your frame rate readings are close no matter the resolution because I don't think the graphics card is the bottleneck. Is 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz native for your monitor?

More as it comes in.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 06 January 2009 - 07:19 AM.

[Tropical Bob]

I'll try doing all the loading again tomorrow when I get off of work, and see if it remains the same.

Edited by Tropical Bob, 06 January 2009 - 08:54 AM.

[Phoenix Rising]

I'm sure it's accurate, I just want to find out why. We'll see what the others post.

[Tropical Bob]

Noticing what you said about how it could be processors, looked up on each of our three. Now I don't know anything about them beyond "higher numbers = better yay!", but I did notice something, if I'm correct about all of this.

-PR's/Kitkun's processor has 6MB of L2 cache and 1333 MT/s FSB
-My processor has 512KB of L2 cache per core (1MB total) and 1600 MT/s FSB
-hetter's processor has 512KB of L2 cache and 533 MT/s FSB
-coinich's has 3MB L2 cache and 1066 MT/s

Like I said, I don't know what any of that means, but it looks like those numbers might matter so far.

Edited by Tropical Bob, 06 January 2009 - 06:21 PM.

[Kitkun]

I swear loading to the main menu is getting faster every time. Very first time was a couple of minutes, and was about 0:45 a couple days ago.

Auto-detect, WTF? Is it not registering my graphics card correctly?

Now, why I still have a beef with GC: The framerate is fine, but everything runs much slower than normal. It's as if I went into gameconstants and doubled all the production, speed and unit of time length (Galactic Week) modifiers. It once took near fifteen minutes to build a single level two space station.

My conclusion: Changing my graphics settings and going for an optimized boot-up yielded negligible performance increases.

Edited by Kitkun, 06 January 2009 - 03:10 PM.

[coinich]

I've taken a look at the taskmanager readouts, and it seems as if eawfoc.exe (whatever it really is) never takes up more than a gig of ram; it seems capped. GFFA and Core Worlds lag just about the same amount for me, but they take up different memory allotments too.

[hetter71]

Is 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz native for your monitor?

Yes, it is.

[Phoenix Rising]

Noticing what you said about how it could be processors, looked up on each of our three.

I was going to ask for those numbers, but I figured most people (non-regulars, whatever) wouldn't have any idea. I'll add it in as a "if possible". Please edit your posts in the sticky if those numbers that Tropical Bob found are correct.

So, a short lesson in computer architecture, for those of you who care. Most moderately tech-savvy people know that you can store data both in RAM and on a HD, with RAM being the faster option in terms of access time, but volatile, so it's lost when you turn the power off. Well, there's an even faster option than RAM, which is a cache.

Cached memory is literally on the processor, so it takes virtually no time to access. Most modern CPUs have a L1 cache, which is the fastest, but very small, and a L2 cache, which varies in size, but is a tiny bit slower than L1. Any variable that's being accessed super frequently gets put in the cache, like, say, your in-game credit balance. Anything that doesn't fit in the cache goes into RAM (this is inevitable), which is slower access, and anything that doesn't fit into RAM goes in virtual memory on the HD (this should be avoided - you need more RAM!), which is jarringly slow.

The front side bus speed basically determines just how slow it is to access RAM. This is where you get the benefit from 64-bit processing - you can push twice the amount of data across the bus in the same time frame. (Of course, you still need to have an OS that supports 64-bit to get the benefit of it.) It's important to note that the FSB runs at the slower of the speed listed for it on the CPU and matching motherboard, so I'll have to ask for that value as well.

I swear loading to the main menu is getting faster every time. Very first time was a couple of minutes, and was about 0:45 a couple days ago.

That's interesting. Vista also seems to be able to load faster than XP.

It once took near fifteen minutes to build a single level two space station.

It should take 90 in-game "seconds" (a day and a half on the game clock), so that's not right.

I've taken a look at the taskmanager readouts, and it seems as if eawfoc.exe (whatever it really is) never takes up more than a gig of ram; it seems capped.

Yeah, we noticed that too. It's unfortunate really.

Is 1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz native for your monitor?

Yes, it is.

So setting the game resolution to your native resolution appears to be faster no matter what. I'd expect that, but I didn't know it would make that much of a difference. That's a good thing to know.

Have you tried contacting Petro...they could know the problem since they didn't plan for this many planets or units in it I believe...May be just a matter of them telling you what to cut out of the xmls.

