CPU and GPU performance tests in Factions

[Aleksej]

I have performed several performance tests with different setting in single player Factions scenario of Alpha 3.4.

First of all about my rig. I have a high end PC with:
Sandy Bridge i7 2600k@4.6GHz, HT on
16GB RAM@2133MHz
GTX Titan SLI @1084MHz and @1150MHz
System and soft are on SSD.
PSU: Be-quiet Dark Power Pro P9 850W 80plus gold.

During the combat when most of the ships are engaged in dogfight I have about 70-90 fps, however the usage of both GPUs drops to about 50% (GPUs automatically downclock to 679MHz and 836MHz correspondingly) while CPU usage is varying 50-70% on average, sometimes there are peaks to about 77%.

When I have disabled SLI I had the same CPU usage, at the same time the load on a single GPU increased to about 85-90% (GPU did not downclock). And I had the same 70-90 fps.

For the last test I have turned hyper-threading off, SLI was enabled. CPU load increased to an average of about 85-91%, GPU load was about the same 50%. FPS dropped to 60-70.

The conclusions are clear:
The game utilizes all 4 CPU cores;
Hyper-threading significantly affects the performance;
Even overclocked 4 core i7 with HT on might actually bottleneck the performance.

Discussion:
Will 8 core CPU reduce the bottleneck and be required for optimal performance?
Should an upgrade to Haswell-E be planned to optimize the performance?
Or will the optimization of the game reduce CPU bottleneck?

 

[deusx_ophc]

Or will the optimization of the game reduce CPU bottleneck?

this more than anything. i do not think much optimisation has been done yet.

and i also do not see the point in waiting for "better" hardware. always buy smart and in the upper percentiles of the current models.

unless you want to burn some cash to flex your epeen

 

[sfried]

I really hope they optimize this game alot. Seeing documentaries about the original Elite make me think game developers nowdays are sort of "spoiled". Then again, its not like I'd like to ask Mr. Braben to personally come and encode E: D in assembly language (quite improbabaly given today's various PC setups) so that we'd get the most optimal performance out of any engine this generation.

Would be nice though if they could really support as many functions from various hardware to squeeze in the performance out of any rig.

 

[Aleksej]

this more than anything. i do not think much optimisation has been done yet.

and i also do not see the point in waiting for "better" hardware. always buy smart and in the upper percentiles of the current models.

unless you want to burn some cash to flex your epeen

There is no sense in waiting for "better" hardware if you do not have any PC yet, or if your PC is outdated. In this cases I would have bought the best I could get right now. However, as you see I am still having a high end CPU, 4770K Haswell won't offer significant performance increase as technically it is also a 4-core CPU with HT. And also Devil's Canyon (Haswell refresh) is one month away. I do not see any sense in upgrading to x79 chipset while x99 is only several months away. Also Haswell-E will have 8-core CPU(s).

 

[Cyborg]

It's a little early to discuss such topics.

Discussion:
Will 8 core CPU reduce the bottleneck and be required for optimal performance?
Should an upgrade to Haswell-E be planned to optimize the performance?
Or will the optimization of the game reduce CPU bottleneck?

It's a little early to discuss such topics. How the game is presented so far, it should not utilize the processor excessively.
The main problem or the bottleneck is the network transmission.
If more players join a session, the framerate drops down. To minimize the necessary objects that have to be syncronized, it is necessary to have a protocol that can handle that intelligent.
To realize such a thing without fixed servers is almost inconceivable, because theoretically the ownership of objects have to be negotiated first.
A more powerful PC would be taken into also stronger and therefore it have to do more work.

 

[Aleksej]

It's a little early to discuss such topics. How the game is presented so far, it should not utilize the processor excessively.
The main problem or the bottleneck is the network transmission.
If more players join a session, the framerate drops down. To minimize the necessary objects that have to be syncronized, it is necessary to have a protocol that can handle that intelligent.
To realize such a thing without fixed servers is almost inconceivable, because theoretically the ownership of objects have to be negotiated first.
A more powerful PC would be taken into also stronger and therefore it have to do more work.

That is the reason why I have performed this tests in single player - to rule out networking issues. Or is the network being used so extensively in single player Factions that it affects the performance in such a significant way?

 

[Pembs]

I have an AMD FX-8350 @ 4Ghz (8 real cores, no hyperthreading shenanigans) in my machine so this might be useful to you in terms of will ED make use of 8 cores?

My CPU full spec is:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 @ 4Ghz (stock speed)
GPU: nVidia GTX 770 with 2Gb DDR5
RAM: 8Gb 1600Mhz DDR3
O/S: Windows 8.1 64-bit

In factions at 1080p, all graphics on high with vsync off I get around 35-45 fps when flying around the ships. I get a solid 60fps with vsync on when playing all the other scenarios.

Here's a screen grab of my CPUs in Task Manager when ED was running factions. ED was the only thing consuming any amount of CPU at the time. Overall it was using around 65% CPU capacity.

 

[Aleksej]

I have an AMD FX-8350 @ 4Ghz (8 real cores, no hyperthreading shenanigans) in my machine so this might be useful to you in terms of will ED make use of 8 cores?

My CPU full spec is:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 @ 4Ghz (stock speed)
GPU: nVidia GTX 770 with 2Gb DDR5
RAM: 8Gb 1600Mhz DDR3
O/S: Windows 8.1 64-bit

In factions at 1080p, all graphics on high with vsync off I get around 35-45 fps when flying around the ships. I get a solid 60fps with vsync on when playing all the other scenarios.

