Framerate performance - GPUs GTX1060 and RX480 + others

[danlightbulb]

Hi all,

This game was basically the reason I got back into PC gaming. I built a PC a few months ago but held off on the GPU because of the new cards being brought out.

So essentially I want to make the right choice for this game. Other games being secondary.

Out of the GTX1060 and the RX480, currently the GTX1060 is showing as the faster card in benchmarks. However I am aware AMD cards have a history of surpassing NVIDIA cards after a period of time.

I would like to find out if any forum members are specifically running either of these cards, and what settings/framerate performance you get.

Of course it may be useful if other types of cards with performance stats are also revealed, as previous gen cards are still on sale and there is always the used market too.


Thanks

 

[tyczj]

graphics card isnt going to help that much since this game is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive

 

[danlightbulb]

Shouldn't be too much of an issue on a current skylake quad core - hence I still think GPU choice is an important factor. If everyone is getting the same framerates on a GTX960 up to a GTX1080 then yes I'll concede the CPU is the bottleneck.

 

[tyczj]

Shouldn't be too much of an issue on a current skylake quad core - hence I still think GPU choice is an important factor. If everyone is getting the same framerates on a GTX960 up to a GTX1080 then yes I'll concede the CPU is the bottleneck.

frame rate is also going to depend on how much each person is putting into their park so this is a very difficult question to answer and is going to vary a lot.

Some people build big parks with lots a scenery and trees with a lot of guests and other just build rides and dont care about scenery that much

 

[danlightbulb]

Problem for me is that I have this choice to make, but Planet Coaster is not the type of game that ever will appear in any online benchmarking suite. In some games the 1060 is faster, in some games the RX480 is faster. So its not a clear cut choice - hence hoping for some clues here.

 

[Sven311]

I have the same issue.. i will buy a new gpu within weeks or even days. My toughts went to the msi gtx 1060 gaming but the rx 48p is cheaper and you can add a second one on the future(crossfire) the 1060 can't support sli.. so i haven't know either what to do. My cpu is an i5 2500k @ 4.5ghz

 

[Krux1]

graphics card isnt going to help that much since this game is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive

while this game is very CPU intensive, it still does a TON of 3d rendering....this is something that is said a LOT on these forums and isnt a true statement, a graphics card upgrade will most definitely improve your performance in this game. the only way that might not be the case, is if you are severely bottle necking yourself with a very low end CPU and a strong GPU. i wish a dev would jump on here and squash this common thing said to everyone on here.

regardless of how CPU intensive a game may be, GPU upgrades will ALWAYS improve performance in 3D applications. unless, again, your bottle necking yourself with an unbalanced system. PC does quite a bit of rendering, and it is still a LARGE part of the game itself. CPU intensive or not.

 

[Guitar_Sly]

Im monitoring my System live on the Second Screen on my keyboard and the use of the GPU has increased extremely from Alpha 2 to Alpha 3. Im just using a R9 290 (waiting for ZEN and VEGA launches winter/spring 2017) but on Parks with much Detail, all available Graphics RAM is FULL! I recommend, if you can, buy a card with the most RAM and Bandwith you can afford. With that much objects randomly placed in this Game, i think, this will be a deal breaker! Over time, theres a chance that you are better with the RX480, due to more bandwith and RAM.

 

[LeglessBloke]

Cannot really recommend between the two, but I would recommend if you get the 1060, perhaps try and opt for the 6GB version of the card. Reason I say that is Planet Coaster is now making use of all 4GB of my cards VRAM since alpha 3 and I imagine the VRAM load will increase over time as they add more assets to the game.

 

[Palaber1984]

I got a Msi 1060 with 6gb. And at the moment I can say that this card is amazing. The only bottleneck could my i5 3470.

But only when the full game is out and all the content run at the same time, then I could tell it's ok or not. For now I have high frame rates but just about 2000 peeps. What's with 10000?

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

I have the almighty XD 6th gen skylake intel core i7 6700k quad core processor and AMD R9 390.

When I play this game in 1920x1080 maxed out all settings, I get:

30-45fps with 4000 people parks.
11-21fps with 10000 people parks.

Also have 16GB HyperX RAM and direct x12 which helps with computation stuff. The game is only in alpha so it by no means is optimized. Thats why even high end rigs may struggle to play this game.

 

[LeglessBloke]

I have the almighty XD 6th gen skylake intel core i7 6700k quad core processor and AMD R9 390.

When I play this game in 1920x1080 maxed out all settings, I get:

30-45fps with 4000 people parks.
11-21fps with 10000 people parks.

Also have 16GB HyperX RAM and direct x12 which helps with computation stuff. The game is only in alpha so it by no means is optimized. Thats why even high end rigs may struggle to play this game.

Planet Coaster is a directx11 game so you wont see any benefit from directx12. I'm not pointing that out to be that guy, it's just for anyone speccing a graphics card you need to more mindful of directx11 performance if you're mainly interested in this game.

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

Planet Coaster is a directx11 game so you wont see any benefit from directx12. I'm not pointing that out to be that guy, it's just for anyone speccing a graphics card you need to more mindful of directx11 performance if you're mainly interested in this game.

Doesn't mean that there won't be a DX12 version at some point though.

In the end its a simulation game, I expect it to run like a dog, and I am sure it will, even on release. Saying that my Skylake 6600 + RX480 seems to be eating it up for breakfast.

 

[Krux1]

Doesn't mean that there won't be a DX12 version at some point though.

