View Full Version : Most CPU intensive games
Old Right Member
10-Jan-2009, 21:11
What currently used engines are the most CPU limited? Which game engines show little difference between running on a 2.5 GHz dual core processor versus a high-end Core 2 Quad or an I7?
GTA4 and Supreme Commander?
Albuquerque
10-Jan-2009, 21:31
Solitaire engine. Maybe Tetris. Any NES, SNES, N64, PS/PS2 emulator is also entirely CPU limited.
More seriously, mainstream 3D PC games shift back and forth depending on the settings you choose. Most games can see a CPU bottleneck if you remove enough graphical options; most games can also be moved entirely to a video-card bottleneck if you enable enough graphical options. The significant majority of games are not optimized for >2 cores -- with some notable recent exceptions such as GTA4 and Saints Row 2, both of which are epitomes of non-optimized PC gaming in their own right.
The reality is, most games will not be "bottlenecked" by one single component as an overall charge. There might be frames where the limiting factor was fillrate, another frame where the limiting factor was main memory lookup, another frame where the CPU was the slowest contributor. This is why doubling the speed or capacity of one component never yields a similar increase in gaming performance.
Old Right Member
10-Jan-2009, 21:34
GTA4 and Supreme Commander?
I remember Supreme Commander was pretty CPU dependent, but what about any other game engines?
Does GTA 4 show a huge difference between an i7 920 and a Phenom X4 at 2.6 GHz? Did the patch take care of pretty much everything, or is there a lot of graphic corruption and instability left?
Blazkowicz
11-Jan-2009, 03:06
I remember Mafia was totally CPU limited.. I ran it with 4x AA on voodoo5 and 16xS AA on ti4200! and very decently.
EQ2. lol. Seriously I think that game does an awful lot on the CPU. I've watched friends get in big battles and seen Core 2 + 8800GTS setups drop into the single digits. Considering the game came out before the GeForce 6800 (friends played it on GF4 & R9700 initially), I'm guessing it's not exactly GPU limited. I get the feeling that it does things on the CPU that should be on the GPU but doesn't because they couldn't assume everyone would have a capable GPU.
Who cares if GTA-4 is cpu intensive, it is only because it is a poorly coded game.
Skrying
12-Jan-2009, 03:36
EQ2. lol. Seriously I think that game does an awful lot on the CPU. I've watched friends get in big battles and seen Core 2 + 8800GTS setups drop into the single digits. Considering the game came out before the GeForce 6800 (friends played it on GF4 & R9700 initially), I'm guessing it's not exactly GPU limited. I get the feeling that it does things on the CPU that should be on the GPU but doesn't because they couldn't assume everyone would have a capable GPU.
MMOs can do that for the most part. For instance in WoW if you gather up 40 people and raid a capital city you're going to see single digits on the most power of machines.
Simon F
12-Jan-2009, 07:58
What currently used engines are the most CPU limited?
Chess.
entity279
12-Jan-2009, 13:22
Chess.
A clasic RTS game, such as C&C Gold for example is much more complex than chess, if one were to tune AI for maximum efficiency (as chess games try to achieve).
On the other hand, chess games such as Chess Titans included in Vista are pretty okish iregarding cpu power requiremens. So i would conclude that strategy games have the potential for being mostly cpu limited, but often don't
Simon F
12-Jan-2009, 13:26
A clasic RTS game, such as C&C Gold for example is much more complex than chess, if one were to tune AI for maximum efficiency (as chess games try to achieve).
On the other hand, chess games such as Chess Titans included in Vista are pretty okish iregarding cpu power requiremens. So i would conclude that strategy games have the potential for being mostly cpu limited, but often don't
I disagree in terms of complexity. A chess engine (apart from trivially following an opening book) should always be increasing its search tree depth irrespective of whose move it is.
John Reynolds
12-Jan-2009, 14:38
EQ2. lol. Seriously I think that game does an awful lot on the CPU. I've watched friends get in big battles and seen Core 2 + 8800GTS setups drop into the single digits. Considering the game came out before the GeForce 6800 (friends played it on GF4 & R9700 initially), I'm guessing it's not exactly GPU limited. I get the feeling that it does things on the CPU that should be on the GPU but doesn't because they couldn't assume everyone would have a capable GPU.
