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Are CPUs Killing The MMO Experience?
- Thread starter ken0y
- Start date
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
ssd won't boost max fps really, but it will reduce stutter(the most noticeable thing in MMO's) which tends to get worst in raid's/busy city centre type area's, it can raise minimum fps for sure but its just a better experience. Depends on the MMO/travel types, some load into instances almost constantly and fast travel means loading new places pretty often, ssd's can be awesome there, other mmo's do all travel in "real world" and have very little instancing, but even then an SSD will help with stutter.
Basically ssd is the single best upgrade for general system feel and little bits of smoother feel in basically everything you do. From booting the computer, game load times, reducing stutter in games, more responsive everything, and less noise... ssd = awesome^42
In terms of fps, its not that you can't notice the difference between 30-60fps, its just its less of an issue in some games than others.
I can EASILY see the difference between 60-120fps on my nice 120hz screen in almost every FPS out there, however, I can't feel the difference between 20 and 120fps in say C&C/Starcraft. Its the way you play a game that matters to what frame rate you need. IN BF3 I might spin around as quickly as possible and the more frames I get to see in a 180 turn, the smoother that turn will be. In C&C, I never turn around, you never really do anything but slowly scroll sideways so you really never need the kind of framerate.
In MMO's, yeah, there are times I turn around fast, but compared to an FPS, its infrequent/rare at best and not crucial when I do. Again in an FPS turning and having the screen stay smooth, the image stay sharp and spotting a guy shooting at you and shooting at him first can be the difference between dying and not, in an FPS, I spin around and don't get off the first shot.... I'm not dead and it makes little to no difference.
The importance and situations in which framerate effects your game are hugely lower in MMO's compared to an FPS. I'd prefer 120hz in say Lotro, but I'm not going to die more or less at 20fps, or effect my experience of the game much either, while in BF3 chugging along at 20fps while moving fast and spinning around can mean not seeing someone shooting at you that you might see at 120fps, it fundamentally changes the gaming experience for FPS's, but not much at all for MMO's, and basically not at all for strategy style games.
I'd pay £300 for a new graphics card to get the perfect framerate for FPS's, I wouldn't for an MMO. But ultimately the biggest problem is most MMO's that suffer from lag/slow down in cities, do so with the best CPU's overclocked the furthest as well. if 99% of the game is designed for max 12-20 player characters in screen during a raid, in a city with 150 characters, its going to suck, but its better than the game is more optimised for that raid situation than the city situation... because its better to have the game look and feel better in raids/PVE/PvP, than look its best in a city with nothing else happening, and crap everywhere else.
Yeh, some good points there Drunken. I agree that framerate is very important in FPS because its all about pinpont cursor accuracy most of the time. Il get an SSD and HD as soon as possible, the ultra quick booting and loading/saving etc will be welcome plus my HD is now the oldest component in my PC.
I tried The Secret World today and was getting constant 60FPS on highest gfx settings but then noticed when enemies swarmed the screen it would reduce to around 40, I guess this is due to a wall of calculations hitting the CPU and it just not having enough grunt to push through unscathed. Cool game though
Cheers, K
I tried The Secret World today and was getting constant 60FPS on highest gfx settings but then noticed when enemies swarmed the screen it would reduce to around 40, I guess this is due to a wall of calculations hitting the CPU and it just not having enough grunt to push through unscathed. Cool game though
Cheers, K
Good Grief... that's a beast.
I think i just wet myself
The extreme version is even more beastly.
It has 2500RPM fans.
H100 can't match that but it is really loud.
I was quite impressed with the performance of the SA but it is a bitch to mount.
Still have a TRUE in service keeping a q9550 cool.
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Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,583
But city area is actually BOTH CPU and graphic intensive. Considering you only got a single 7970 for 2560 res, getting only 25fps is may be because you got graphic settings at max, and using Supersampling (which kill frame rate hugely) rather than you CPU holding you back. The easiest way to check is to lower the graphic settings and see if frame rate increases.
Turning down the detail actually makes very little detail in the GW2 cities, Black Citadel especially. For example, I get around 30fps on high settings then turn everything right down and still average around 30-40fps. I was testing TSW last night and experienced the exact same thing, as a result I have concluded that that really it has nothing to do with GFX power. Unless like Martini says you are at HD with TOO many bells and whistles. I have noticed that this problem only occurs when there are lots of dynamic objects on the screen such as other characters or NPCs. Like many others I have no problems running around the more static open world environments at 60fps where there are little players and enemies on screen. I am assuming therefore that this is my processors fault.