In the end its a simulation game, I expect it to run like a dog, and I am sure it will, even on release. Saying that my Skylake 6600 + RX480 seems to be eating it up for breakfast.

yes it does, as the devs have stated DX12 is not coming to planet coaster, as the benefits from DX12 would make little to no difference for this game (they say)

 

[The Judge1]

The 1060 would be the better choice. Much more overlocking headroom that will allow it to far exceed the RX480. It also requires less power and has a lower TDP.

The game is more CPU dependent then any other game (or program) that I have ever ran. This does not mean that it does not require a good GPU or that it would not improve the games performance. It simply means that you will not notice a huge gain in FPS from say a 1060 to a 1080.

And yes, no DX12 for PC. The main advantage of DX12 over DX11 is that it allows commands to the video card to be multithreaded. It eliminates a bottleneck to allow more commands to be processed at once. GPUs can multithread and until dx12 came out, they were not able to take much advantage of this feature. I have no knowledge of how PC and the cobra engine sends commands to the video card but I am guessing that DX12 may cause a slowdown to the game. CPU is already pushed to 70% across all cores. Adding more commands to be processed across those same cores may cause system slowdown beyond what It is currently with large parks.

@Krux, Yes and no...
If PC was using 100% of the GPU I would agree with your statement. The main problem with PC as it is now is that it does not use the GPU anywhere near 100% usage. After playing a park with a map that is 3/4 full of rides and scenery and 5k guests, My GPU never exceeds 50% usage and don't even get warm compared to BF4 or other games I play. Even WOW runs my GPU harder then PC! So until they balance out the workload in the games engine, a new 1080 GPU will not net massive gains in PC.

However your statement about a high end GPU being bottlenecked by a low end CPU is plausible, however no modern CPU will bottleneck a modern GPU. Plenty of tests have been ran with older AMD chips (much slower then any "I" series chip) running 1080s and there was no difference in performance. CPUs are not a normal bottleneck in a DX11 game unless you have a extremely old CPU. But then the CPU would be below minimum spec for PC.

 

[Guitar_Sly]

Somethings strange... On my AMD FX8350 and R9 290 Setup, it utilizes the GPU(!) at 100% since Alpha 3. Heating of the VRMs and GPU itself are the same as in ohter GPU heavy Games. So this changed massively. Also the VRAM is nearly at the maximum of 4GB when i load a SMALL Park. We should do some comparison on different AMD and NVidia GPUs to sort out, wich cards are used to the Limit and wich not?!?

 

[The Judge1]

Somethings strange... On my AMD FX8350 and R9 290 Setup, it utilizes the GPU(!) at 100% since Alpha 3. Heating of the VRMs and GPU itself are the same as in ohter GPU heavy Games. So this changed massively. Also the VRAM is nearly at the maximum of 4GB when i load a SMALL Park. We should do some comparison on different AMD and NVidia GPUs to sort out, wich cards are used to the Limit and wich not?!?

That is indeed interesting....
Perhaps it is a AMD vs Nvidia thing?

Drivers not optimized for Nvidia vs AMD... Seems more research would be needed...

 

[mmppolton]

I get good frame rate with 16 gb of ram
a rx 480 8 gb
Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor

 

[Guitar_Sly]

That is indeed interesting....
Perhaps it is a AMD vs Nvidia thing?

Drivers not optimized for Nvidia vs AMD... Seems more research would be needed...

The main difference between the AMD GCN Architecture (since Radeon 7000 series) and the NVidia Maxwell/Pascal (GF900/1000) is the capability of Compute Shading/Asynchronous Shading and Computing Power. But i thought, thats mainly a DirectX 12 thing there... Is it possible, that frontier has pushed theyr Cobra engine that far, that they can use such things in some Parts in DX11? This could also explain, why it takes the long time until Alpha 3, to run it stable and optimised.

Planet Coaster shows a extremely efficient use of Modern Multicore CPUs, thats also not really Common for Game Engines. Most Games today use at least 4 Cores, some exceptions make use of a 6-Core, but not nearly that efficient like the Cobra Engine works here. For me as an Hardware and Technology enthusiast, its a very interesting thing here. Im really excited to see, where this will go over time, and how much it can improve on future Architectures. Im planning to go on a ZEN/VEGA Platform early/mid 2017 with an 8-Core/16 Thread ZEN and a High-End Vega GPU. [big grin]

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

MSI Afterburner says Planet Coaster Alpha 3 is utilizing 100% of my AMD R9 390 GPU, but only 52% of my 6th gen Intel Core i7-6700k CPU (4 cores, 8 threads, 8MB cache, base clock speed of 4Ghz with turbo boost to 4.2Ghz, can be overclocked but mine isn't. 4.2Ghz even 4Ghz is a respectable clock speed especially since my CPU is not just a dual core processor). This game according to MSI Afterburner IS utilizing hyperthreading of the 8 threads which my processor has due to results from MSI afterburner.

I can play Alpha 3 on 1920x1080 MAXED out settings or High Preset Settings and even with playing on parks with 4,000 people in it, I'm still achieving 30-45fps. I've read a lot of comments about Nvidia GPU's having low frame rates since Alpha 3 came out. My AMD R9 390 has a higher bandwidth (384GB/s) than the GTX 1080 (320GB/s) and the GTX 980 (in the 200's GB/s). It also has a bigger bus (512-bit bus) than the GTX 980 and 970). It hands down outperforms better than the GTX 970 but I think it's slightly weaker/slower than a GTX 980.