Not sure you're remembering correctly. The GF 6800 came out in summer of 2004 and EQ2 wasn't released until that November. But, yea, it's pretty much a DX8 title, too many passes with its lighting model that could be reduced if the game's engine used DX9/10.
pjbliverpool
12-Jan-2009, 16:09
Crysis loves a lot of CPU power even though its GPU limited most of the time. If you have a lot of GPU power though then Crysis will benefit. It will also help smooth out the lows almost reagrdless of CPU power.
Farcry 2 also loves the i7's but I wouldn't call it CPU limited since it will run fine on a modest dual core as long as you have the GPU hardware. Its whether you think 80fps is worth the money over the 40fps a dual core would provide.
Not sure you're remembering correctly. The GF 6800 came out in summer of 2004 and EQ2 wasn't released until that November. But, yea, it's pretty much a DX8 title, too many passes with its lighting model that could be reduced if the game's engine used DX9/10.
I just remember friends playing it on GF4 and Radeon 9700. And then one friend went out and got a 6800GT that autumn for it. My point really was that it's rather amazing that it still stresses out high end PCs. Although you can often run around the countryside on max settings with no problem, if you get into the right situation, the game will happily drop your system to 5 fps.
I disagree in terms of complexity. A chess engine (apart from trivially following an opening book) should always be increasing its search tree depth irrespective of whose move it is.
I think Go would be the most CPU intensive, if you put it like that.
Simon F
13-Jan-2009, 09:35
Indeed.
Surely Conway's Life, since that's supposed to be played on an infinite plane :twisted:
Jawed
PhilTaylor
29-Jan-2009, 22:42
I suggest Flight Sim might be up near the top of CPU-limited games.
ShaidarHaran
30-Jan-2009, 01:18
I suggest Flight Sim might be up near the top of CPU-limited games.
"might be"?
:lol:
nice to see you round these parts Phil!
Not many FS fans around but a great place for you game devs :D
PhilTaylor
30-Jan-2009, 16:13
"might be"?
:lol:
nice to see you round these parts Phil!
Not many FS fans around but a great place for you game devs :D
yes, it is. and thanks.
the great thing about the new job is it actually gives me time to write code again, like what I am doing on futuregpu.org. and that gives me more to say technically.
pjbliverpool
30-Jan-2009, 17:53
Yeah FSX is a good one. I would love to see some CPU scaling benchmarks for that game using Nehalem as well as C2Q/C2D.
fsx does use more than 2 cores, doesnt like sli either
its a shames toms uses fsx in the vga charts but not the cpu charts
PhilTaylor
31-Jan-2009, 03:00
fsx does use more than 2 cores, doesnt like sli either
its a shames toms uses fsx in the vga charts but not the cpu charts
with SP1 multi-threaded support for scenery loading and terrain texture synthesis during flight was added. which will work for the up to 32 cores addressable by SetThreadAffinityMask.
SLI is done through driver magic, read the NV doc on it, it has advice on what not to do so you dont stuff up the magic the driver does.
yes, I am surprised FSX hasnt been used in more CPU tests.
has anyone tried the intel quadcore benchmark (the fugly one with the hovercraft) on a i7
ps: If anyone is thinking Phil Taylor i've heard that name before
well your right, the above poster is indeed
"Philthy" Phil Taylor of Motorhead fame :D
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1984/philtyanimaltaylorbj0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
pjbliverpool
31-Jan-2009, 17:47
has anyone tried the intel quadcore benchmark (the fugly one with the hovercraft) on a i7
Ice storm fighters.... yeah I would love to see some i7 benchmarks with that.
Richard
31-Jan-2009, 23:38
Dungeon Siege. Went from a Radeon9800 Pro to an X850XTPE and the fps improvement was zero. DX7 game though. :P
shiznit
10-Feb-2009, 06:50
This is kinda relative but stick with me.
Counter:Strike Source and Team Fortress 2. They aren't the hardest hitters, but in these two games it is absolutely critical to maintain at least 100 and 66 frames per second, respectively, for connection quality reasons. Their respective versions of the Source engine aren't multi-threaded (maybe TF2 is a bit but it crashes when you force it fully) and it takes a lot of ghz to do it.