Petroglyph, or rather the developers at PG who worked on EaW, barely remembered how the engine worked, and that was over a year ago when I was there. Development for EaW started in, what, 2003? So I don't think that would get anywhere. Really they're too busy with Mytheon to bother with issues in FoC.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 07 January 2009 - 01:00 AM.

[coinich]

I don't suppose you want page file numbers? For the record, simply looking up your processor on Wiki should divulge your L2 cache without much work. The Dxdiag can take care of anything else.

Edited by coinich, 07 January 2009 - 01:19 AM.

[El Danny]

I remember downloading Thawns Revenge mini-mod a while ago. They removed all planet in GC and replased them with a single planet marker. Maybe a simler idea will make things faster?

[Phoenix Rising]

I don't suppose you want page file numbers?

Yeah, whatever else you want to add that might be helpful. I'm just trying to design a test that anyone can reasonably take, so I'm sure we can't get those numbers from everyone, but if you can think to add anything extra, go ahead. Please put it in the other thread though.

I remember downloading Thawns Revenge mini-mod a while ago. They removed all planet in GC and replased them with a single planet marker. Maybe a simler idea will make things faster?

How do you mean? We're pretty certain that this isn't a graphical limitation, so you should be able to put, I don't know, 3D orbiting fleets when you zoom into a planet without it hurting the performance. We don't think the GPU is what's being taxed in GC, which is what models would fall under. Animation might be another story though - I'm not sure if that's something the GPU or CPU would handle.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 07 January 2009 - 01:24 AM.

[Dr. Nick]

Just loaded up the Core Worlds GC and got 6-10 FPS.

My relevant specs:
Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
4 Gb RAM

[Phoenix Rising]

I got a chance (or rather took the time) to play GC through week 60 or so, which is a rarity. I'm certain the locking up that you experience just before a battle is announced is the result of the game writing an auto-save to the hard drive. I'd like to find out if it's possible to disable this "feature". I checked the constants and found nothing relevant to auto-saving, but I haven't checked all of the quirky little XMLs, even though it's probably a long shot.

Also, more evidence to it being a CPU issue: turning on fast-forward just about halved the frame rate. Unlike increasing build times or something like that, fast-forward actually forces the game to "think" faster, except it doesn't seem to be able to because it kills the frame rate.

Just loaded up the Core Worlds GC and got 6-10 FPS.

Thanks Dr. Nick. Have you guys had any luck at making GC run better? How does that compare to what you run TR at?

[Tropical Bob]

It's important to note that the FSB runs at the slower of the speed listed for it on the CPU and matching motherboard, so I'll have to ask for that value as well.

I suppose that, on a laptop, it's all one in the same? Because I'm not sure I saw anything about a motherboard for my lappy, and definitely don't know where to look if it has one.

Petroglyph, or rather the developers at PG who worked on EaW, barely remembered how the engine worked, and that was over a year ago when I was there. Development for EaW started in, what, 2003? So I don't think that would get anywhere. Really they're too busy with Mytheon to bother with issues in FoC.

Hooray for the developers...You'd think they'd at least have notes somewhere. Or at least something better than the random nonsensical comments left here and there throughout the XMLs.

[coinich]

Nonsensical notes build character, though!

[Casen]

It's obvious it's the CPU. When I play Supreme Commander on huge maps with lots of AI after a while into the game everything starts to slow down. Not the framerate, nothing skips, it just literally slows down smoothly like it goes into slow mo. It's almost the same with GC.

[Kitkun]

I suppose that, on a laptop, it's all one in the same? Because I'm not sure I saw anything about a motherboard for my lappy, and definitely don't know where to look if it has one.

Nope. Google the model of laptop you have, and you should find specifics. They use different form of the same hardware. Just don't try taking it apart enough to see the motherboard.

BTW, I'm wondering if the hard drive spec might affect loading time in any way. Or perhaps even performance when it comes to the page file.

Edited by Kitkun, 07 January 2009 - 07:18 PM.

[Tropical Bob]

I suppose that, on a laptop, it's all one in the same? Because I'm not sure I saw anything about a motherboard for my lappy, and definitely don't know where to look if it has one.

Nope. Google the model of laptop you have, and you should find specifics. They use different form of the same hardware. Just don't try taking it apart enough to see the motherboard.

BTW, I'm wondering if the hard drive spec might affect loading time in any way. Or perhaps even performance when it comes to the page file.

I've looked at a couple different specs, but never see anything about a motherboard model. Even on the HP support site: dv9922us