My analogy goes something like this; You can invite a lot of people to a party, everyone turns up dressed really well and looks cool, but ultimately if nobody talks to each other the atmosphere slowly becomes turgid and banal. Everyone leaves and buys an Intel.
P.S, By the time I can afford a new CPU and Mobo it will most likely Haswell will be on the scene. What do you guys think about Haswell for gaming?
cheers, K
My analogy goes something like this; You can invite a lot of people to a party, everyone turns up dressed really well and looks cool, but ultimately if nobody talks to each other the atmosphere slowly becomes turgid and banal. Everyone leaves and buys an Intel.
P.S, By the time I can afford a new CPU and Mobo it will most likely Haswell will be on the scene. What do you guys think about Haswell for gaming?
cheers, K
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Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
I had been hoping for a long time that Intel would stop rinsing everyone and start making 6 or 8 core mainstream cpu's with Haswell, it looks like marginal CPU side improvements and a huge update to the IGP and a huge huge focus on driving power usage down. Useful but they could have gone AMD style and had the option of 4 core + igp, or 8 core + no igp.
Not long after Haswell we'll have, steam roller 8 cores(likely... there is a chance AMD might dump the high end non APU's) or steam roller APU, quad + igp.
APU's are great for many people, lower power usage, a little on die acceleration and that will become increasingly important, but for gaming its discrete gpu's and IGP's are largely wasted with discrete gpu idle power coming down so far in recent times.
The main thing is along with steamroller we'll be having all three consoles with AMD gpu's and at least one with an AMD cpu, and HEAVY optimisation for AMD cpu's along with it. That means, better threading, better optimised for AMD architecture.
So at some stage in 2014 it will basically be Haswell quad core not much faster than Ivy vs AMD 8 core, with heavy optimisation from all games for AMD architectures.
People underestimate AMD chips now, they lack a bit in single thread though this has decreased already with better software optimisation and other tweaks and even more from Piledriver, Steamroller is aimed at fixing its biggest weakness, single thread, and its already significantly stronger in multithreaded performance than Intel quads.
Basically come the new consoles all being out, an 8 core AMD chip is likely to be the best balls out performance option and the more games are coded for more threads in the future, the more the advantage lies with 8 cores over 4.
Intel still make great chips but for balls out performance they just aren't providing more cores and no IGP chips for the mainstream. Quad's from what £130 to £250, then a hex for £450, and nothing inbetween, even though 95% of gamers don't need the IGP you're paying for on the quads
The irritating thing being, cost wise for Intel hexcore vs a quad core with IGP would cost almost the same amount to produce, they just aren't making them(for mainstream).
They've got the best process in the world, the biggest advantage and the smallest die size, this also means they've got the most room to play with and still be highly profitable. They could make a 2500k twice as big, still have great yields and be highly profitable at the same price, let alone the ability to charge way more for a 8 core + igp. WE can cool 300W gpu's with no problem, we cool 250W overclocked cpu's with no problem, we can cool 150W stock cpu's with no problem.... intel just won't make them.
Not long after Haswell we'll have, steam roller 8 cores(likely... there is a chance AMD might dump the high end non APU's) or steam roller APU, quad + igp.
APU's are great for many people, lower power usage, a little on die acceleration and that will become increasingly important, but for gaming its discrete gpu's and IGP's are largely wasted with discrete gpu idle power coming down so far in recent times.
The main thing is along with steamroller we'll be having all three consoles with AMD gpu's and at least one with an AMD cpu, and HEAVY optimisation for AMD cpu's along with it. That means, better threading, better optimised for AMD architecture.
So at some stage in 2014 it will basically be Haswell quad core not much faster than Ivy vs AMD 8 core, with heavy optimisation from all games for AMD architectures.
People underestimate AMD chips now, they lack a bit in single thread though this has decreased already with better software optimisation and other tweaks and even more from Piledriver, Steamroller is aimed at fixing its biggest weakness, single thread, and its already significantly stronger in multithreaded performance than Intel quads.
Basically come the new consoles all being out, an 8 core AMD chip is likely to be the best balls out performance option and the more games are coded for more threads in the future, the more the advantage lies with 8 cores over 4.