Unknown Soldier
10-Feb-2009, 13:00
Got myself a QX9650 .. should be able to get 3.6Ghz .. or so I hope. Hope to see an increase in GTA4 which uses all 4 cores.
US
homerdog
10-Feb-2009, 14:20
This is kinda relative but stick with me.
Counter:Strike Source and Team Fortress 2. They aren't the hardest hitters, but in these two games it is absolutely critical to maintain at least 100 and 66 frames per second, respectively, for connection quality reasons. Their respective versions of the Source engine aren't multi-threaded (maybe TF2 is a bit but it crashes when you force it fully) and it takes a lot of ghz to do it.
I v-lock at 60fps in TF2 and never have any noticeable connection quality issues. But when I do get the occasional slowdown to ~30fps, reducing AA and AF and overclocking the GPU has no impact on performance -> the game is CPU limited on my 3.2GHz E6750 + GTX260 at 1440x900 with _all_ settings maxed.
shiznit
10-Feb-2009, 22:34
I v-lock at 60fps in TF2 and never have any noticeable connection quality issues. But when I do get the occasional slowdown to ~30fps, reducing AA and AF and overclocking the GPU has no impact on performance -> the game is CPU limited on my 3.2GHz E6750 + GTX260 at 1440x900 with _all_ settings maxed.
servers tick at 66 updates/second and unless you have at least 66fps at all times you really can't run "cl_cmdrate 66". Many servers don't care that you are vsynced at 60 and they force 66 rates on you, so you basically play with 6 choke all the time. It's even worse in CS:S where servers tick at 100 and you need 100fps for cl_cmdrate 100. People with 100fps and 100 cmdrate/updaterate will have significantly better hit reg. My E8400 runs at 4.2ghz and I still get times in both CS:S and TF2 when my framerate dips below 100 and 66, respectively. r_3dsky 0 helps a lot though, but Valve really needs to update both games to the L4D engine where muti-threading finally works.
btw, vsync is a bad idea in Source because for example if you are synced at 60hz, if your framerate dips below that, without triple buffering it will get halved to 30, and if you had your cmdrate set to 60 to take advantage of running at 60fps, you just got 30 choke. And it always happens when it hursts you the most, in firefights. Not to mention if you cap yourself to 60fps with vsync you can't use 100 rates in CS:S and most of the other players will have 40 more updates per second than you to and from the server. You can force triple buffering with Direct3dOverrider but the input lag is not worth it imo. I play at a high enough refresh rate not to see the tearing anymore, but with a 60hz lcd you have to pick your poison, imo it's much better to turn vsync off so you can use the best rates and just try to ignore the tearing.
So will any i7 owners take up the Ice storm fighters challenge ?
homerdog
10-Feb-2009, 22:45
servers tick at 66 updates/second and unless you have at least 66fps at all times you really can't run "cl_cmdrate 66". It's even worse in CS:S where servers tick at 100 and you need 100fps for cl_cmdrate 100. People with 100fps and 100 cmdrate/updaterate will have significantly better hit reg. My E8400 runs at 4.2ghz and I still get times in both CS:S and TF2 when my framerate dips below 100 and 66, respectively. r_3dsky 0 helps a lot though.
btw, vsync is a bad idea in Source because for example if you are synced at 60hz, if your framerate dips below that, without triple buffering it will get halved to 30, and if you had your cmdrate set to 60 to take advantage of running at 60fps, you just got 30 choke. And it always happens when it hursts you the most, in firefights. Not to mention if you cap yourself to 60fps with vsync forget about using 100 rates in CS:S. You can force triple buffering with Direct3dOverrider but the input lag is not worth it imo. I play at a high enough refresh rate not to see the tearing anymore, but with a 60hz lcd you have to pick your poison.
Interesting. I use vsync and triple buffering in TF2 'cause the lag doesn't really matter when I'm demo spamming :grin:. In CS:S I choose to leave vsync off and suffer the tearing.
shiznit
10-Feb-2009, 22:54
sorry I edited again without refreshing first. bad habit.
pjbliverpool
10-Feb-2009, 23:00
So will any i7 owners take up the Ice storm fighters challenge ?
