CPU and GPU performance tests in Factions

[Aleksej]

What I don't quite understand though, is that if Factions is very CPU limited, then why doesn't it max the CPU?

People are showing 65% to 75% use on the CPU, surely this should be max'd?

When I have turned off hyper-threading I had about 90% load on all cores.

Actually, I am trying to find an explanation for the significant drop in GPU load during the most active phase of the combat in Factions. IMO this is the reason behind the drop in the frame rate.

Forgot to mention that when I turned off HT I had 10-15fps less than with HT on.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

When I have turned off hyper-threading I had about 90% load on all cores.

Actually, I am trying to find an explanation for the significant drop in GPU load during the most active phase of the combat in Factions. IMO this is the

reason behind the drop in the frame rate.

Forgot to mention that when I turned off HT I had 10-15fps less than with HT on.

I can't test that as my i5 2500k doesn't have hyper-threading. However it still only ever achieves 75% load on Factions. The GPU ranges from 50% to 60% - this is with a GTX 780.

On Crysis 3 both the CPU and GPU max out. So I agree there is certainly a limiting factor somewhere here.

But it's not a case that the CPU is bottlenecking FPS due to the game demanding higher CPU power is it? If this was the case surely our CPUs would be maxing.

I realise your CPU goes up to 90% without hyper-threading, but I don't get near that at all - and I don't have hyper-threading. And surely with my CPU being weaker than yours I should get a higher load, not a lower one?

 

[Aleksej]

I can't test that as my i5 2500k doesn't have hyper-threading. However it still only ever achieves 75% load on Factions. The GPU ranges from 50% to 60% - this is with a GTX 780.

On Crysis 3 both the CPU and GPU max out. So I agree there is certainly a limiting factor somewhere here.

But it's not a case that the CPU is bottlenecking FPS due to the game demanding higher CPU power is it? If this was the case surely our CPUs would be maxing.

I realise your CPU goes up to 90% without hyper-threading, but I don't get near that at all - and I don't have hyper-threading. And surely with my CPU being weaker than yours I should get a higher load, not a lower one?

I just have double-checked I have significantly higher load with HT OFF, 3 cores at about 70-80% load, 4th core up to 90%. HT ON - about 60% average. Win 8.1 clean install.

 

[Athan]

But it's not a case that the CPU is bottlenecking FPS due to the game demanding higher CPU power is it? If this was the case surely our CPUs would be maxing.

Not necessarily. ED is obviously a highly multi-threaded application, but those threads don't all run independently, there will be cases where one thread has to wait for another to be done with its work, or release a lock on a shared resource. The thing to look for is per-core CPU load. But even then there will be cases of multiple application threads swapping in and out of being actively run, with associated cache miss costs etc which mean you won't see 100% on any core.

Thus I'd expect what's being seen is "high load due to many ships around meaning thread X is struggling" -> "threads Y and Z depend on X's results, and can't continue until it produces its next tick of data" -> "Therefore the GPU is sat around twiddling it's thumbs as it's not being told to do anything".

 

[Aleksej]

Not necessarily. ED is obviously a highly multi-threaded application, but those threads don't all run independently, there will be cases where one thread has to wait for another to be done with its work, or release a lock on a shared resource. The thing to look for is per-core CPU load. But even then there will be cases of multiple application threads swapping in and out of being actively run, with associated cache miss costs etc which mean you won't see 100% on any core.

Thus I'd expect what's being seen is "high load due to many ships around meaning thread X is struggling" -> "threads Y and Z depend on X's results, and can't continue until it produces its next tick of data" -> "Therefore the GPU is sat around twiddling it's thumbs as it's not being told to do anything".

Well, this explanation seems plausible. Although no cores are loaded even close to 100%, especially when HT is on when I sometimes have peaks of up to 80%. The average is still about 60-65% in this case.

 

[Bikky]

Well, this explanation seems plausible. Although no cores are loaded even close to 100%, especially when HT is on when I sometimes have peaks of up to 80%. The average is still about 60-65% in this case.

And don't forget, there's disk caching. A LOT of people seem to think, fast cpu fast computer, and not realise they're caching to disk. Shouldn't be such an issue with more RAM, and very much less so with SSD, but still possible.

The only way to know for sure is threaded performance monitoring, see what processes are hitting CPU, how many threads, what's going on in ram, disk I/O etc.

 

[Aleksej]

And don't forget, there's disk caching. A LOT of people seem to think, fast cpu fast computer, and not realise they're caching to disk. Shouldn't be such an issue with more RAM, and very much less so with SSD, but still possible.

The only way to know for sure is threaded performance monitoring, see what processes are hitting CPU, how many threads, what's going on in ram, disk I/O etc.

This is not my case. You can see my rig in the first post, so all 8 threads are used, nothing besides ED loads CPU. Also I do not have paging file, so no caching to disk (SSD in my case). I think that 10GB of RAM is enough for the system and ED.

 

[Bikky]

This is not my case. You can see my rig in the first post, so all 8 threads are used, nothing besides ED loads CPU. Also I do not have paging file, so no caching to disk (SSD in my case). I think that 10GB of RAM is enough for the system and ED.

I agree with you, it's highly unlikely, but there is the possibility the ALPHA (as this is what it is) is trying to open more threads, or create more read/write queues that the CPU, GPU or HDD can handle.

It's only a thought, we see it at work on some machines, where the Disk IO isn't large itself and the network is blamed for everything running slow, then we (the network team) prove its the client (normally AV) trying to hit the disk and the queues going ballistic.

I'm sure FD will provide much tweaking before beta in this area. As long as it's reported to them that's the main thing.

 

[Aleksej]

I agree with you, it's highly unlikely, but there is the possibility the ALPHA (as this is what it is) is trying to open more threads, or create more read/write queues that the CPU, GPU or HDD can handle.

It's only a thought, we see it at work on some machines, where the Disk IO isn't large itself and the network is blamed for everything running slow, then we (the network team) prove its the client (normally AV) trying to hit the disk and the queues going ballistic.

I'm sure FD will provide much tweaking before beta in this area. As long as it's reported to them that's the main thing.

I think it is to early to report such performance issues as the game is still not optimized and lots of things will be soon changed. I just wanted to understand if 8-core CPUs have advantage over 4-core in ED, and it seems to me, that there is no advantage.