Intel still make great chips but for balls out performance they just aren't providing more cores and no IGP chips for the mainstream. Quad's from what £130 to £250, then a hex for £450, and nothing inbetween, even though 95% of gamers don't need the IGP you're paying for on the quads
The irritating thing being, cost wise for Intel hexcore vs a quad core with IGP would cost almost the same amount to produce, they just aren't making them(for mainstream).
They've got the best process in the world, the biggest advantage and the smallest die size, this also means they've got the most room to play with and still be highly profitable. They could make a 2500k twice as big, still have great yields and be highly profitable at the same price, let alone the ability to charge way more for a 8 core + igp. WE can cool 300W gpu's with no problem, we cool 250W overclocked cpu's with no problem, we can cool 150W stock cpu's with no problem.... intel just won't make them.
I had been hoping for a long time that Intel would stop rinsing everyone and start making 6 or 8 core mainstream cpu's with Haswell, it looks like marginal CPU side improvements and a huge update to the IGP and a huge huge focus on driving power usage down. Useful but they could have gone AMD style and had the option of 4 core + igp, or 8 core + no igp.
Not long after Haswell we'll have, steam roller 8 cores(likely... there is a chance AMD might dump the high end non APU's) or steam roller APU, quad + igp.
APU's are great for many people, lower power usage, a little on die acceleration and that will become increasingly important, but for gaming its discrete gpu's and IGP's are largely wasted with discrete gpu idle power coming down so far in recent times.
The main thing is along with steamroller we'll be having all three consoles with AMD gpu's and at least one with an AMD cpu, and HEAVY optimisation for AMD cpu's along with it. That means, better threading, better optimised for AMD architecture.
So at some stage in 2014 it will basically be Haswell quad core not much faster than Ivy vs AMD 8 core, with heavy optimisation from all games for AMD architectures.
People underestimate AMD chips now, they lack a bit in single thread though this has decreased already with better software optimisation and other tweaks and even more from Piledriver, Steamroller is aimed at fixing its biggest weakness, single thread, and its already significantly stronger in multithreaded performance than Intel quads.
Basically come the new consoles all being out, an 8 core AMD chip is likely to be the best balls out performance option and the more games are coded for more threads in the future, the more the advantage lies with 8 cores over 4.
Intel still make great chips but for balls out performance they just aren't providing more cores and no IGP chips for the mainstream. Quad's from what £130 to £250, then a hex for £450, and nothing inbetween, even though 95% of gamers don't need the IGP you're paying for on the quads
The irritating thing being, cost wise for Intel hexcore vs a quad core with IGP would cost almost the same amount to produce, they just aren't making them(for mainstream).
They've got the best process in the world, the biggest advantage and the smallest die size, this also means they've got the most room to play with and still be highly profitable. They could make a 2500k twice as big, still have great yields and be highly profitable at the same price, let alone the ability to charge way more for a 8 core + igp. WE can cool 300W gpu's with no problem, we cool 250W overclocked cpu's with no problem, we can cool 150W stock cpu's with no problem.... intel just won't make them.
What i hope AMD will do is just drop all this silly core counting, some daft hybrid 8 core 4 thread module nonsense and just get back to baisics.
A 4 big core CPU with 4 fast threads for £120, and a 6 big core 6 fast thread CPU for £160 is what i want to see.
Stop messing about with shared resources which just form natural bottlenecks left right and center.
If they had just stuck to the basics and upgraded / improved on Thuban by increasing the core size with DIE shrinks and improved the performance with faster threads and updated instruction sets... they would have kept pace with Intel.
Stop all this silliness, just get back to basics.
Here is something i did to check out what was holding me back. I used the msi afterburner on screen display and set it to show gpu usage. My Gpu usage was something like 50% but struggling to maintain 50 fps and dropping to 25 Fps. So i now know im Cpu bottlenecked and looking for a cpu to bump up the minimum fps. Go try that
Associate
- Joined
- 6 Jan 2008
- Posts
- 272
MMO's are all about Min FPS. 30 frames is plenty playable if its a constant 30 its the dips that kill ya. You can be running 60 FPS in a MMO but if you have sudden and frequent dips that take ya down in the 20's or lower its gonna seem like a stuttering mess and gets really annoying fast.