Yeah i'm still waiting on that one too ;)
Here's a helping hand to get any i7 users out there started:
http://www.intelcapabilitiesforum.net/ice_storm_fighters?m=v
Personally I think they're scared :D
Thorburn
12-Feb-2009, 00:22
Yeah i'm still waiting on that one too ;)
Here's a helping hand to get any i7 users out there started:
http://www.intelcapabilitiesforum.net/ice_storm_fighters?m=v
What am I supposed to be testing with it? :wink:
Morrowind - what's the deal w/that game engine? PC HW review sites don't use it as a reference game any more & I've always wondered how it scales, if at all, on late model HW & where the hang up is/was, CPU or GPU. My suspicion is that it's more CPU than GPU bound, but ya never know. As a previous poster noted, probably just another poorly coded game w/flags not dropping, resulting in ever accumulating memory leaks.
homerdog
12-Feb-2009, 04:28
I picked up Morrowind a few months back. Performance was fine, but I got wicked mouse lag when vsync was enabled, as I do in Oblivion and Fallout 3. Somethings screwy with that engine there is.
Somethings screwy with that engine there is.
Thank you yoda
John Reynolds
12-Feb-2009, 15:13
Morrowind - what's the deal w/that game engine? PC HW review sites don't use it as a reference game any more & I've always wondered how it scales, if at all, on late model HW & where the hang up is/was, CPU or GPU. My suspicion is that it's more CPU than GPU bound, but ya never know. As a previous poster noted, probably just another poorly coded game w/flags not dropping, resulting in ever accumulating memory leaks.
I think I once read that the render order was stupidly reversed, so any culling/occlusion techniques on modern GPUs are basically unusable. And, yea, it was more CPU dependent when released back in 2002.
I'll take the Ice Storm Fighters challenge tonight if I can ween myself off of LOTRO long enough to d/l, install, and run it once the kids are in bed.
homerdog
12-Feb-2009, 16:31
I think I once read that the render order was stupidly reversed, so any culling/occlusion techniques on modern GPUs are basically unusable. And, yea, it was more CPU dependent when released back in 2002.
I've also heard mention that they spend something like 1/3 of render time on water reflections, even when there's no water to be seen..
Well I'm definitely CPU limited in Fallout 3. Sometimes I get slowdowns to ~35fps and lowering AA and AF has no effect in these situations. In most games 35fps minimum would be great, but my solution to the mouse lag requires a consistent 50+fps (I use FPS Limiter to lock framerate at 50fps and force vsync and triple buffering with D3DOverrider. But if fps drops below the lock the lag returns (WTF?). ).
I'll take the Ice Storm Fighters challenge tonight
Dont worry about it too much I wouldnt want you loosing your hair or anything - Oh wait :D
Here is a CPU-load snap-shot during a heavy MP session in L4D:
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1889/l4dcpuloadtb5.png
Looks very similar to the GTA4 load-levels, though. Probably a tri-core CPU could be saturated well enough, here.
shiznit
13-Feb-2009, 21:24
Yea Fellix, the CS:S community is praying for an update to the L4D engine, DOD:S got it recently and the framerate doubled. When (or if) it finally arrives we won't need 4.0ghz penryns for 100fps. Those kernel times look high too, is that an indicator of system calls?
magoo5225
18-Feb-2009, 06:22
Hi guys! I just discovered this forum tonight, pretty cool site!
anyway, i found it while i was looking for a new game to test out my new i7 that i bought.
here are my system stats:
intel core i7 920
vista ultimate x64
12 gb of ddr3 corsair memory (tripple channeled)
nvidia 8800gts 640mb video card (not the best i know)
msi x58 platinum sli motherboard
here is the link to the results...
http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq2s007S
let me know if i can test other things with my system if you need!!
Jack
q6600 stock 2.4ghz
xp32
4gb ddr2
gt260 898mb video card 1920x1200
asus p5w-dh deluxe
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5760/icefightnx1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
and why is the usage so high on the virtual cores is it a parculiararity of hyperthreading because the virtual cores are part of the real cores ?