Here's a screen grab of my CPUs in Task Manager when ED was running factions. ED was the only thing consuming any amount of CPU at the time. Overall it was using around 65% CPU capacity.

I have similar graphs for CPU usage in Factions for all 8 threads I have with HT on:

http://bayimg.com/LanDpaAfO

 

[estebadia]

what sli profile are you using ?

the only one working with Elite right now is AFR2... all others sli profile does not use the second card as it should...

in a middle of a battle, i got almost double fps with afr2 than all the others profile... with the same processor and a 670's SLI, i got more fps than you :/ i mean NO SLI i got around 40/50 fps, with SLI AFR 2 around 100, sometime 80, other times 120, depends on the load on the screen

so check first what sli profile you re using, once again, only one of them will use properly your two cards

 

[Aleksej]

what sli profile are you using ?

the only one working with Elite right now is AFR2... all others sli profile does not use the second card as it should...

in a middle of a battle, i got almost double fps with afr2 than all the others profile... with the same processor and a 670's SLI, i got more fps than you :/ i mean NO SLI i got around 40/50 fps, with SLI AFR 2 around 100, sometime 80, other times 120, depends on the load on the screen

so check first what sli profile you re using, once again, only one of them will use properly your two cards

I use AFR2 for SLI with 337.50 drivers. Definitely both cards are under load as I have MSI afterburner running for these purposes. Also I have a walkthrough video of Incursion with SLI visual indicator. At the start of the scenario I have almost 100% load for both GPUs but then when the combat starts it drops to 50% for both GPUs. And as I said during the active phase of combat there is no difference between single GPU and SLI. I have the same average of 80 fps. After sometime fps increase to about 100. In Incursion I have an average of 300fps if I am not recording a video with ShadowPlay.

 

[estebadia]

ok i understand better

 

[Aleksej]

ok i understand better

I have just double-checked I have 185fps with single GPU in Factions before other ships arrive and 315fps with SLI. However during active phase of combat there is no difference between single GPU performance and SLI except GPU utilization for both GPUs in SLI is 40-50% while single GPU is at about 70-80% load.

 

[Pembs]

I have similar graphs for CPU usage in Factions for all 8 threads I have with HT on:

http://bayimg.com/LanDpaAfO

Interesting to see your memory usage there. You have 16gb and 52% of that is being utilised! Presumably not all by ED. Were you running an Oracle database on there too?!

 

[Aleksej]

Interesting to see your memory usage there. You have 16gb and 52% of that is being utilised! Presumably not all by ED. Were you running an Oracle database on there too?!

I have 4GB dedicated to RAMDisk and 2GB to Samsung EVO Rapid mode.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

This is on the following system:

i5 2500k
8gb RAM
GTX 780

CPU seems to average around 75% on Incursion. GPU never goes close to being maxed for more than a second or two.

I get 189fps on Incursion before all the ships jump in. This drops to around 90fps once the Anacondas arrive.

During battle I get 49 to 69fps depending on how much action is on the screen.

 

[Beachlight7]

The game is designed to work well on 1.6ghz 8 cores in my view.

 

[ste]

Is it worth upgrading to 16GB ram?

Is there any noticeable benefit?

I have an i7 3770K ivy bridge OC
MSI GTX 670 OC
2x4GB Corsair DDR3 Vengeance
250GB SSD.

My graphic card is a weak, would it be better to buy a new one or get a second one and join them together?

 

[Aleksej]

Is it worth upgrading to 16GB ram?

Is there any noticeable benefit?

I have an i7 3770K ivy bridge OC
MSI GTX 670 OC
2x4GB Corsair DDR3 Vengeance
250GB SSD.

My graphic card is a weak, would it be better to buy a new one or get a second one and join them together?

There is no special need in 16GB RAM. I bought it because I had initial plans to place Temp folder on RAMDisk as well as I move Temporary Internet Files there to decrease SSD usage for these purposes.
IMO your graphics card is fine. Are you satisfied with its performance in the game? I think it should provide playable FPS in most of the games. I usually upgrade GPU when I become unsatisfied with its performance and I need to decrease graphic settings in the game. If this is not your case then stay with you current graphics card and wait for Maxwell GPUs.

 

[Aleksej]

The game is designed to work well on 1.6ghz 8 cores in my view.

I would agree with that but I have some doubts due to this post:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=370952&postcount=7

In most of the reviews that I have seen GTX Titan is about 20% faster than GTX 770. I have minimum of 80fps in factions with a single Titan and 4-core i7 2600k@4.6GHz HT on. According to that post GTX 770 with 8-core AMD FX8350@4GHz provide a minimum of 40fps, which is 100% slower. Where does such difference come from?

Also this post:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showpost.php?p=371809&postcount=15

shows that GTX780 with i5 2500k provide similar results that I have with i7 2600k HT off. I have slightly better frame rate as GTX Titan is slightly more powerful than GTX 780.

 

[Ergahhr]

My Hardware:
4930k @ 3,8GHz HT on
780Ti @ 1124 MHz Ingame
16GB RAM
Software on SSDs (Win/Software)

Start Faction - 185-190fps
Anaconda arrive - 85-90 fps
Same fps over a long distance
at a short distance to the fight - 60-70 fps

GPU-utilization: 67-82%
CPU-utilization: of the 12 cores use 6 75%, 4 50%, 2 5%

I hope it helps