Log into a popular MMO and go to a crowded city and do the spin test(stand still and just spin around) and watch your frames. Draw distance can usually help this depending on the game if your having issues. MMO's are hard to generalize like you can FPS games. Each one is a totally different animal because they all have vastly different engines and set ups. For example I mostly play MMO's and I regret my CPU frankly. It just doesnt have the raw power and a couple games I play I pay for it with the dips. I can be 60+ one seccond and come around the corner and a group is standing there and my FPS will tank.
Dont get me wrong its not all doom and gloom but if I had it to do all over again I would have saved for a i5.
Log into a popular MMO and go to a crowded city and do the spin test(stand still and just spin around) and watch your frames. Draw distance can usually help this depending on the game if your having issues. MMO's are hard to generalize like you can FPS games. Each one is a totally different animal because they all have vastly different engines and set ups. For example I mostly play MMO's and I regret my CPU frankly. It just doesnt have the raw power and a couple games I play I pay for it with the dips. I can be 60+ one seccond and come around the corner and a group is standing there and my FPS will tank.
Dont get me wrong its not all doom and gloom but if I had it to do all over again I would have saved for a i5.
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The trouble is CPU's are designed to be used in scientific areas throughout industries where they are under the heaviest of loads and cooling doesn't involve a 15cm dual fan heatsink and countless case fans.
Piledriver is only 125W and it's already difficult to keep cool with a massive heatsink under Prime95 (scientific application) and practically impossible to do so if you overclock, the VRM's also get really hot and can throttle under Prime95.
I've also had a 3930K (130W) and VRM throttling was an issue under Prime95 when overclocked (~200W), why do you think they make VRM waterblocks? there was a story the other day about a Gigabyte board blowing a mosfet on a stock FX8350.
The difference between CPU & GPU is that CPU's need to be able to operate reliably at their maximum potential should the software demand it, it's no good having a CPU which falls over or slows down if you push it too hard.
Whereas most modern GPU's have throttling mechanisms which limit them to prevent overheating when they're given too much load (think Furmark being thottled), a CPU which throttles when running things like Folding/Prime95 and other scientific applications industry wide would be no use to anyone.
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I wish AMD would push their involvment in these big MMOs more. Games they get heavily involved in tend to have proper multi threading support (as well as other graphical stuff) and sometimes run better than on an Intel. Most importantly though, everyone would benefit whether your using an Intel quad or AMD 4/6/8-core. Just look at PS2, that's a disaster with it's CPU usage even clocked Intels aren't getting particularly steller fps.
So true. I love the way enthusiasts and gamers think that Intel and AMD make CPUs especially for them.
You're over exaggerating there tbh. I know from my own experience with PD that it's not that difficult to cool, and 990fx VRMs just need good airflow and they're fine. If I can cool a poor clocking 8320 in an HTPC case, and quietely, then peeps with proper tower cases shouldn't have any trouble.
Gigabyte have had problems with VRMs failing for ages though so it's more likely to be a coincedence that it's with an 8350. IIRC, PCZ will be able to tell you all about Gigabyte VRMs.
So true. I love the way enthusiasts and gamers think that Intel and AMD make CPUs especially for them.
You're over exaggerating there tbh. I know from my own experience with PD that it's not that difficult to cool, and 990fx VRMs just need good airflow and they're fine. If I can cool a poor clocking 8320 in an HTPC case, and quietely, then peeps with proper tower cases shouldn't have any trouble.
Gigabyte have had problems with VRMs failing for ages though so it's more likely to be a coincedence that it's with an 8350. IIRC, PCZ will be able to tell you all about Gigabyte VRMs.
Soldato
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- 21 Mar 2003
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- 4,652
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- Nottingham
I would also note, that certainly in the case of GW2, its poorly written and is more cpu reliant than it should be.
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
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- 14,583
Actually no. While I do agree it is not perfect, but it still manage to more or less use up to 75-80% of each of the 4 cores (I have been monitoring this myself all the time) at the intensive battles. There's plenty of other mmos that are far worse than that (i.e. those that use 2 threads or less). Also the rendering of city areas is quite CPU intensive as well (besides the large number of people in them).
The problem with GW2 is that it IS THAT CPU demanding...even my i5 2500K at 4.6GHz (all cores at 75-80% usage) would bottleneck my 5850 "at times", such as in the situation of for example fighting the dragon with like 40-50 players and like 20 enemy minions (with GPU usage drop to around 60-70% usage, and fps drop to around 32-35fps), or in World vs World with 60-80 players battle. In other instances such as solo exploring/questing, it would be GPU limited instead of CPU.
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