Edit magoo just realised I did mine on demo high you appear to have used game low and very early into it hence score 20 and the fact you dont appear to be getting hit by a constant stream of missles
This is kinda relative but stick with me.
Counter:Strike Source and Team Fortress 2. They aren't the hardest hitters, but in these two games it is absolutely critical to maintain at least 100 and 66 frames per second, respectively, for connection quality reasons. Their respective versions of the Source engine aren't multi-threaded (maybe TF2 is a bit but it crashes when you force it fully) and it takes a lot of ghz to do it.
Yeah still waiting for the multicore support that valve promised. A 32 player server brings my 2,7Ghz Conroe to it's knees.
homerdog
21-Feb-2009, 21:49
Yeah still waiting for the multicore support that valve promised. A 32 player server brings my 2,7Ghz Conroe to it's knees.
Okay glad to see it's not just me.
itsmydamnation
24-Feb-2009, 00:06
Yeah i'm still waiting on that one too ;)
Here's a helping hand to get any i7 users out there started:
http://www.intelcapabilitiesforum.net/ice_storm_fighters?m=v
i'll do it when i get home tonight,
i7 @ 3990 ( cant hit 4 ghz dam Bclock wall :cry:)
demo high please and 1920x1200 if you can do it
ps: can you do one at stock clock rates
Can I benchmark with ISF or should I just run the demo on high? Does it use CUDA Physx? I didn't let it install the old Physx package it came with. How do I change resolution? It defaults to 1280x1024 or something.
whats isf ?
cant remember how to change res as ive uninstalled it (maybe you cant and ive got it wrong)
Ice Storm Fighters, what you've been telling people to run you crazy man! I have an i7 ...
almighty
24-Feb-2009, 14:18
CS:S is CPU dependant pretty bad.
I got a nice boost when overclocking my CPU from stick 2.1ghz to 3.8ghz.
Gained me ~55fps
1280x1024, 4xMSAA, maxxed out everything - 287fps average
Single 8800GT
almighty
24-Feb-2009, 14:19
i'll do it when i get home tonight,
i7 @ 3990 ( cant hit 4 ghz dam Bclock wall :cry:)
Try putting you multiplier on auto and dropping ur fsb ;)
homerdog
24-Feb-2009, 16:14
Try putting you multiplier on auto and dropping ur fsb ;)
Turbo Mode FTW!
I've yet to see any game utilize/warm up the CPU like the 'Intel Burn Test' stability program. It even heats the CPU 5-10c more than Prime95!
And while CPU temperature might not be the best gauge for CPU utilisation it still is worth something I would think.
My vote goes to FSX regarding games. 100% CPU utilisiation and higher temps that other games I have. Also Crysis/Warhead seems to have rather low CPU utilisation but Crysis Wars has quite a bit higher.
Turbo Mode FTW!
I once had a 386DX 33MHz. The mobo and case had a turbo switch that brought it up to 40MHz. It sure improved perfomance quite well. Hehehe!
Okay glad to see it's not just me.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=824502
Here ya go.
homerdog
19-Mar-2009, 19:39
Oh yeah :cool:
Blakhart
29-Jun-2009, 00:29
When there are lots of building interior polys visible from outside and many players in view, Tribes2 brings my otherwise 400fps or higher down to 50 or so pretty regularly. This is with a e8500, 8800gts@600MHz core, 1024x768, 2xssaa, 16xaf. I blame the game engine.
Blazkowicz
29-Jun-2009, 01:28
I once had a 386DX 33MHz. The mobo and case had a turbo switch that brought it up to 40MHz. It sure improved perfomance quite well. Hehehe!
you are very lucky. I had a 486 DX/2 66, the turbo switch allowed to clock it down to 20MHz :lol:
Who cares if GTA-4 is cpu intensive, it is only because it is a poorly coded game.
It at least makes use of quad cores, most games that are cpu limited are so because they are single/dual-threaded primarily.
Though I have a suspicion that GTA4 is so cpu intensive because it uses the cpus for things that shaders would normally be used for on a PC. On the consoles, which have excess FLOPs on their cpus but weak gpus, this is probably a reasonable trade off (or perhaps it works well enough so that they wouldn't even consider the problems implicit to it with regards to porting).
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